Challenges and dilemmas working with high‐conflict families in child protection casework

Social workers within child protection services report that families marked by high levels of conflict between separated parents are among the most challenging cases to handle. Few studies however have focussed on how social workers themselves experience and meet with parents involved in hostile martial interactions. This article reports on a qualitative study involving 31 social workers and provides an analysis of their experiences and dilemmas in working with such families. Findings demonstrate that social workers struggle to find ways to help high‐conflict families and often find themselves at an impasse. Parents involved in such conflict are highly resistant to change, and social workers struggle to engage with them over concerns about their children. Furthermore, findings suggest that social workers lack organizationally allotted time to assist the parents. I conclude by discussing ways in which emotional support, empowering interventions, and strength‐based approaches enable social workers to manage relationships with high‐conflict families. More research on this topic is needed to support and promote better practices for social workers to be more effective in assisting high‐conflict families.     

Construction of Boundaries in Teacher Education: Analyzing Student Teachers' Accounts

This article analyzes student teachers' interactions in different practices over a period of one semester. We use Cultural-Historical Activity theory as a theoretical framework to address how interactions at the boundaries in teacher education are constructed and made relevant to the participants when they are working on object constructions. In the analysis, we show how an object, conceptualization of goals in education, emerges and develop in interactions, and how the object's trajectory differs as the students move between practices. In the analysis we call these practices learning spheres. Our findings indicate that the participants' positions are of importance. In teacher-led situations, such as supervision and mentoring, the teachers influenced the construction of the object, whereas in group work, the student teachers pursued and explored a variety of object constructions. Meaning emerges in the dialectical relationship between activity and action, and is regulated by the enactment of rules and norms, and the division of labor. An important finding is that the student teachers' learning trajectories vary across the different parts of the teacher education program.     

The rights of the child enabling community development to contribute to a valid social work practice with children at risk

This paper presents a way of thinking about and doing child protection work using community development (CD) principles to guide practice. It suggests that a useful addition to CD can be found within the rights of the child provisions in Human Rights conventions. Using examples from the authors' three countries to illustrate the work that practitioners do in their work with children at risk, we argue that social work practice can be enhanced by the inclusion of these principles and practices which are essentially core generic social work practice. However, much of social work with the protection of children is bound by ‘risk’ perceptions which result in investigatory approaches being used as a first action, often to the exclusion of preventive approaches. This article demonstrates that in very different situations from different environments, CD in concert with the principles of the rights of the child can assist good outcomes with children at risk. A model is presented for unifying the worldview of human/children's rights with social work's core concern, the protection of children, using generic social work skills.     

Prosodic Modification and Vocal Adjustments in Mothers' Speech During Face‐to‐face Interaction with Their Two‐ to Four‐month‐old Infants: A Double Video Study

The purpose of this study was to examine 32 mothers' sensitivity to social contingency during face‐to‐face interaction with their two‐ to four‐month‐old infants in a closed circuit TV set‐up. Prosodic qualities and vocal sounds in mother's infant‐directed (ID) speech during sequences of live interaction were compared to sequences where expressive behaviours were decoupled by presenting either the mothers (Replay 2) or the infants (Replay 1) with a replay record of the partners' former behaviour in a Live 1–Replay 1–Live 2–Replay 2–Live 3 design. Overall, the mothers produced significantly higher amount of ID speech during the live sequences. Compared to the Live 1 sequence, there was a significant reduction in mothers' ID speech during both replay sequences. However, the mothers only recovered ID speech after the Replay 2 sequence, not after the Replay 1. These findings suggest that the emotions signalled by the mothers' ID speech is affected by the contingency of the infant responses.     

Comparative Analysis of Within-Household Respondent Selection Techniques

A probability sample of households frequently must be translatedinto a sample of persons representing characteristics of theadult population. Researchers have developed at least 14 within-householdrespondent selection procedures or their variants to accomplishthis task. Although probability methods are preferable, theyoften increase nonresponse. Quasi-probability and nonprobabilitytechniques have been devised to increase cooperation and decreasecosts, although they sacrifice the advantages of randomness.The purpose of this paper is to analyze the results of 16 studiesthat have compared within-household respondent selection procedures,with respect to demographic representativeness, cooperationor response rates, and costs. Although there is an increasingneed to hold down costs yet maintain quality and accuracy asresponse rates are falling, little systematic, accessible evidenceexists to guide choice of respondent selection method.     

Emotional labor in social workers' practice

The meeting between service users and social workers is emotional, since it is centered on significant challenges and changes in the service users' lives. Emotions are thus always at play in social work, but are managed in various ways by the professional. In an explorative qualitative case study at two Danish social services departments, we identified three types of emotional labor: (1) when the social worker shuts off emotions both during and after the meeting; (2) when the social worker defers emotions and processes them at a later time; and (3) when emotions dominate, and a case gets ‘under the skin’ of the social worker. Emotional labor can have both positive and negative effect on the work, and knowledge about different kinds of emotional labor can aid professional discussion about emotions at the work place as well as the psychosocial working environment for the social workers, factors which help improve practice. The study showed that emotional labor is a multidimensional concept, hence it is not just managed in different ways by social workers; it is always related to the specific emotion culture and the community of practice at the work place.     

Excellent and gender equal? Academic motherhood and ‘gender blindness' in Norwegian academia

This article explores Norwegian female academics' experiences with academic motherhood in an organizational perspective. A main finding is that academia as an organization is greedy, uncertain, and has ‘blind spots' that reveal gender bias related to gender and parental status, especially mothers. By analysing the link between gendered organization of work and the legitimatizing of gender inequality, the article reveals ‘gender blindness' in the academic organization concerning gender and parental status. The article concludes that changes in academia — in line with academic capitalism — may indicate that the Norwegian model of work–life balance is under pressure. This article suggests that the organizational conditions for academic motherhood are important factors in order to understand the persistence of gender inequality.