Families as subjects of need and knowledge: epistemic misrecognition in disability welfare policy in Norway

This article explores how Norwegian welfare policies aiming to ‘recognize families as resources’ align with the lived experiences of families caring for children with multiple disabilities. Drawing on qualitative data, the article examines parents’ experiences through a lens of professional family partnership and theories of epistemic injustice and social recognition. The article develops the notion of ‘epistemic misrecognition’ to describe three dimensions of feeling unacknowledged in these family accounts: families feel unheard in their testimony (testimonial misrecognition); they feel dismissed as relevant participants in inquiry (participatory misrecognition); and especially mothers experience misrecognition of their care-based expertise (misrecognition of experiential knowledge). These findings underscore both the importance of valuing families’ expertise in policy and practice and the barriers to doing so. While Norwegian next-of-kin policies recognise families as subjects of need, they are less able to acknowledge families as subjects of knowledge and fall short in granting families full epistemic standing.