Rudi Roose
Biographic Data
| ID | 136071 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Rudi Roose |
| GIVEN NAMES | Rudi |
| FAMILY NAME | Roose |
| SIGNATURE | ROOSE R |
| AFFILIATIONS | Ghent University |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-7508-4593 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 101 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 334 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 101 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2003 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 10 |
Sports programmes for the social reintegration of (formerly) incarcerated people
This article investigates the role of sport as a social work intervention in the social reintegration of (formerly) incarcerated individuals. Drawing on participatory observations and 141 semi-structured interviews conducted in three Belgian prisons, and using the Capability Approach as an analytical lens, the study offers a multi-stakeholder analysis of participants’ experiences, available resources, and key conversion factors within sports prog…
Building a new society in the shell of the old’
An in-depth study on the meaning of sport for the social reintegration of (formerly) incarcerated people
The aim of this study was to explore how sports contribute to the social reintegration of (formerly) incarcerated individuals. The focus lays on the perspectives of participants in sports activities in a Belgian prison. The research utilized participatory observations and semi-structured interviews spanning eighteen months. The data were processed through a thematic analysis by using the Capability Approach as a theoretical lens. The findings rev…
(Dis)placement in Youth Care
This research article focuses on young people's lived experiences of displacement in youth care and investigates how social work might counter the dynamics and experiences of displacement in this context. Researching the potential role of social work in residential youth care accordingly shows how young people's right to youth care can be realized while embracing their lifeworld. We build on research insights emerging from a qualitative case stud…
In Search of Reflexive Approaches to Risk in Residential Youth Care
There is a growing body of critical social work research that calls for alternative and more reflexive approaches to dealing with ‘risk’ in the domain of child protection and welfare. This paper responds to this call by proposing rhetorical studies as a fruitful theoretical and methodological perspective to examine the constructed, contested and discursive nature of risk and risk‐based professional practice in youth care. Our contribution is base…
Neutrality is not an option
Australian social work education in the neoliberal university
This article explores the impacts of the neoliberal university on Australian social work education and academics. It presents a critical analysis of empirical data derived from a national qualitative study involving 30 interviews with Australian social work educators. In particular, it discusses the rise of managerial-administrative control within universities, the impacts on teaching and curriculum (including the emergence of student consumer cu…
Power is a dirty word
Transparency, traditionally considered a management concept, has become a guiding framework in social work policy and practice. We approach transparency as a relational concept, a prerequisite for promoting a democratic partnership with service users and their families and social networks. Relational transparency is often taken for granted, both by practitioners and by policy makers, but our research shows the opposite. Social work has to constan…
Practice development in social work
Contains fulltext : 303613.pdf (Publisher’s version ) (Open Access)
Revealing the freedom of movement of youngsters in residential youth care
Recent research shows the relevance of a socio-spatial citizenship climate in residential youth care to shift the focus from youngsters as objects of care due to their challenging behaviour to youngsters as citizens in their own right who give meaning to the various circumstances in their everyday lives. A socio-spatial citizenship climate acknowledges the synergy between residential youth care and the wider living environment, as residential you…
The Voices of Minor Children of Parents With a Mental Illness or Addiction
This qualitative evidence synthesis aims to show how the agency and voices of minor children of parents with a mental illness (COPMI) or with an addiction (COPA) are represented in existing qualitative research. A thematic analysis was conducted to analyse the parts of the articles reporting on the voices of COPMI/COPA themselves (e.g., through interviews with them). Special attention was given to how the authors of the different articles represe…
Organizational Supports for Practice Research
Organizational support represents a critical driver of practice research projects. This analysis includes four international examples of such support (Norway, Finland, Belgium, and USA and China). The four studies capture the similarities and differences between university support and national government support. The analysis is placed within the context of defining practice research and the core components of organizational support. The findings…
