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ABSTRACT
The organisation of the daily lives of children encountered in Finnish child welfare work is approached here in the light of multi-local residency. Conceptually the focus will be on children’s residential changes or moves. It is an explorative pilot study in the context of municipal in-home child welfare social work, attempting to establish the existence of the phenomenon. The data consist of case descriptions of child clients drawn up by social workers. The data are analysed by the causes and the nature of the residential changes. As a result, the multiple changes and their accumulation in the lives of the child clients of child welfare are remarkable. In-home child welfare interventions themselves also produce children’s multi-local residency. Gathering the research data and discussing the results were a momentous experience for many of the social workers. Home-based child welfare work rarely examines the child’s housing history as a lifelong continuum. More often, the focus is on the current moment or recent events. Mapping a geography of well-being on the basis of children’s housing and relationships to places deserves elaboration as a tool for social work with children.
Abstrakti
Suomalaisen lastensuojelun asiakkaana olevien lasten arjen organisoitumista lähestytään artikkelissa monipaikkaisen asumisen näkökulmasta. Käsitteellisen huomiomme kohteena ovat lasten asuinpaikkojen muutokset ja muutot. Kyseessä on kokeileva pilottitutkimus kunnallisen lastensuojelun avohuollon kontekstissa ja pyrkimyksenä on osoittaa ilmiön olemassaolo. Aineisto koostuu sosiaalityöntekijöiden koostamista asiakaslapsia koskevista kuvauksista. Aineiston analyysissä on keskitytty asuinpaikkojen muutosten syihin ja luonteeseen. Tutkimuksen tuloksena moninaiset muutokset ja niiden kasautuminen lastensuojelun asiakkaana olevien lasten elämässä on huomattavaa. Myös lastensuojelun avohuollon interventiot itsessään tuottavat lasten monipaikkaista asumista. Aineiston keruu ja keskustelu sosiaalityöntekijöiden kanssa oli heille merkityksellinen kokemus. Avohuollon lastensuojelutyössä harvoin tarkastellaan lapsen asumishistoriaa elämänmittaisena jatkumona. Huomio on pikemminkin nykyhetkessä ja äskettäisissä tapahtumissa. Hyvinvoinnin maantieteen kartoittaminen lasten asumisena ja paikkasuhteina ansaitsee tulla arvioiduksi myös lasten kanssa työskentelyn välineenä.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Notes on contributors
Hannele Forsberg is Professor of Social Work at the School of Social Sciences and Humanities, University of Tampere, Finland. She has researched many aspects of family, childhood, and welfare practices, and is currently working on multi-local housing of children and family futures. She is the co-editor of Social work and child welfare politics: Through Nordic lenses, Bristol: Policy Press (2010).
Aino Ritala-Koskinen, Ph.D. is Senior Lecturer at the School of Social Sciences and Humanities, University of Tampere, Finland. Her research interests include child welfare, childhood studies, and changing family structures. She has special focus on stepfamilies, multi-local housing of children, and family futures. She is involved in social work further education and she is responsible for co-ordination and development of praxis clinics network and action.
Notes
† The article is part of a wider research project in which children’s multi-local residency is examined through three different case studies: in a post-divorce situation, in an unaccompanied underage asylum seeker situation, and in in-home child welfare social work situation (Forsberg, Ritala-Koskinen, Autonen-Vaaraniemi, & Kauko, Citation2014).
1 Finland – a country of 5.4 million people, of whom about 1 million are children – is often seen as a child-friendly Nordic welfare state. In international comparisons, the Finnish model of child welfare is often called a family service model or a welfare model (Blomberg et al., Citation2010; Gilbert, Citation1997; Pösö, Citation2011). This refers to a broad understanding of child welfare: on the one hand, there are universal welfare benefits and services to all families with children and, on the other hand, municipalities carry out child- and family-specific child welfare or child protection work to address the specific needs and problems of some children and their families. These two levels of child welfare are intertwined. The universal services are often the first arena where the potential need for child protection is actualised, and the general services form an important support resource for child welfare social work in municipalities.
2 In Finland, the implementation of micro-level child protection or child welfare is primarily the task of municipalities, with social workers as key actors in the field. Mapping the needs of the child and families and the use of general support measures are typical ways to approach the situations (instead of focusing on signs of maltreatment or abuse, which would be more typical of the Anglo-Saxon social work model). These in-home services are provided within the child’s community, with the exception of short-term out-of-home placements (emergency placements) (for more details, see Pösö, Citation2011).
3 Research on child welfare work in different countries cannot be directly compared with Finnish research because of systemic and cultural differences. As regards multi-local residency, features worth noting in current Finnish child welfare work include the following: a focus on in-home measures; a high number of emergency placements; frequent placements in either foster families or institutions; the principle of care orders being temporary, based on the importance accorded to biological family; and the fact that, at least so far, adoption is not an established practice of child welfare work.