This paper presents the results of research on children's risk of being placed in out-of-home care. The purpose is: firstly, to compare children placed in out-of-home care with non-placed children, secondly, to estimate the children's risk of entry into care and finally, to compare the results of this study with the results from similar studies. The study is based on register data from the Statistics Denmark. The sample includes all children with Danish citizenship who were born 1981-2003. In order to estimate the risk of being placed in out-of-home care, we use information about the child, the mother and the father. We discovered that especially children who had a mother on disability pension, children who came from broken homes but also children whose mothers were unemployed or receiving social assistance and children whose mothers had a conviction had a high risk of being placed in care. The mother's characteristics are more important risk factors than the corresponding risk factors of the father. The results, the applied method and the epidemiological inspired analysis make an opportunity to discuss the central concepts and methods of calculation of statistical association, risk, prediction and causal inference in applied sociology and social work. This project is a part of the research project "Welfare interventions in an epidemiological perspective" financed by a grant from the Danish council for strategic research. We thank the editor and two anonymous referees for valuable comments, Elsebeth Lynge, Simon Thorbek and Palle B. Pallesen for useful suggestions and comments and Anders Munk-Nielsen for excellent research assistance.

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Decades of commitment to the basic principles of the Danish welfare state have been discarded with a new social policy reducing the benefits for people already at the bottom of the income ladder. The political intention is to increase job search via economic incentives that increase the gap between benefit income and market income. Using a panel dataset with benefit recipients, we show that the intended job search effect did not materialise to any significant extent; rather, the affected people became poorer because the vast majority of individuals could not respond to the economic incentives in the intended manner. Joblessness was not due to lack of incentives. This study confirms the importance of employability and self-efficacy, but it shows that health is an underlying variable that explains both of these factors and the recipients’ difficulties in getting a job. The results have two major social policy implications. Access to early retirement schemes should be easier for recipients who have serious health problems and therefore cannot respond to economic incentives, and there should be an increased focus on how to help the recipients without major health problems to develop self-efficacy.

Uoverensstemmelser mellem pædagoger og småbørnsforældre i daginstitutioner kan være afgørende for forældresamarbejdet, forældrenes tilfredshed og pædagogernes arbejdsliv. Sådanne uoverensstemmelser eller deciderede konflikter kan opstå af forskellige årsager. Særligt kan forskelle i gruppernes viden om børn, interessekonflikter og værdikonflikter gøre sig gældende. I denne artikel undersøger vi værdikonflikter mellem pædagoger og småbørnsforældre igennem en holdningsundersøgelse. Det har ikke tidligere været undersøgt, hvor ens eller hvor forskellige forældres og pædagogers holdninger til konkrete pædagogiske spørgsmål er. I to kvantitative vignetundersøgelser gennemført med et repræsentativt udsnit af pædagoger og småbørnsforældre sammenlignes de to gruppers holdninger. Undersøgelserne viser overordnet, at de to gruppers holdninger er meget ens. I forhold til en del spørgsmål har majoriteten inden for både pædagoggruppen og forældregruppen samme holdning, mens begge grupper i andre spørgsmål er splittede internt, men på nogenlunde samme måde. Der er således ikke belæg for, at der forekommer værdikonflikter mellem professionsgruppen og brugergruppen. De empiriske resultater diskuteres i forhold til organisations- og professionsteoretiske tilgange samt i forhold til forskellige Bourdieu-inspirerede referencerammer, der har været almindelige i studiet af relationsprofessioner i Danmark. På denne baggrund argumenteres for, at eksisterende tilgange til studiet af relationsprofessioner må modificeres, så de kan rumme både holdningsdiversiteten blandt professionelle og ligheder i holdningsmønstre professionsgruppen og brugergruppen imellem. ENGELSK ABSTRACT: Morten Ejrnæs and Merete Monrad: Profession, Attitude and Habitus: The Relationship between Parents’ and Teachers’ Attitudes concerning Pedagogical Issues in Day Care Institutions Disagreements between child care professionals and parents in day care institutions can be important for their cooperation, for the satisfaction of parents and for the working life of the professionals. Disagreements or conflicts may arise because of differences in knowledge, conflicting interests and conflicting values. In this article we examine value conflicts between child care professionals and parents by using a study of attitudes. Similarities and differences between parents’ and professionals’ attitudes regarding specific pedagogical questions have not been examined previously. The attitudes of the two groups are compared through two quantitative vignette studies. The results show that the attitudes of the two groups resemble each other. The majority of both groups hold similar attitudes on a wide range of questions, while both groups are internally divided in much the same way regarding other questions. Thus, there is no evidence for the existence of value conflicts between professionals and parents. The empirical results are discussed in terms of theories of organizations and professions as well as Bourdieu-inspired theoretical approaches that are common in the study of welfare professions. It is argued that existing approaches to the welfare professions need to be modified in order to account for the empirical evidence of both diversity of attitudes between professionals and similarity in attitudes between professionals and users. Key words: Child-care professionals, parents as service users, profession, attitudes, vignette method.

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When is a family poor? We examine what factors are emphasized when people judge whether a family is poor or not. The article is based on a factorial survey with 356 respondents who study social work, nursing, nursery teaching and nutrition and health. Based on theories of poverty, we study what aspects of a family’s life situation are accentuated when people judge whether the family is poor or not. The respondents primarily emphasize income in their poverty judgements. Some deprivations also enter into the judgements, while the duration of deprivations, gender and labor market participation have no or minimal significance for the judgements.

Hvornår er en familie fattig? Vi analyserer i artiklen, hvilke faktorer der lægges vægt på, når man vurderer, om en familie er fattig. Undersøgelsen er baseret på resultaterne af en horisontal vignetundersøgelse (factorial survey) med 356 respondenter, der alle er professionsbachelorstuderende. Med udgangspunkt i forskellige fattigdomsteorier undersøger vi, hvilke aspekter af fattigdom (blandt andet økonomi, afsavn og varighed) der tillægges størst vægt, når man vurderer, om en person er fattig. Resultaterne viser, at der først og fremmest lægges vægt på indkomsten. Fattigdomsopfattelserne er i overensstemmelse med OECD’s fattigdomsgrænse, idet familier gennemsnitligt begynder at blive klassificeret som fattige, når de falder under OECD’s fattigdomsgrænse. Nogle afsavn tillægges en lille betydning, mens afsavnenes varighed samt vignetpersonernes køn og arbejdsmarkedstilknytning tillægges ingen eller minimal betydning.