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Based on strong discourses of individualization, active welfare reforms in Denmark have changed the financial security of vulnerable families and increased numbers of children are growing up in poverty. This study investigates how poverty is reflected in frontline workers' categorizations of children considered vulnerable. Empirically, the study draws on qualitative group interviews with 56 informants and descriptive results from two surveys with almost 2000 respondents each. Findings are analysed using Foucault's theory of disciplinary power. The findings give an important insight as to how policy discourse influences and steers the moral and professional judgement in the frontline and why social work with vulnerable clients takes on particular forms. The results show that frontline workers implement and reproduce an individualised discourse found in recent social policy reforms while overlooking societal structures defining the individual's possibilities. In particular, poverty is left unrecognised, as categorizations of ‘normal’ versus ‘vulnerable’ revolve around family relations and perception of personal shortcomings of the parents.

This study investigates the implementation of preventive policy targeting children. Based on longitudinal survey data we analyze how frontline workers assign meaning to core concepts of the policy and categorize the children and in this light how their exercise of discretion affects policy implementation. Many studies problematize the effects of limiting the discretion in the frontline. We identify a case where the policy is highly ambiguous, the definitions of target groups, core concepts, or central goals are vague, and the general steering of the frontline is not characterized by a lack of discretion but a lack of organizational boundaries to shape the discretion. This expands not only the policymaking role of the frontline but also becomes a barrier to developing a stronger preventive effort. The findings give nuanced insight into how organizational boundaries affect the discretion and target group construction in the frontline during frontline implementation of welfare policies.

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