Editorial

This general issue presents articles focused on social work with children and young people in Belgium, Estonia, Ireland, Norway and the UK. Together they address a range of issues about how social workers promote the wellbeing of children and young people and work with other professionals in challenging practice situations, within complex organisational settings and social policy contexts.

The subject of how to build relationships and trust within supervisory relationships is the subject of the first article by Darka Kovič and Aisling McMahon. Supervisory relationships are often influenced by power dynamics, which are particularly important when there is a lack of trust and positive power sharing. The study is set within a national service in Ireland that offers therapeutic interventions to young people aged 12–25 years. Using Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis, the study found that supervisees experienced supervisory relationships as a source of both vulnerability and empowerment. Positive supervisory relationships where power is shared take time to develop, but they can support supervisees to find their place in the organisation and navigate through vulnerability and the fear of being exposed and judged.

The challenging and fascinating issue of how to understand and promote the voice of infants is explored in the next article by Brynulf Bakkenget and Eystein Victor Våpenstad. Although pre-verbal children have their right to participate and be heard in matters that affect their lives enshrined in the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC), the operationalisation of this right has remained highly challenging. The dominant discourses on involvement have presupposed that social actors are competent, rational individuals and neglected the interpersonal and intersubjective nature of children’s communication.

The article reports the results of a study that combined research interviews and observations of interactions between parents and professionals during pregnancy and around six months after birth. The data was analysed using scenic-narrative microanalysis (SNMA) and the aim was to find a scientific method for understanding the infant voice in the parental interview. An example of an interview between a mother and a midwife is presented and analysed. The authors concluded that a child is born in a narrative sense before its actual birth and this narrative beginning has an important influence in the child’s subjective development.

The next article by Arlene Weekes focuses upon the question of how the interests of children and young people can be promoted through good decision making in fostering and adoption panels. It reports the results of a study that examined how the panels worked, focusing upon the effects of psychoanalytic factors on the decision making process. A number of fostering and adoption panels across the UK were observed and the research was based upon a constructivist-interpretivist approach. The study found that panel outcomes were affected by a number of aspects: task focus, structure and organisation of the meetings, professionalism and scrutiny.

How to promote children’s welfare in the context of a global pandemic is the focus of the fourth article in this issue by Karmen Toros, Asgeir Falch-Eriksen and Rafaela Lehtme. This has been addressed in an earlier issue of the journal in the award-winning article by Ferguson et al. (2022) which addressed this question in the context of the UK, while this study focuses on the situation in Estonia. The article in this issue, therefore, widens the lens through which we can consider this topic by illuminating approaches adopted in regions beyond the UK.

The article reports the findings from a study of interviews with child protection workers across the country and found the following difficulties. Firstly, increased vulnerability due to increases in related factors such as alcohol misuse, domestic abuse and social isolation within families. Secondly, difficulties in responding to referrals and obtaining information including a lack of clarity around home visits. Thirdly, there was a suspension of face-to-face services, including emergency services, during lockdown and difficulties with families accessing e-services as replacements. In particular, problems with online schooling were reported, although there were examples where parental support had ameliorated the situation. The authors conclude that the role of the state acting as loco parentis when parental care fails had collapsed and that it is important to learn from the crisis for the future.

The final article by Jochen Devlieghere, Karel De Vos, Griet Roets and Rudi Roose explores how the wider social policy context influences how practitioners promote the welfare of children and young people. Child protection systems can be divided into minimalist and maximalist approaches with regard to how they interpret their responsibility towards children. While minimalist approaches focus on the responsibility of families and seek to restrict the role of the state to providing a residual social safety net, maximalist approaches emphasise providing a broad range of social services that seek to promote children’s rights.

The authors use the Flemish child protection system in Belgium as an example of a maximalist perspective and use an ethnographic and biographical case study to analyse key challenges. The case study of Zoë, a young person who fell between different services, is used to analyse the relationship between a maximalist discourse and the realities of frontline practice, which can exhibit the features of a minimalist practice. In the individual case, the maximalist goals are realised by practitioners who use professional judgement to deviate from policy while acting as if they were following it. They conclude that a maximalist welfare approach requires practitioners to manage a number of tensions, including between explicit and hidden policy discourses and between practice and the discourse on practice.

This issue also includes the winning essay from the Clare Winnicott essay competition. Congratulations to the prize winner, Harriet Ballantine-Thomas.

We would like to thank all the authors for sharing their work and insights with us and we are very appreciative of their excellent contributions to this issue.