Institutional pedagogy and the transformation of residential care for, and with, disabled citizens
In this article, we build upon a historical and critical analysis of de-institutionalisation strategies, representing a fundamental shift in disability policy and practice starting in the 1960's. We state that de-institutionalisation has commonly been interpreted and translated as a vital 'transition' - referring to the dismantling of residential care and institutions - in rights discourse, policy, and (self-) advocacy. Whereas de-institutionalis…
Revisiting the role of social work in the substantial realization of social rights in local welfare systems
Although diverse European welfare states have institutionalized an extensive infrastructure of public welfare services to redistribute resources, governments have been confronted with barriers in realizing the social rights of certain groups of citizens. Decentralization and increasingly local welfare provision has been promoted as a strategy to substantially realize social rights. In that sense, the vital role of frontline social work has been s…
Looking Through the Eyes of General Practitioners
In Flanders, Belgium, a primary healthcare reform is ongoing to strengthen the health system and work towards improving integrated care. At the core of this transformation stands a person-centred perspective that considers social factors, which increases the tendency for collaboration between health and welfare systems. Primary care physicians and social workers are urged to collaborate; however, the way general practitioners (GPs) define and uti…
Listen Very Carefully, We Will Say This Only Once (Again)’ Dead Ends to Politicisation in Social Work
This article explores the significance of politicisation in social work and its role in challenging power dynamics and promoting transformative change. It is viewed as a means to challenge established power structures, raise awareness of issues and engage in political action. Three pitfalls are identified in the way politicisation is conceptualised and used. First, there is a tendency to define politicisation too broadly. The authors assert that …
Revisiting a Positive Living Group Climate as a Citizenship Climate
The concept of a positive living group climate is currently used as a key strategy to substantially realise the citizenship of youngsters in residential youth care. The concept focuses mainly on what happens inside the residential youth care facility, as the interpersonal relationships between the professionals and the youngsters are identified as the main component of a positive living group climate. How the youngsters practise and experience th…
Hegemony, Common Sense and Good Sense
The existing international research on the prevalence of poverty in Child Welfare and Protection (CWP) services points to a persistent discourse of ‘pedagogicalisation’, meaning that CWP interventions often construct social problems, such as poverty, as emerging from a failing education of families, and leave the social circumstances of the families unchallenged. Although front line practitioners in CWP can exercise professional discretion in dea…
Findings from a European, cross-national project study on service user participation
This article reports on a European project that sought to explore the relationships between social work and service user participation, using a five-country (Belgium, Czech Republic, Finland, Ireland and Portugal) case study approach. It revealed areas of comparison and contrast depending upon respective histories of social work development, organisation, education and research that determined forms of service user participation. It is argued tha…
Hitting the road together
One of the key factors in providing high-quality support in residential youth care (RYC) is developing a positive living climate. The role of group worker and his/her elaboration of the pedagogical praxis are particularly relevant in this regard. Despite its importance, the development of this pedagogical praxis in the current relational and societal context seems to be under pressure. In this study, we aim to investigate how care workers cultiva…
Realising a responsive social work practice in a non-responsive context
Public welfare actors struggle with the question how they can guarantee children’s wellbeing. The answer to this question depends on the countries’ perspective concerning its responsibility for the care of its citizens. In the Flemish context, a maximalist child protection logic – with a focus on the realisation of rights – is adopted. In this article, we focus on the so-called ‘bottleneck cases’ and use the case of Zoë as a concrete application …
Quo Vadis, Homo Digitalis? Reflection on Well-being in Education and the Covid-19 Pandemic in Belgium, Croatia, Poland and Romania/Quo Vadis, Homo Digitalis? Razmišljanje o dobrobitima u obrazovanju i…
The last few decades brought about unprecedented rapid technological change. The COVID-19 pandemic sped it up and forced digitalized citizenship, digitalized teaching and learning, and permanent engagement through the virtual bond. Many processes were moved to the virtual world and those illiterate in digital tools might have felt excluded or left behind. Technological advancements have had many benefits revealed but they have also had multiple n…
