What families in poverty consider supportive: welfare strategies of parents with young children in relation to (child and family) social work

Abstract

In current European Welfare states, Child and Family Social Work has been assigned a pivotal role in constructing a route out of (child) poverty. The direction, processes and outcomes of these interventions are, however, rarely negotiated with the families involved. Based on a retrospective biographical research with parents of young children who experienced financial difficulties over time, this paper therefore seeks to uncover and understand how parents give meaning to welfare which strategies they accordingly develop and how these perspectives and welfare strategies interact with Child and Family Social Work interventions. We aim to acquire knowledge about how interventions are constructed, interpreted and being used as potentially supportive levers in realizing the well-being of parents and children in poverty situations and explore how they may influence families’ routes out of poverty. Drawing on Lister’s analytical framework of agency within the bounds of structural constraints, our research provides insights in the essentially complex, multi-layered and paradoxical nature of support and suggests that support cannot simply be perceived as synonymous to mobility out of poverty

Social workers' emotional labour with families in poverty: Neoliberal fatigue?

“…In many countries, social workers are mostly engaged in direct practice, providing impoverished families with both material and emotional support (Featherstone, White, & Morris, ). On the material level, social workers help clients exercise their social rights, directing them to make use of entitlements, social benefits, health care, and childcare (Schiettecat, Roets, & Vandenbroeck, ). On the emotional level, social workers provide clients living in poverty with psychological support.…”

Families with young children in times of economic downturn: Implications for social work practice

“…Previous research indicates that there is little knowledge about the (diverse) everyday lived and contextualised experiences of parents (Schiettecat et al, ). This is also a concern in research on parents experiencing unemployment (Dyson, Gorin, Hooper, & Cabral, ).…”

“…1751–1752) asserted that, ‘while social investment promises to build human and social capital to make people full contributors to the economy (…), “investing in children” and developing “responsible parents” have become core features of the political landscape’. Critical voices thus plea for caution since the practice of parenting risks being seen independently from the broader social, economic and political circumstances in which parents live, work and raise their children (Clarke, ; Featherstone, ; Lister, ; Mitchell & Campbell, ), and the inherently complex, uncertain and ambiguous nature of social problems risks being overlooked (Lorenz, ; Parton, ; Schiettecat, Roets, & Vandenbroeck, ). Moreover, as stated in a recent article in the International Journal of Social Welfare (Hujo & Gaia, , p. 230), ‘we observe increasing inequalities in and between countries, (…) and an increase in precarious and informal employment’, due to the dominance of neoliberal growth models in policy responses.…”

Poverty Measure Based on Hesitant Fuzzy Decision Algorithm under Social Network Media

“…There were unmet basic needs (UBN) methods, poverty line methods, and concept and method in the field of multidimensional poverty measurement [16]. Schiettecat et al used the principal component method to derive simplified and economically effective indexes of water resource poverty, and the results showed that these simplified indexes had a high positive correlation and negative correlation with human development index and human poverty index respectively [17]. Ferrone and Milliano calculate India's human development index (HDI) and the human poverty index (HPI) [18].…”