This article aims at studying the dynamics of organized home care and particular problems in the delivery of social services, analyzed against the background of the international recasting of welfare systems. Challenging an influential academic discourse on the advent of new forms of network governance thought to improve service provision, three jurisdictions-Germany, England, and Quebec-are compared with regard to how home-care networks are actually configured and the rationales which appear to shape the interaction between network members. The article argues that notwithstanding the extensive literature extolling the virtues of network governance or the possibility of reconciling different governance modes, home care operates through arrangements embracing conflicting rationales. Rather than providing for mutual adjustment and shared perspectives, contemporary home-care networks tend to produce tensions and outcome problems as a result of the "biased" interplay between various steering rationales within given institutional arrangements and different meta-governance regimes.
In North America, a significant number of families who care for an elderly relative relocate in the same residence. However, research has paid little attention to the process that precedes such relocation. This article aims at studying this process by examining the experiences of a sample of Canadian elderly and their caregivers, born in Quebec and in Haiti. The article highlights that in spite of diversity, moving in together usually occurs in stages and follows a relatively lengthy process in which transitory living arrangements are not uncommon. In addition, a range of events, hospital stays in particular, act as markers between stages or shorten their duration. It appears that cohabitation trajectories differ according to origin and generational group. Noteworthy is that home-care services did not greatly influence the cohabitation decision of respondents from either group. Most respondents claim that the decision to relocate together was consensual but motivated by a variety of reasons.
Collaboration and networking are ubiquitous, versatile features of social service provision in most Western countries. However, it is an open question whether networking means and entails the same across countries. Comparing regulatory frameworks in three jurisdictions representing distinctive ‘worlds of welfare services’ – Germany, Norway and Quebec – this article aims at eliciting the normative rationales that underpin and inform local service networks in child welfare and protection (CWP) systems. In Norway, where services are little diversified and largely insular, networking appears as a way of opening up for greater organizational plurality, within and beyond the public sector realm. In Germany in contrast, where services are highly pluralized and fragmented, networks are seen as an instrument for streamlining complexity. As for Quebec – an intermediate case in some respects – networking is envisioned as a catalyst for aligning two co‐existing service streams and mitigating the child protection–family support divide. Interestingly, in all three places, networking is now being enforced through similar highly formalized, top‐down regulatory provisions, even though the intended directions of change differ markedly. This has implications for CWP policy as well as research on networks at large.
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