Reflexive professionalisation in social work practice development, research, and education
This paper examines how the renewed critical emphasis on reflexiveprofessionalisation in thefield of social work can take into account thechallenges regarding the politics of democratic participation of serviceusers as citizens while working towards social justice. Our contributionis based on thefindings of a collaborative European research projectinvolving researchers, students, public service organisations, service userorganisations, and educat…
Recognising or Minimising Ethical Trespass? An Exploration of Professionals’ Moral Agency in Prioritising Cases
Deciding about priority cases in waiting lists is a controversial activity. However, it is a well-known challenge for many social workers. This article addresses two questions related to this problem: how do social workers, as moral agents, experience the policy context in which they must prioritise cases, and what stance do they take towards it? Building on a previous study where a practice of case prioritisation was observed, semi-structured in…
In Search of Social justice-informed Services
One of the main characteristics of social work is the fundamental tension between the profession’s conservative and critical rationales. In the last three decades, this tension has informed the development of critical resistance to the deprofessionalisation effects of neo-managerial rationality, which establishes cost reduction and fiscal accountability as the basis for professional practice. However, the theoretical conceptualisation of such cri…
Outreach social work
A recurring feature of outreach work is that outreach tries to reach people who are left without care and not effectively reached by existing services. In this article, we discuss the importance of outreach practices in the context of changes in society. We suggest that the pressure on the managing of access to social services is increasing along with the demand to avoid an unnecessary inflow, and make a distinction between a residual and structu…
Social work as a policy actor
A long-standing critique on social work is that it is ‘a dog that doesn’t bark’ meaning that social work doesn’t live up to the challenge of changing unjust policies, and as such is merely an affirmative practice of the status quo. This article builds upon the premise that social workers still lack the conceptual frames and knowledge to enable them to fully understand what social policy is about and how social policy measures are formulated, shap…
From parental engagement to the engagement of social work services
Social work has moved from a child protection discourse towards a child welfare discourse that views the relationship between social workers and families as a partnership. Partnership with families in the field of child protection and child welfare, however, mirrors diverse ideological motives of social policy, civil society and practice. We engage in a theoretical discussion of different interpretations of partnership. We draw a primary distinct…
Irony and Social Work
The logic of managerialism is seen as a rationale for the limited scope for discretion of social workers and also complicates the recognition of the inherently ambiguous nature of social work. In this article, various strategies in dealing with managerialism and ambiguity are identified: social work can either attempt to escape from ambiguity or embrace (the discussion on) ambiguity as an opportunity. It is stated that, although social work can r…
On the frontline or on the side-line? Homelessness care and care avoiders
Homelessness is a social problem which is subject to many definitional issues and problems. These problems can be discerned on both the conceptual and the practical level (Hopper, 1997). Based on research carried out in Ghent, Belgium, this article deals with ways in which social workers involved in homelessness care construe the problem of ‘care avoiders’, who seem to be perceived as a separate category within the homeless population. We show th…
From participative research to participative practice—a study in youth care
In this contribution the development in action research of a participative care practice in youth care is discussed. The study was prompted by the intention of the Flemish government to reform youth care. The initial research‐question was how youth care can be organized in such a way that it (also) represents an added value for the client(s). The aim was to find out to what extent the reorganization of youth care could contribute to a social serv…
Implementing a strengths perspective in child welfare and protection
Although it can be observed that the popularity of a strengths perspective in social work is increasing, social work researchers have articulated the necessity to gain empirical knowledge about actual social work practice that claims a strengths perspective. We explore the findings of recent research into a strengths-oriented pilot project in the field of child welfare and protection in Flanders (the Flemish speaking part of Belgium), in which we…
Children's rights
