Editorial

In this third issue of 2023, we are glad to offer you 14 read-worthy contributions. The first article presents outcomes for persons who have been supported by child welfare services in Norway related to upper secondary school, employment, financial assistance and health-related benefits. This study provides a more nuanced account of upper secondary education, employment, health-related benefits and financial assistance than previous studies have done. The second article traces the development of social work in Israel's Arab society at the turn of the millennium (1996–2006) based on semi-structured interviews with Arab social workers who worked in the profession at the time. They discovered that there were two parallel social work paradigms at the time – one for the country's Jewish citizens and the second, far poorer, for her Arab citizens – that evolved against the backdrop of the ongoing Israeli-Arab conflict and the definition of Israel as a Jewish state. The third contribution refers to emotional nurturance as a fundamental feature of all forms of professional caring. Drawing on feminist care theory, Hochchild's emotional labour theory and Bourdieusian social reproduction theory, as well as diverse empirical studies, this paper identifies how emotion is marginalised and misrecognised and calls for the reappraisal of emotion in professional care work in ways that appreciate tensions, contradictions and dilemmas in practice.

Our fourth paper contributes to the ongoing debate about the depoliticisation of social work. The authors explore intergenerational dialogues as a non-formal approach to this debate and argue that social welfare organisations should engage in creating free space for discussions about the political nature of the profession. According to the authors, intergenerational dialogues can be seen as learning opportunities without a fixed educational agenda. The fifth paper describes three different caregiver profiles and analysed them in relation to their panorama of care, i.e. the extent to which caring is shared with other formal and informal co-carers. They conclude that in developing relevant care support, it is important to acknowledge that caregivers are not a homogenous group. In the sixth paper, the nature of child-researcher relationships and researchers’ positions are examined to further understand how to account for the impact of contexts on meaning making in research with children. According to the authors, further reflexivity in social-work research with children is called for, so that understanding of the possible dimensions of reflexivity are extended.

The seventh paper reports on a study of a specialist social work service provided by local government agencies in Ireland. It draws on qualitative findings taken from interviews with social workers and explains why social workers faced challenges in upholding their professional values, regulatory obligations and continuous professional development. The authors conclude by arguing for a more clearly defined, human-rights-based social work role. The next and eighth paper of this issue discusses how technology is used in the lives of women who are victims of domestic violence. The analysis shows that the accessibility of digital media enables the abuser to be constantly present in the woman's life, even after she has left him. However, the same technology is also important to the women, enabling them to manage victimisation, monitor the perpetrators, store evidence, obtain information, gain support and keep in touch with family and friends.

In our ninth paper, the authors argue that we have gone from the more conventional form of face-to-face relationships to the more innovative methods making us talk about e-welfare with the use of digital technology. This article aims to shed light on these changes which are taking place by highlighting the operational and ethical implications of digitalisation to find a new approach to social work, which has been seen as ‘a beacon in the night of the pandemic’. In the 10th paper, the authors have surveyed dedication to work among 1347 trained social workers and street-level bureaucrats with other educational backgrounds in the Norwegian Labour and Welfare Administration. Whereas perceptions of demand were negatively associated with dedication, perceptions of control and support yielded positive relationships, with the latter variable being the most salient predictor of dedication to work. The next paper examines the performance of resilient practices by 17 asylum-seeking and refugee families living in Belgium, and how such practices have been facilitated by social professionals in various types of relationships with these families. Overall, the findings highlight that resilience is not opposed to vulnerability, but may exist next or through it. This suggests the need for a re-politicisation of resilience in social work.

The 12th paper of this issue is an explorative study in two German Federal States and addresses the question of whether the far right influences social work and, if so, how. The results show that influences can be found across all fields of social work and point to shifts within professional social work that are reflected in anti-democratic and inhumane practices as well as concrete exclusions. The following paper is a scoping review of 36 articles published between 2000 and 2019 on electronic information systems in social work. The findings show that the use of electronic information systems changed the priorities of social work, but that social workers deviate from the rules of these systems to maintain their agency in relation to their work. The last and 14th paper of this issue deals with maintaining the balance between help and control in social work. Using a logical process of analogy, this article presents a proposal regarding how to work with the legal principle of proportionality in the practice of social work. According to the authors, such a process can help to legitimise the selection of procedures, especially for social workers in countries where codes of ethics about the exercise of control have not been developed.