Visual research methods reduce reliance on verbal communication and offer an avenue for non-verbal storytelling. Body mapping is a visual arts-based research method with its origins in art therapy and community development. It has been successfully used to explore embodied experiences of marginalised social groups. Participants engage in sensory and multimodal storytelling by tracing a life-size body outline and adorning it with fabrics, drawings and images to symbolise their views during a guided interview. This approach was used in research to explore birth family contact experiences in New South Wales, where children have ongoing direct contact with birth relatives in long-term care, guardianship and open adoption. Twelve mothers of children in permanent care took part in body mapping to explore their feelings about contact and the support they need to nurture a relationship with their children. Immersion in the artistic process of bringing a representational body to life granted these mothers access to hidden memories about their experience of child removal. They used evocative images to depict system violence and their fight against the erasure of their mother identity as well to envision a positive future relationship with their children. Body mapping potently revealed that traumatic loss resides in the body and resurfaces in encounters with child welfare systems. This has important policy and practice implications, highlighting a need for post-removal therapeutic services to process trauma and sensitive casework to rebuild parent trust and to help carers respond with empathy to their child’s mother at contact. This lends support to the usefulness of body mapping not only for research with vulnerable parents, but to its enormous potential as a creative engagement tool for child welfare practitioners.

视觉研究方法减少了对口头交流的依赖，并为非语言叙事提供了途径。人体贴图是一种基于视觉艺术的研究方法，其起源于艺术疗法和社区发展。它已成功地用于探索边缘化社会群体的具体经验。参加者通过追踪真人大小的身体轮廓，并在织物，图纸和图像上进行装饰，以象征性地表达自己的观点，从而进行感官和多模式的故事讲述。在研究中使用了这种方法，以探索新南威尔士州的出生家庭接触经历，在那里，孩子们在长期护理，监护和公开收养方面一直与亲属保持直接接触。十二名长期照料的儿童母亲参加了人体测绘，以探讨他们对接触的感受以及抚养与子女的关系所需的支持。沉浸在使具代表性的身体栩栩如生的艺术过程中，使这些母亲能够获得有关其驱逐儿童经历的隐藏记忆。他们使用令人回味的图像描绘了系统暴力以及他们与消除母亲身份的斗争，并设想了与孩子未来的积极关系。人体测绘有力地揭示了创伤损失存在于人体中，并在与儿童福利系统相遇时重新出现。这具有重要的政策和实践意义，强调需要遣散后的治疗服务来处理创伤和敏感的个案工作，以重建父母的信任，并帮助照顾者在接触时对孩子的母亲表示同情。这不仅支持人体贴图的有用性，不仅对与弱势父母的研究有用，而且还为儿童福利从业者提供了作为创造性参与工具的巨大潜力。