English A children's rights approach to social work might have adverse consequences for children and parents when it ignores a view on rights as a lever for commitment and the question of how these rights can be realized in different contexts and with respect for the rights of other actors involved. French Une approche de travail social centrée sur les droits des enfants peut avoir des conséquences négatives auprès des enfants et des parents lors…
In Search of Social justice-informed Services
One of the main characteristics of social work is the fundamental tension between the profession’s conservative and critical rationales. In the last three decades, this tension has informed the development of critical resistance to the deprofessionalisation effects of neo-managerial rationality, which establishes cost reduction and fiscal accountability as the basis for professional practice. However, the theoretical conceptualisation of such cri…
Reconstructing the Foundations of Joined-Up Working
In a diversity of European countries, an ambitious pursuit of organisational reform is stressed in the field of social work policy and practice, which is rhetorically rooted in ‘joined-up thinking’. Emerging criticism about joined-up working has been identified in the body of available research, particularly in terms of the construction and pursuit of joint goals. In this article, we discuss the empirical findings that were acquired during a rece…
Do Children Have Rights or Do Their Rights Have to be Realised? The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child as a Frame of Reference for Pedagogical Action
The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) is presented and understood as the primary reference point regarding questions of children’s rights. However, the UNCRC is not a neutral instrument deployed to meet the rights of children: it embodies a specific perception of the child, childhood and citizenship. The interpretation of the UNCRC from the point of view of children’s legal status emphasises the autonomy of children; th…
The DNA of social work as a human rights practice from a frontline social workers’ perspective in Flanders
Societal and political developments in European welfare states challenge the core principles of social justice, human rights, collective responsibility and respect for diversity that underpin social work. At the same time, however, in many European countries, there is a revival of a more transformative social work discourse aimed at the fight for social justice and the realisation of human rights. Gaining insight into the implementation of this h…
Social Work as a Human Rights Profession
Human rights are foundational to social work, as recognised in the global definition, leading many to consider social work a human rights profession. Although human rights has become an important compass for social work, comprehensive frameworks for understanding the ‘practice’ of human rights in social work are still limited. Only recently attempts have been made to fill this gap. This article seeks to continue these efforts and contribute to a …
Pawns or Pioneers? The Logic of User Participation in Anti‐poverty Policy‐making in Public Policy Units in Belgium
Since anti‐poverty policy‐making in Belgium is embedded in a logic of user participation, social policy has shown interest in employing users with experience of poverty as experts in public policy units in order to implement and monitor anti‐poverty policies. In this article, we discuss this recent development as a relevant case for contemporary public service delivery in the European context. In the light of the ambiguous practices of user parti…
The Emerging Social Pedagogical Paradigm in UK Child and Youth Care
This article is prompted by the finding that social pedagogy—although not a familiar concept in the UK—is now being taken up with greater interest ( Petrie et al., 2006; Lorenz, 2008), especially in the field of early childhood education and residential child and youth care. Social pedagogy is believed to be able to promote shared values and skills across different fields in education and care that were, until recently, sharply distinguished from…
Making the Iceberg Visible Again
Under a third-party government regime, NPOs are largely funded to implement social policies and have open lines of communication with policy makers. When performing their advocacy role, questions may, however, arise about whether NPOs actually strive for policy change to structurally improve the lives of their clients or rather aim to secure these organizational benefits. Based upon a case study of 6 youth care organizations in Belgium, this arti…
Tackling social inequality and exclusion in education
Both in the international context and in Flanders (the Dutch-speaking part of Belgium), research shows that many young people experience social exclusion in relation to education. However, research evidence concerning structural social inequality in education is predominantly underpinned by an outcome-based approach, since educational policies and practices are largely informed by a human capital model. Inspired by the theoretical insights of the…
Poverty and Decision Making in Child Welfare and Protection
The influence of socio-economic background factors, such as poverty, on the risk of children to be disproportionately represented and placed in residential care has increasingly been the subject of international research. This article reports on the findings of a research project that focused on the relationship between poverty and child welfare and protection (CWP) interventions in Flanders (the Dutch-speaking part of Belgium). Using logistic re…
