Dealing with the wicked issue of child poverty : inter-organizational networks as forums for collective debate and reflection

In the international realm, inter-organizational networking is perceived as a highly relevant instrument in social policy that enables welfare organizations to deal with "wicked issues." In this article, we discuss the central empirical findings acquired from a recent qualitative research project that focuses on inter-organizational networks that were formed at the local level to deal with the wicked issue of child poverty as a complex and multidimensional social problem. We explore how the network discussions about normative value orientations in four inter-organizational networks evolve, and identify three central fields of tension that illustrate the complexity for local welfare actors in and across networks to create network strategies in dealing with child poverty: (a) selective versus universal provision, (b) conditional versus unconditional strategies, and (c) instrumental versus lifeworld-oriented approaches. Our findings show that networks can function as valuable forums for collective debate and reflection, since different approaches and perspectives to tackle the problem of child poverty can be confronted with each other. Creating such a forum has the potential to challenge dominant conceptualizations and undesirable assumptions of complex social problems that are present in welfare practices and policies

Complexities in the exchange of private information in inter-organisational networks : the challenge of justification

In this contribution, we focus on the question of how social workers actually deal with the complexity of sharing private information in three local networks of social provision that aim to combat child poverty. Building on the existing body of social work research, we discuss how practices for exchanging private information are enmeshed in a field of tension between both regulation and discretion. This complexity reveals a major challenge for social workers to justify their interventions. Based on a combination of qualitative semi-structured interviews with social workers in the network and participant observation during the network meetings, we examine the strategies of discretion, considerations and potential justifications of social workers in dealing with private information. Our analysis reveals three major themes: (i) legitimacy to act, (ii) deserving versus undeserving families and (iii) powerlessness to collectively act. We conclude that a rights-based approach can be crucial as a normative value orientation and as a point of reference to enable social workers in justifying how and why they exchange private information about families in poverty situations

Stereotypes, conditions, and binaries : analysing processes of social disqualification towards children and parents living in precarity

In contemporary European welfare states, poverty reduction strategies can currently be characterised as individualistic rather than solidaristic, focusing on welfare recipients’ merit rather than securing their rights. Based on the findings of a recent research project in Belgium, we explore how social workers develop strategies to combat child poverty in local municipalities. Inspired by the work of the critical French scholars Robert Castel and Serge Paugam, our qualitative analysis reveals how social workers construct stereotypes, conditions and binaries between ‘deserving’ and ‘undeserving’ poor in their everyday practice. Our results elucidate how social workers strengthen processes of social disqualification when they support children and sanction parents living in poverty. Interestingly, our analysis also shows how social work takes a critical stance in relation to the recent shifts in the normative value orientation of social policy and social work

Managing the flow of private information on children and parents in poverty situations : Creating a panoptic eye in interorganizational networks?

In this article, we discuss how the flow of private information about children and families in poverty situations is managed in interorganizational networks that aim to combat child poverty. Although practices for sharing information and documentation between child and family social work services are highly encouraged and recommended to create supportive features for parents and children, this development often results in undesirable forms of governmentality. Interorganizational networking also creates controlling side effects because the exchange of information in networks of child and family services may wield a holistic power over families. We theorize this issue by using the Foucauldian concepts of the panopticon and pastoral power, which allows us to grapple with the major tension between support and control in the information‐ and documentation‐sharing practices of social workers. A critical analysis of our empirical data reveals four central fields of tension in which social workers and their organizations must position themselves: (a) craving control and handling uncertainty, (b) using and misusing private information and trust, (c) constructing families as subjects and objects of intervention, and (d) including and excluding families.peerReviewe

Parenting newspeak

Scholars in several European countries have documented the recent turn to parenting (see e.g. Mary Daly's contribution in this issue). Inspired by this analysis and informed by on-going and recent research in our Department, we discuss the emergence of a new vocabulary (or new meanings given to older words) in a polemic essay. Presently, the terms empowerment, strengths-based approach, and demand-led services seem to be shaping the dominant narrative over parent support policies and practices -- particularly when framing parents in poverty. With reference to Foucauldian discourse analysis, these buzzwords in contemporary parenting support policy and practice appear to have different - if not opposing - meanings to what may be their historical meaning. The use of these words can therefore be labelled as either duckspeak (babbling without content) or newspeak (meaning the opposite of what they are saying) (Orwell 1949). This Orwellian newspeak may very well mean that parent support is hardly concerned with the perspectives and well-being of parents. This does not necessarily entail, however, that parents are mere objects, let alone victims of the parenting turn. They are active constructors as well as de-constructors of dominant parenting discourses, considering that parents are also part of the surrounding social, institutional, systemic, and structural dimensions of the welfare state and its social investment paradigm in which educational discussions are framed