ABSTRACT
This study explores how child welfare workers make sense of involuntary child welfare relationships. Drawing on qualitative interviews with 11 frontline professionals in Norwegian child welfare services, the study uses reflexive thematic analysis to examine how child welfare workers interpret parental resistance in light of relational, emotional and structural dynamics in child welfare practice. The analysis identifies three interconnected themes: (1) parents’ experience of insecurity, (2) feelings of alienation and (3) organizational conditions for relational practice. Drawing on theoretical perspectives on relational recognition and structural constraint in professional child welfare encounters, the study highlights how resistance is not merely a product of individual opposition but rather emerges within asymmetrical, often involuntary professional relationships shaped by limited discretion, procedural demands and organizational pressures. Child welfare workers reflect on how time constraints and administrative requirements hinder their ability to build trust and engage in meaningful dialogue, often reinforcing transactional dynamics. The findings suggest that parental resistance should be understood as both a relational response and a systemic outcome. The study contributes to debates on professional discretion, relational practice and participatory approaches by showing how parental resistance becomes intelligible to child welfare workers at the intersection of relational vulnerability, professional authority and organizational constraint.