Data Recording and Social Work
Social workers operate in an increasingly informational context (Parton, 2008, 2009). In this context, registration and data recording are becoming an important condition for the funding of social work organisations (Jones, 2001). In this article, we argue that the debate on data recording and social work mainly focuses on the question of whether data recording is a threat to or an opportunity for the relational aspects of social work practice. B…
Participatory social work and report writing
Participation of children and parents is a central notion in child and family social work. This paper reports on a research dealing with how the participative paradigm comes to the fore in the practice of report writing in the work with looked‐after children. As social work is essentially a language‐centred activity, report writing is a core skill in social work. A participative practice of report writing would imply that the perspective of the c…
Developing a positive living climate in residential youth care
Towards a clearer understanding of the transformational potential of outreach work
Access to social services is a major concern in welfare policy, service delivery and social work. Outreach work is a social work approach described as an ‘active mode of access’. However, the literature on access differentiates between a universal and a transformational view on access. In the first view, access refers to inclusion into the mainstream, for ‘them’ to become more like ‘us’. In the second view, access refers to the transformation of …
Enabling the recognition of people in poverty through social work practice. From being on a par to participating on a par
In its engagement towards anti-poverty-strategies, social work has become strongly embedded in a politics of recognition and respect. Nevertheless, this raises critical questions in regard to how such a politics connects to the socio-economic and political dimensions of poverty. We build on an intensive qualitative study in five Associations where People in Poverty Raise their Voice (Belgium), to reveal how practitioners attempt to provide this c…
Dealing with Risk in Child and Family Social Work
The rhetoric of risk has become a prominent issue in the field of child and family social work. As a consequence, an emerging politics of fear has re-oriented this field towards managing, controlling, and securing social work practice against risk, rather than responding meaningfully to the needs and concerns of children and families. In the available body of research, it is argued that this general tendency creates "anxious" professionals. As a …
Researching child poverty
Childhood research with children in poverty involves a diversity of dilemmas and complexities. In the context of a recent research project in Belgium, the authors attempt to embrace child poverty as a normative issue created a crisis of representation. In order to untangle this, they situate different methodological approaches in relation to the constructed epistemological windows on child poverty. The authors differentiate between research in wh…
From participative research to participative practice—a study in youth care
In this contribution the development in action research of a participative care practice in youth care is discussed. The study was prompted by the intention of the Flemish government to reform youth care. The initial research‐question was how youth care can be organized in such a way that it (also) represents an added value for the client(s). The aim was to find out to what extent the reorganization of youth care could contribute to a social serv…
Do Children Have Rights or Do Their Rights Have to be Realised? The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child as a Frame of Reference for Pedagogical Action
The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) is presented and understood as the primary reference point regarding questions of children’s rights. However, the UNCRC is not a neutral instrument deployed to meet the rights of children: it embodies a specific perception of the child, childhood and citizenship. The interpretation of the UNCRC from the point of view of children’s legal status emphasises the autonomy of children; th…
Children's rights
English A children's rights approach to social work might have adverse consequences for children and parents when it ignores a view on rights as a lever for commitment and the question of how these rights can be realized in different contexts and with respect for the rights of other actors involved. French Une approche de travail social centrée sur les droits des enfants peut avoir des conséquences négatives auprès des enfants et des parents lors…
Participatory social work and report writing
Participation of children and parents is a central notion in child and family social work. This paper reports on a research dealing with how the participative paradigm comes to the fore in the practice of report writing in the work with looked‐after children. As social work is essentially a language‐centred activity, report writing is a core skill in social work. A participative practice of report writing would imply that the perspective of the c…
