This study considers the accounts of mothers who have been using illegal drugs, have received treatment and are in the process of recovering. The data is based on 19 individual interviews conducted between May and December 2005 in two institutions for female drug users in southern Finland. The primary aim is to discuss the self-conceptions of the interviewed women as they related their experiences with social workers and the child welfare system. The study relies on the social constructionist view of identity as a self-construction created in situations of interaction and routines of everyday life. As a result, four different categories of motherhood identities and their connections to the various positions of child welfare authorities identified in the interviews of women with drug histories are presented: Responsible motherhood — asking for help, Giving up motherhood — submitting to outside forces, Strategic motherhood — learning to cope and Stigmatized motherhood — fighting back. Asking help from child welfare services was the only category in which the mothers were able to manifest responsible motherhood and co-operate with social workers.
This study discusses treatment barriers affecting access to social and health care services from the standpoint of female substance users. The data consist of seven group discussions and three individual meetings with 13 women in Helsinki, Finland. Institutional ethnography by Dorothy Smith is used as the theoretical background. The focus is on exploring how people's lives are bound up in so-called "ruling relations" which organize their experiences. The research questions consider women's personal experiences that are understood as being socially shared: What treatment barriers do women face; what reasons are there for them not receiving services, and how do the ruling relations coordinate women's experiences. Women faced multiple barriers affecting their access to services. They could be interpreted as being: determined by the service system, such as a lack of services and difficulties in meeting the various criteria in order to be granted access to services; determined by the lack of trust, such as experiences of inequality and stigmatization, which created hopelessness; or determined by personal choices. The study suggests that different sectors of the service system should break down the institutional barriers and cooperate closely in order to get an overall view of the complicated life situations of female drug users. Further, the service system should be organized according to the needs and wishes of the service users in terms of the availability and organization of services.
In this chapter, the authors analyse how the Finnish welfare service system, as it consists of different institutions and professionals, meets or fails to meet the needs of women in varying vulnerable life situations. The participants are women with severe substance abuse problems, women sentenced for committing a crime and poor lone mothers living on basic social benefits. The findings show that women's experiences of encounters with welfare professionals as well as their access to and use of the services share a number of characteristics. They described several barriers and problems related to the complexity of the service system. These included receiving only limited support for basic needs combined with the experiences of stigmatisation and the lack of trust in professionals and problems with face-to-face interaction with them. There is a moral stigma on these women, who have failed both as 'active citizens' and as 'decent women'. The welfare system does not recognise their specific needs as women. The guiding principle of the Finnish welfare service system is gender equality rather than a feminist or gendersensitive approach, and women-specific welfare services are rare.
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