While we all are all rooting for a fast return to normality in which meeting each other and getting close, rather than keeping distance is paramount, we are pleased to present the third European Journal of Social Work issue of 2021. In this issue, we stay close to what the journal stands for: providing a forum for the social professions in all parts of Europe and beyond, analysing and promoting European and international developments in social work, social policy, social service institutions, and strategies for social change by publishing refereed papers on contemporary key issues. We will keep doing so in the following months and years.
We kick off this issue with no less than seven papers that explore the meaning-making and impact of the ever-expanding attention for New Public Management, accountability and activation. The academic interest in these developments is, of course, not new. Early 2019 we published a special issue on Social work and Neoliberalism, examining how neoliberal imperatives are continuing to impact on, and shape, social work as a disciplinary ‘field’. Nonetheless, the authors in this issue once again manage to adopt new and innovative perspectives that keep us alert to the importance of social work research.
The first paper, from Ulrika Järkestig Berggren and her colleagues from Sweden, examined the strategies used by public officials in implementing austerity measures in needs assessment for personal assistance in Sweden. They found that the social policy values of fifty years, emphasizing the right to equal participation in society, are being trade for economic austerity goals. The second paper, also from Sweden, was written by David Pålsson and Emelie Shanks. In their contribution, they analysed all formal applications submitted to the Swedish national Inspectorate between the years 2013–2016 and found that licensing does not, or only to a limited extent, address issues such as schooling and health support, staffing levels, children’s contacts with the birth family, the scientific base of methods and measurement of client outcomes.
We continue this discussion with a paper from Norway, written by Alf Roger Djupvik and his colleagues on professional autonomy and New Public Management. In their paper, they aptly describe how practitioners in Wales (UK) and Norway consider their administrative duties to be an important feature of practice rather than an unwarranted diversion from direct work. The following paper by Susana Vilhena, also from Norway, discusses the implementation of frontline sanctions in Norwegian social assistance because of welfare conditionality. Drawing on fieldwork and interviews with caseworkers she shows the way caseworkers perceive the client’s attitude, level of need and control over neediness seem to be decisive in distinguishing between cases. Moreover, she found that caseworkers display a tendency to attribute non-compliance to incapability, which leads them to renegotiate activation requirements.
Our fifth paper, written by Maria Appel Nissen from Denmark concerns broad the development of social work in advanced capitalist welfare states, where gaining competitive advantages has become the primary goal of public governance and management expressed in a strong focus on competition and productivity. In her thought-provoking study, she demonstrates how a focus on productivity and competition expressed in public reforms and incentives to promote short-term services fosters a subtle and almost invisible reorganisation of social services changing the time horizon of social work. Marja Lindberg and her colleagues from Finland follow this line of reasoning in our sixth paper by discussing the association between economic strain and parental coping and by assessing the relevance of other social and health-related factors in explaining parental coping experiences. They found out that economic strain undermines parental coping, hereby pointing out at the significance of sufficient support and work/family reconciliation for parental coping.
We conclude this debate with a paper from Belgium on accountability perspectives and expectations in practice. In this paper, Michelle van der Tier and her colleagues conducted a scoping review of recent studies to review which type of accountability mechanisms come to the fore and how social workers use these mechanisms in practice to account their work to these multiple actors. They found that social workers struggle to implement managerial mechanisms because they are not always congruent with social work values and with the relational and contextual nature of the work.
Moving on in this issue, we tackle another topical debate in social work and beyond: refugee reception and integration. This topic has resulted in a highly debated issue all over Europe in which social workers play an imported role. As part of their professional mandate, they are confronted with addressing the needs and rights off, for instance, asylum seekers, refugees and migrants. The following three papers contribute to this debate in a broad sense. The first paper was written by Ayan Handle and Anders Vassenden from Norway. In their contribution, they examine how young second-generation parents portray middle class identities when they interact with school and kindergarten personnel by analyzing how parents conduct and meticulously prepare for encounters with school and kindergarten personnel. They argue that understanding performance of ethnicity requires inclusion of institutional contexts, such as the schools, kindergartens, and the child welfare system.
The second paper was written by Welat Songur from Sweden investigated how and to what extent older migrants use different forms of elderly care. The results of his study show that while Nordic migrants have similar patterns access to elderly care to Swedes, older migrants from the Middle East and Africa use home help services to a similar extent to older Swedes, but refrain from use of special housing due to the greater accessibility of home help services and the help they receive from family and relative. The third and last paper on this topic was written by Memory Jayne Tembo and her colleagues from Norway. They took a step backwards and tried to understand how different parents perceive and interpret interventions and measures aimed at improving their lives, hereby focusing on immigrant parents’ perceptions of the welfare system. They conclude by stating that immigrant families feel disempowered through their interactions with the welfare system, which they perceive to be controlling through excessive surveillance of immigrant parents parenting practices.
The last cluster of papers covers a variety of debates on social work education. Three of them are written by colleagues living and working in the United Kingdom. Joe Hanley opens up the debate by explaining that social work education in England has a long track record of success in widening participation to disadvantaged student populations. In this article, he critically examines the changing nature of widening participation in social work education by investigating how fast-track social work programmes are perpetuating the inequalities that are inherent at all levels of the English educational system. He ends with a strong plea for a social justice approach. In the next contribution, Hannah Jobling and Ian Shaw explore how a leading social work journal in the UK locates the discipline of social work, both internationally and in relation to the various professional, policy and academic ‘worlds’ it inhabits. They conclude by considering what their analysis of the journal’s position in its wider world(s) means for questions of plurality and coherence within the social work field.
In the third paper on this topic, Joanna Fox and Petra Videmsek highlight the importance of learning about reflective processes in social work education, because acts of reflection enable us to learn from past experiences to improve our future practice. They consider how our own educational experience taught us to value the perspectives of experts-by-experience in all aspects of our practice, investigating the disclosure of our own self and identity in this process; furthermore we consider the importance of incorporating the perspectives of experts-by-experience in the wider professional development of social workers. Consequently, both authors recommend that social workers reflect on their experience throughout their professional development. The last and fourth paper on this topic was developed by Pia Tham and Deborah Lynch from Sweden. They followed twelve Swedish social work graduates over their first years in practice to gain insight into the journey from their social work education into the profession and found that their social work education had not prepared them for the complex realities of practice.
We wish you a happy reading.