The Crises of Legitimation in Residential Child Care. Institutional practices, Expectations and Visions of Childhood in Social Work Training Schools in Switzerland (1940 -1990). Symposium 438

In my paper I will present an analysis of the efforts to professionalize residential child care in the post-world war II period. Since the 1940s, staff shortages, financial difficulties, and scandals widely reported in the... [ view full abstract ]

In my paper I will present an analysis of the efforts to professionalize residential child care in the post-world war II period. Since the 1940s, staff shortages, financial difficulties, and scandals widely reported in the media about the abysmal conditions in residential children’s homes resounded throughout professional discourse in the German speaking part of Switzerland. During the children’s homes campaign (Heimkampagne) in the 1970s we could observe an intensified controversy about this field of social work. The residential care system went through a crisis of legitimization: Social protest movements, politicians and policy makers, and the old established field of residential children’s homes shaped this field of conflicting power relations. Most importantly, the perception of the children in these institutions underwent a dramatic transformation: the old-established perspective of the deviant child was contested by images of these children as oppressed subjects and possible agents of societal transformation and many more.
The mostly in the 1960th and 1970th founded training schools for worker in residential car were designed to prepare young adults for the “mission” to promote occupational quality in an area, in which until then no special training was required. However, what quality and professionalization in child care means was interpreted in very different ways, depending on the underlying social or religious norms and values. Drawing on a white range of sources I will analyze the qualification process in these training schools. It’s possible to trace institutional practices as well as changes and controversies. The training schools can be seen as “gate keepers” regulating the access to a professional position. The criteria and procedures of training and ‘licensing’ and the ways of dealing with conflicts give interesting insights into how the images of children changed and how the future professional social workers were supposed to deal with them.