The Pointer Sisters
In this article, acquired knowledge is considered as a temporary reflection that expresses the enactment of a social life that produces and reproduces social realities. Researchers need to engage with an open-ended process of de- and reconstruction of meanings between many players of the social world. As the poststructuralists Deleuze and Guattari reveal, our knowledge base is inherently trapped in lines of flight, on a voyage for which there pre…
The Emerging Social Pedagogical Paradigm in UK Child and Youth Care
This article is prompted by the finding that social pedagogy—although not a familiar concept in the UK—is now being taken up with greater interest ( Petrie et al., 2006; Lorenz, 2008), especially in the field of early childhood education and residential child and youth care. Social pedagogy is believed to be able to promote shared values and skills across different fields in education and care that were, until recently, sharply distinguished from…
Data Recording and Social Work
Social workers operate in an increasingly informational context (Parton, 2008, 2009). In this context, registration and data recording are becoming an important condition for the funding of social work organisations (Jones, 2001). In this article, we argue that the debate on data recording and social work mainly focuses on the question of whether data recording is a threat to or an opportunity for the relational aspects of social work practice. B…
Working with volunteers in victim support
We address the role of volunteers in victim support in regard to the growing issue of specialization. We argue for a generic basis of victim services and that working with volunteers and professionals holds chances and pitfalls. Volunteers can function as camouflage or as a mirror for professional social work
Implementing a strengths perspective in child welfare and protection
Although it can be observed that the popularity of a strengths perspective in social work is increasing, social work researchers have articulated the necessity to gain empirical knowledge about actual social work practice that claims a strengths perspective. We explore the findings of recent research into a strengths-oriented pilot project in the field of child welfare and protection in Flanders (the Flemish speaking part of Belgium), in which we…
On the frontline or on the side-line? Homelessness care and care avoiders
Homelessness is a social problem which is subject to many definitional issues and problems. These problems can be discerned on both the conceptual and the practical level (Hopper, 1997). Based on research carried out in Ghent, Belgium, this article deals with ways in which social workers involved in homelessness care construe the problem of ‘care avoiders’, who seem to be perceived as a separate category within the homeless population. We show th…
From parental engagement to the engagement of social work services
Social work has moved from a child protection discourse towards a child welfare discourse that views the relationship between social workers and families as a partnership. Partnership with families in the field of child protection and child welfare, however, mirrors diverse ideological motives of social policy, civil society and practice. We engage in a theoretical discussion of different interpretations of partnership. We draw a primary distinct…
The rhetoric of disability
In this article the authors introduce a rhetorical perspective into disability studies by exploring the work of Kenneth Burke (1969). Specifically, the focus is on how Burke's theory of dramatism can be used in disability research as well as in teaching disability studies, as it holds potential for the production of a diversity of social interpretations of the relationship between ‘impairment’, ‘disability’ and a disabling society. The focus shif…
Pawns or Pioneers? The Logic of User Participation in Anti‐poverty Policy‐making in Public Policy Units in Belgium
Since anti‐poverty policy‐making in Belgium is embedded in a logic of user participation, social policy has shown interest in employing users with experience of poverty as experts in public policy units in order to implement and monitor anti‐poverty policies. In this article, we discuss this recent development as a relevant case for contemporary public service delivery in the European context. In the light of the ambiguous practices of user parti…
Reinventing the Employable Citizen
In workfare-as-welfare regimes, welfare states attempt to increase efforts to employ economically inactive individuals, such as people with chronic ‘mental health problems’, through a wide range of activation strategies. In this article, we draw upon insights obtained from a recent research project in Belgium, in which social workers are charged with managing labour market training programmes. In the project, we explored the experiences of people…
Irony and Social Work
The logic of managerialism is seen as a rationale for the limited scope for discretion of social workers and also complicates the recognition of the inherently ambiguous nature of social work. In this article, various strategies in dealing with managerialism and ambiguity are identified: social work can either attempt to escape from ambiguity or embrace (the discussion on) ambiguity as an opportunity. It is stated that, although social work can r…
