‘You never know where their hands have been’ – the notion of intellectual disability as contaminated

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Trøblete overganger i et aldersdelt hjelpeapparat

Author's accepted version (postprint)

Making sense, discovering what works... Cross-agency collaboration in Child Welfare and Protection in Norway and Quebec

<p>This paper addresses the enabling and constraining factors that underpin inter-organizational collaboration in Child Welfare and Protection services in Norway and Quebec. Characterized by different regulatory systems, but with a common drive to hierarchically promote cross-agency collaboration, these jurisdictions provide the basis for two instructive and contrasting case studies on the subject. The paper builds on meta-ethnography as a means to synthesize and translate results from separate qualitative research undertakings carried out in each place. It argues that although a core set of properties may be identified as necessary for collaboratives to operate in a successful, sustainable manner; greater attention should be paid to how these properties interact with one another on the ground, given schemes’ particular scope and scale of objectives. Moreover, regulatory provisions aimed at stimulating or mandating cross-agency networks may align with collaborative capacity in various ways, occasionally in a mutually reinforcing, but sometimes antagonistic manner. The conclusions drawn have implications for both research and policy.</p

Public – private partnership

Public-private partnerships have long been highly valued in Western welfare states, and the valuation of such cooperation has become even stronger in light of last year’s economic turbulence, particularly with voluntary non-profit organizations (VNPOs). At the same time, the voluntary sector is changing. The broad popular movements have generally declined in favour of more individual interests as the basis for forming VNPOs, and those organisations still involved in the provision of social services are becoming more and more similar to public service, due to requirements placed on them by the public sector. This is believed to have consequences for the value of such cooperation. If voluntary organisations in public services – or other private organisations for the matter – are becoming copies of public services, there is not much value to be gained from such cooperation, except for some financial gain.In this article, we argue that this conclusion is based on a rather narrow perception of public-voluntary cooperation. Research and debate on such cooperation are mainly preoccupied by what we call supplementary relations, in which voluntary organizations are assessed according to whether they can deliver cheaper or better services than the public sector. Based on an example of public-voluntary cooperation in preventive social work among young adults in Norway, the article show that public-voluntary collaboration can be truly valuable when it is based on a complimentary relation, in which parties collaborate because they command different resources equally important to the task at hand

Public – private partnership: A critical discussion

Public-private partnerships have long been highly valued in Western welfare states, and the valuation of such cooperation has become even stronger in light of last year’s economic turbulence, particularly with voluntary non-profit organizations (VNPOs). At the same time, the voluntary sector is changing. The broad popular movements have generally declined in favour of more individual interests as the basis for forming VNPOs, and those organisations still involved in the provision of social services are becoming more and more similar to public service, due to requirements placed on them by the public sector. This is believed to have consequences for the value of such cooperation. If voluntary organisations in public services – or other private organisations for the matter – are becoming copies of public services, there is not much value to be gained from such cooperation, except for some financial gain.In this article, we argue that this conclusion is based on a rather narrow perception of public-voluntary cooperation. Research and debate on such cooperation are mainly preoccupied by what we call supplementary relations, in which voluntary organizations are assessed according to whether they can deliver cheaper or better services than the public sector. Based on an example of public-voluntary cooperation in preventive social work among young adults in Norway, the article show that public-voluntary collaboration can be truly valuable when it is based on a complimentary relation, in which parties collaborate because they command different resources equally important to the task at hand

Exploring the social relations of Roma employability: The case of rural segregated communities in Romania

The article reports on a qualitative study of Roma employability in Romania. Being the largest ethnic minority group in Europe, the Roma population is the object of profound marginalization in most of the countries where they reside, by measures such as spatial segregation and exclusion from the formal labour market. This article focuses particularly on the Roma living in rural segregated communities. Inspired by institutional ethnography, the aim is to explore the social organization of rural Roma employability from the standpoint of the Roma themselves. The main obstacles to employment, as they are known and shared by our interviewees, are a lack of available jobs within reach, their own lack of education and a rejection by employers on the grounds of them being Roma. As the analyses show, these obstacles, and the individual’s experiences and knowledge about them, are shaped and maintained by extended translocal relations of administration and governance, thus making the rural Roma dependent on a precarious secondary labour market of low-paid day work for neighbouring farmers. The uncertainty of this work, and the organization and work of everyday life it implies for the people inhabiting these communities, further increases the distance to formal employment. It is this complex set of relations coordinating people’s doings that produce the employability of Roma inhabiting the rural segregated communities

Trøblete overganger i et aldersdelt hjelpeapparat

Author's accepted version (postprint)

Marking time? – a critical analysis of Norwegian research on collaboration in the health and care services

publishedVersio