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- Title
Havaintoja suomalaisen lastensuojelun institutionaalisesta rajasta.
- Authors
Pösö, Tarja
- Abstract
This article examines child welfare with the concept of 'institutional boundary'. As a concept institutional boundary refers to situations which the public child welfare intervenes in, or points at which it provides services for those who need them, within relations normally considered private and personal, between children and their parents. The boundary is made visible both during and after the selection of children as clients of child welfare. The data includes social workers' descriptions of child welfare during the different phases of the formal system. In addition to these descriptions, the data includes reflections between the social workers and the researchers on the conditions for providing these kinds of descriptions. The article demonstrates the complexity and context-bound nature of the institutional boundary and shows that it is a sometimes contested result of human interaction and assessment. The analysis stresses that the numbers of children in the child welfare system, or any changes in these numbers must not be read as direct signs of children's or their families' social problems.
- Subjects
CHILD welfare; SOCIAL boundaries; SOCIAL work with children; PHILOSOPHY of social services; INSTITUTIONAL theory (Sociology); SOCIAL workers
- Publication
Janus, 2010, Vol 18, Issue 4, p324
- ISSN
1235-7812
- Publication type
Article