Welcome to our second issue of 2018. Six of the papers in this issue originate from Sweden. This has not been a deliberate selection, but reflecting on what they collectively contribute, it is clear that, taken together, the papers provide (for an outsider at least) an interesting ‘shorthand’ overview of contemporary concerns in Swedish social work. They are therefore grouped together in the first half of this issue.
We start with a paper that itself seeks to offer a critical overview of a concept that has emerged as central in Swedish social work research over the last decade, yet is diverse and fragmented in its meaning – social exclusion. Tobias Davidsson and Frida Petersson, from Gothenburg, conclude their analysis by proposing that a multi-level analytical framework is necessary in order to understand the sequences of events that result in denial of access to social, economic, material, cultural and/or political resources.
Social exclusion remains a theme across the remaining Swedish articles. Linnéa Bruno, from Uppsala, follows with an exploration of financial oppression of children in the context of parental separation, demonstrating how children are positioned in cases involving welfare benefits and in those involving child contact. Goran Basic from Linnaeus University addresses a further aspect of practice in child welfare in a study of professional collaboration in the field of juvenile care, teasing out the interactive patterns that characterise successful cooperation.
Three further articles from Sweden explore aspects of exclusion in services for adults. Lars Hultkrantz, Emelie Värja and Susanna Larsson-Tholén from Örebro tackle the question of how local politics affects services, asking whether Swedish national entitlement legislation for persons with intellectual disabilities achieves its aim of providing equal quality of day services independent of location. Perhaps not surprisingly, they find that disability rights are compromised in the political decisions of local government, providing further evidence of what in other contexts has been called a postcode lottery. Helene Brodin from Stockholm shows how the forces of migration and marketisation intersect to shape family eldercare, cautioning of the need for policy-makers to evaluate the impact of customer choice in the complex territory of international migration and ethnic diversity. And finally, Håkan Jönson, Tove Harnett and Magnus Nilsson, in a collaboration between Lund and Gothenburg, explore the ethnic profiling of nursing homes, identifying how a focus on accommodating lifestyle, language and culture can risk concealing inequalities based on class.
Moving elsewhere, to contributions from a more diverse range of countries, we find a common theme in their focus on children’s services. Anna Gupta, Hannah Blumhardt and ATD Fourth World, writing from England and New Zealand, focus on how ‘the politics of recognition & respect’, centralising the lived experience of poverty, can improve child protection practice, drawing on a participatory research project to update poverty awareness training for social work students. Kristina Urbanc, Branka Sladović and Vanja Branica from Croatia continue the education focus in a paper that explores the needs of students with experience of living in care, drawing on their perspectives to suggest how higher education institutions can develop support structures and mechanisms. Francesca Corradini from Italy again picks up on the theme of growing up in care, exploring whether out-of-home placements improve outcomes for children and young people. Florian Eβer from Germany explores the significance of touch in children’s residential care, focusing on how care workers in a study conducted in Scotland influenced children’s agency by bringing their own bodies into their relationships with them. Drawing on a relational understanding of care, the author argues for reflexive engagement with touch as a professional tool. In the last of our child-focused papers, João Carvalho and colleagues look at professional judgement and decision-making in the Portuguese childcare system, investigating the factors at work in decisions to place a child in foster care or to reunite her with her family.
Finally, we conclude this issue with a contribution from Thomas Besch and Jung-Sook Lee, who write from China and Australia, take us deep into conceptual territory in an exploration of the concept of toleration and its relevance to social work, arguing that incorporating toleration within social work discourse assists in negotiating the ethical challenges of practice.