The Greatest of Equalisers’
There is a large consensus among international organisations (e.g., United Nations and the World Bank) in considering Early Childhood Care and Education a prominent policy to equalise opportunities. Moreover, it is common opinion that interventions in early childhood aiming at equalising ‘opportunities’ rather than ‘outcomes’ will overcome political dissent. These two claims draw upon a particular interpretation of the work of contemporary egalit…
Researching child poverty
Childhood research with children in poverty involves a diversity of dilemmas and complexities. In the context of a recent research project in Belgium, the authors attempt to embrace child poverty as a normative issue created a crisis of representation. In order to untangle this, they situate different methodological approaches in relation to the constructed epistemological windows on child poverty. The authors differentiate between research in wh…
From Vagrancy to Homelessness
For centuries, the debate about homelessness concentrated on the ways in which the issue of vagrancy could be dealt with as a criminal problem. In recent decades, this perspective faded out and alternative approaches to dealing with vagrancy were argued for and implemented. In this article, we discuss the emerging reconceptualisation of a repressive approach into a welfare approach to the issue of vagrancy—which is called homelessness later on—as…
Voluntariness as legitimation for social work interventions
Based on research into homelessness care, in this article we discuss the dominant interpretation of voluntariness as an individual characteristic. It will be demonstrated that this conceptualization runs the risk of becoming a tool to select those clients for whom short-term reachable goals can be set, and that clients are obliged to accept the conditions which are set by social work initiatives. We argue for an understanding of voluntariness as …
Dealing with Risk in Child and Family Social Work
The rhetoric of risk has become a prominent issue in the field of child and family social work. As a consequence, an emerging politics of fear has re-oriented this field towards managing, controlling, and securing social work practice against risk, rather than responding meaningfully to the needs and concerns of children and families. In the available body of research, it is argued that this general tendency creates "anxious" professionals. As a …
We Make the Road by Walking
In this article, we discuss a research project focusing on the ways in which children in poverty spend and experience their leisure time. We argue that the dominant conceptualisation of leisure time participation reduces poverty to a lack of social and cultural capital, marginalising poor children as passive objects of socialisation. Inspired by the interpretative paradigm of lifeworld orientation, three insights are identified throughout poor ch…
Constructing the ‘Child at Risk’ in Social Work Reports
In the context of the changing relationship between children, parents and the welfare state, professionals have to deal with notions of the ‘child at risk’. In child welfare and protection, the issue of normative judgement in (risk) assessment and documentation is an essential area for exploration for social workers. We examine the practice of report writing in which future professionals exercise power while assessing, documenting and judging the…
Social work research as a practice of transparency
Social work research is inherently normative and as such the assumptions about social problems in social work research should be open to scrutiny and contestation. But although researchers often face tussles and huge contradictions, they rarely articulate them. In this article, we report on a small research project in which a collective of social work researchers in Flanders (the Dutch speaking part of Belgium) tried to think critically through s…
Poverty and Decision Making in Child Welfare and Protection
The influence of socio-economic background factors, such as poverty, on the risk of children to be disproportionately represented and placed in residential care has increasingly been the subject of international research. This article reports on the findings of a research project that focused on the relationship between poverty and child welfare and protection (CWP) interventions in Flanders (the Dutch-speaking part of Belgium). Using logistic re…
Outreach social work
A recurring feature of outreach work is that outreach tries to reach people who are left without care and not effectively reached by existing services. In this article, we discuss the importance of outreach practices in the context of changes in society. We suggest that the pressure on the managing of access to social services is increasing along with the demand to avoid an unnecessary inflow, and make a distinction between a residual and structu…
Sociology (87 works) · Political science (86 works) · Social Work Education and Practice (69 works) · Law (56 works) · Public relations (56 works) · Social Work (56 works) · Psychology (41 works) · Law (35 works) · Homelessness and Social Issues (32 works) · Healthcare innovation and challenges (31 works)