Som del av et større forskningsprosjekt intervjuet vi ti foreldre med flyktningbakgrunn om deres erfaringer fra kontakt med barnevernet. Til tross for at foreldrene beskrev både positive og negative opplevelser, tillit og mistillit, fant vi at frykt for barnevernet var et sentralt tema. Tematiske analyser viste at frykten for barnevernet ikke primært ble relatert til informantenes egne negative erfaringer, men til en rekke oppfatninger og representasjoner av barnevernet som informantene beskrev som vanlige eller gjengse blant etniske minoritetspersoner generelt. Vi fant at representasjonene av barnevernet kunne kategoriseres i følgende undertemaer: 1) Barnevernet bare tar barn, 2) Barnevernet går ikke i dialog med foreldre, og 3) Barnevernet diskriminerer. Analysen drøftes kritisk i lys av Axel Honneth og Nancy Frasers forståelser av anerkjennelse og sosial rettferdighet. Vi foreslår at frykten for barnevernet kan forstås som frykt for krenkelser i møte med barnevernet; å bli fratatt barna, å bli usynliggjort og bli diskriminert. En sentral implikasjon av studien er behovet for ytterligere forskning som undersøker frykten for barnevernet blant etniske minoritetspersoner samt tiltak som adresserer mistillit til tjenestene i deler av befolkningen. As part of a larger research project, we interviewed ten parents with refugee backgrounds about their experiences of contact with child welfare services in Norway. Despite parents describing both positive and negative experiences, and trust as well as distrust, we found that fear of the child welfare services was a central theme. Thematic analyses showed that fear of the child welfare services was not primarily related to the interviewees' own negative experiences, but to a variety of perceptions or representations of the child welfare services that informants described as common or prevalent among people from ethnic minorities in general. We found that the representations of the child welfare services could be categorized into the following themes: 1) child welfare services primarily take children away from parents, 2) child welfare services do not go into dialogue with parents, and 3) child welfare services discriminate against ethnic minority families. The analysis is discussed critically in light of Axel Honneth and Nancy Fraser's understandings of recognition and social justice. We suggest that the parents’ fear of the child welfare services can be understood as fear of experiencing humiliation and disrespect through contact with child welfare services; fear of losing their children, becoming invisible and being discriminated against. A key implication of the study is the need for further research that examines the fear of child welfare among people from ethnic minorities, as well as measures that address distrust of services in parts of the population.

This study examines the conceptualisation of family in key social legislative documents guiding social workers in two European countries, whose welfare systems have previously been labelled as re-familialised (Lithuania) or de-familialised (Sweden). The focus is on the concept of family as delineated on three legislative levels: the constitutional level, the general family policy level, and the child welfare policy level. ‘Family’ is explicit in Lithuanian law, and the regulation of family formation and responsibility is imperative, while this is much less so in Swedish law. The analysis reveals how general welfare systems (regime-types) are linked to legislative frameworks, which, in turn, provide fundamentally different conditions for social work in different contexts.

The article reviews the relevance and methodological utility of welfare regime typologies for the study of professional sense-making in social work with families. Focus groups were carried out with social workers in European and Latin American countries representing four different policy regimes. A case vignette was used to elicit social workers’ descriptions of how welfare policy may influence how they understand their work task and the notion of family. The research team identified methodological challenges of general relevance in similar policy-practice studies. There were paradoxes in terms of homogeneity on the regime level vs. heterogeneity within and between national services. Pitfalls appeared in the selection of regime-typical cases, language/cultural barriers, and in deciding organisational level. The article shows that welfare typologies have potentialities in that they may provide a helpful analytical basis for theoretical and practical reasoning in which syntheses between policy and practice can be explored, discussed and challenged.

The aim of this article is to reflect on the strengths and challenges in qualitative comparative research on personal social services. The specific methodological approach that these reflections emerge from is the application of case vignettes in focus group interviews with social workers, working in different welfare regimes. We describe the process of vignette construction and implementation in focus group interviews, and relate this to findings in a large international project with researchers and data from Chile, Mexico, Norway, Sweden, Lithuania, Bulgaria, Ireland and the UK. Findings reveal that some globally spread professional norms prevail when they are applied locally, while others are more formed through welfare systems with strong contextual norms and legal and socio-economic barriers. Furthermore, the project showed that to use case vignettes and focus groups, in order to compare ‘social work’ in its totality between countries, is really difficult. It appears more fruitful to use such research methods to compare subsectors and sub-disciplines instead of social work as a whole. The strength of the data retrieved from the study is that it makes it possible to separate information on actual practice from information on principles and system norms, thus providing in-practice and on-practice reflections.

This article compares social work in countries representing four different welfare regimes: Chile, the Republic of Ireland (refer to elsewhere as ‘Ireland’), Lithuania and Sweden. The aim is to examine how social workers in different contexts refer to families’ complex needs, how contextual factors influence social workers’ positions and actions, and how they make sense of their work. Social workers in 15 focus groups, 4 per country except for Chile with 3, were interviewed about their conceptions of ‘family’, ‘families with complex needs’, and reasoning about interventions in relation to a fictitious complex case vignette. The understanding of complex needs appears relatively individualized in Chile and Lithuania, while contextual factors were more pronounced in the Irish and Swedish material. Chile, exemplifying a familialized family policy regime, reflects a poverty-compensatory social worker role that also supports familial reproduction; Ireland, a partly de-familialized regime, reflects a supportive and risk-reactive role; Lithuania, a re-familialized regime reflects a patriarchal risk-reducing role and Sweden, a de-familialized policy regime, reflects a rights-oriented and technocratic role. Welfare regimes shape different social work practice contexts. However, to some extent, social workers around the world share a common work ethos in how they, for the best interest of the people they work with, deal with the cross-pressure from social problems and political-ideological priorities.

In June 2016, China promulgated the “Opinions of the State Council on Strengthening the Work of Rescuing Children in Difficulty”, which broadened the coverage of child welfare in China. The document clearly encourages and supports the participation of nonprofit charitable organizations in improving and complementing the public support system for children living in difficulty. This paper reports an assessment study of the relief program for children with congenital heart disease, which was launched by the Red Cross in L Province. Semi-structured face-to-face interviews with six Red Cross employees and 10 parents of stricken families, and telephone interviews with 66 recipient families, were carried out. Additionally, a review of a large number of background documents was analyzed to assess interventions by social organizations in the rescue of children in difficulty. The project was shown to reduce poverty and improve medical treatment for children with congenital heart disease. The role of nonprofit charitable organizations in relation to the child protection system can be characterized as “leak-filling”.