As the COVID-19 vaccination campaign gets underway, it is time to look back at the past year. The coronavirus evolved at an unprecedented speed from a local phenomenon to a global threat, forcing governments to almost completely lock down what had been a vibrant society until then. The pandemic posed immense challenges to all aspects of our lives. The nightmare, as it were, survived night after night and reality surpassed fiction. Even in Albert Camus’ 1948 novel La Peste (The Plague), the people of the fictional city of Oran were able to go to bars and cinemas during the epidemic to break out of their social isolation. Most European health systems passed this litmus test. In many parts of the world, education showed its most flexible side and a warm wave of solidarity was set in motion. In many countries, people even applauded for months the health care workers who braved the front line.
And yet, in addition to the deceased and the sick, the corona crisis also embraced a dark social page. Pre-existing social problems of loneliness, educational failure, poverty, unequal access to health care and a lack of space to play outside surfaced more strongly, and suddenly became visible to a part of the population that did not know of the existence of these problems or closed its eyes to them for many years. The corona crisis is forcing us to rethink the way we organise our society, but in particular how we deal with vulnerable families and especially with children and young people.
It is our understanding that social work could and should make use of the corona crisis to plea for a social welfare system that breaks boundaries, that uses its creativity to colour outside the lines, that not only recognises but also embraces the ambiguity that is inherent to working with vulnerable people, that dares to experiment and is allowed to do so, that is free to fill in the public space that exists, that knows how to create proximity without being paralysed by procedures and guidelines, but above all to develop a social work landscape that is infected with the children’s rights virus. A landscape that is permeated by a child rights reflex, not only in its quality manuals, but especially in its thinking, acting and speaking.
By devoting this issue to research with and about children and young people, we aim to direct attention to this and pay a modest contribution to this debate. We start with no less than eight papers from Sweden.
The first paper was written by Robert Lindahl. The aim of his conceptual paper is to use Axel Honneth’s theory of recognition to analyse, discuss and understand the relationship between children and youth in Swedish foster care and their child welfare workers. The article problematises Honneth’s approach to childhood and recognition and the understanding of mutuality in caring relationships. The second paper was written by Madeleine Wirzén and Cecilia Lindgren. In their contribution, they explore why talking about past difficulties and crises is crucial when assessing prospective adoptive parents. The study points to how social workers’ professional discourse on the significance of past experiences holds and reproduces the ideal of a reflective confessing subject, the hallmark of a therapeutic culture.
We continue this issue with our third paper, written by Veronica Ekström and Magnus Johansson. They argue that for children growing up with a parent who has a problematic use of alcohol, the other parent can be a protective factor. Their study reveals how much stress and strain mothers face due to the other parents’ problematic alcohol use and that they need support to better handle their and their children’s situation. The fourth paper was written by Victoria Lönnfjord and Curt Hagquist. The purpose of their study was to investigate the associations between self-reported schoolwork pressure and family factors with psychosomatic problems, and to investigate possible moderators of these associations. They concluded that health promoting and preventive work by the school health team should focus on strengthening pupils’ self-efficacy and target schoolwork pressure. In doing so, special attention needs to be given to girls and adolescents living with a single parent or no parents.
The fifth paper by Kristina Engwall and Lill Hultman examines how childhoods are constructed within the assessment process concerning respite care for children with disabilities in Sweden. They argue that the application for respite care compels the social worker to prioritise needs, evaluate children’s development and define what constitutes a good childhood. In the sixth paper of this issue, Henrik Karlsson researched potential discrimination in decision-making of child-welfare investigations, i.e. to place children into out-of-home care or let them remain at home while providing services. They found that the large over-representation of immigrant children in Swedish out-of-home care is more likely driven by disproportionate exposure to common risk factors for child welfare involvement, poor housing conditions, poverty and neighbourhood segregation.
The seventh paper, written by Thorbjörn Ahlgren and his colleagues examined how children report abuse, neglect and behavioural problems and what authorities they claim to have had contact with that are legally mandated to report to the Child Welfare Services, e.g. health services and police. They uncovered that poverty and living in single-parent households significantly increases the risk of abuse, neglect, and behavioural problems. Odds ratios of contact then again were higher in the case of behavioural problems compared to the odds ratios for abuse and neglect. The eight and last paper from Sweden was written by Anna ChuChu Schindele and Malin Lindroth and addressed the issue of sexual and reproductive health and rights among young people in secure state care and their non-incarcerated peers. The results show large differences in sexual health between the groups, in that sense that young women in secure state care are the most vulnerable. They suggest that social work should obtain a SRHR-affirmative perspective as this is particularly important when social work involving young people is organised in a compulsory fashion.
The following two papers are written by colleagues from Norway. In their contribution, Inger Johanne Solheim and her colleagues investigate what service users themselves considered to be the most important help towards employment. Based on an action research approach they found that relationships are the most crucial factor for service users as well as that the meaningful relationship is not limited to the one with the professional helpers, but that it also includes the relationship between service users. The second paper from Denmark is written by Cecillie Sudland and Cecilie Basberg Neumann. They argue that few studies have explored caseworkers’ perspectives on children’s safety and emotional wellbeing in high-conflict families. In addressing this gap in our current knowledge, they concentrate on caseworkers’ assessments when they worry about the intensity of interparental conflicts and their ability to identify the right thresholds for interventions. They conclude that parents’ higher socio-economic status denotes resilience, overshadowing intense conflict as a risk factor for children’s wellbeing.
We end this Scandinavian series of papers with a contribution from Denmark, written by Thomas Mackrill and Signe Steensbæk. In their study, they explored the use of Feedback Informed Treatment to improve the involvement of children, young people and caregivers in statutory casework in Children’s Services in a Danish municipality. Feedback Informed Treatment involves monitoring a client’s wellbeing at the beginning of sessions and monitoring the working alliance at the end of sessions. They conclude that involvement requires an individual commitment from caseworkers in each meeting and each case and that there is a need for more research on approaches to how professionals can involve children, young people and caregivers in statutory processes.
The penultimate paper of this issue was written by our Chinese colleague Yong Tang. By means of a photovoice process, the article describes a project on the photovoice of floating children (internal migrant children’s), implemented through a community programme to highlight education and health inequalities. The paper provides interesting preliminary insights into the lives of floating children, which could help inform the development of interventions and bring about positive educational and environmental changes for this marginalised population.
We conclude this issue with a paper from Robyn Munford and Jackie Sanders from New Zealand. They argue that social workers across the globe are being challenged to provide meaningful support to young people who face multiple challenges. Drawing on the findings of a longitudinal study, they present young people’s perspectives on services and support and identify the elements that constitute practice which can be transformative for young people. They state that central to this practice are relational social work practices which underline the significance of authentic and respectful helping partnerships in realising positive change and futures for vulnerable young people.
We wish you lots of reading pleasure and a happy, relaxing and healthy summer.