Challenges in interagency cooperation – workfare and child welfare as different points of departure

Relevant for topic: Interagency cooperation or: Children and poverty Background Although a rich country, an increased number of children are living in relative poverty in Norway. The consequences of recession for children,... [ view full abstract ]

Relevant for topic: Interagency cooperation or: Children and poverty

Background
Although a rich country, an increased number of children are living in relative poverty in Norway. The consequences of recession for children, also in wealthy countries, are well documented (UNICEF 2014).

Low income families are often users of multiple social welfare services. These services have lacks and failures. Investigation about child poverty from The Office of the Auditor General (2014) states that the measures towards children and parents are too few, they are not good enough and the efforts done are not coordinated.

The scope of the paper is on the professionals in two services: The Labour and Welfare Services (NAV) and the Child Welfare Services (CWS). We will describe and analyse some processes and interventions in a small scale project that aimed to better and develop cooperation between NAV and CWS in their efforts towards children and parents in low income families. Dimensions regarding knowledge development, service development and organisational development are central.

The project is part of a larger one: “Innovation and Service Development through evolving Forms of Collaboration” (2013-2016), co-funded by the Norwegian Research Council.

We ask:
* How do different institutional backgrounds and mandates influence practices in working together with children and parents in marginalised low income families?
* What can promote and what may inhibit innovative ways of collaborative working across agency borders on different levels in NAV and The CWS?

Child poverty and challenges in low income families can be mentioned as “wicked problems”: There is more than one explanation to the problems and the solutions to them are not true or false scientifically spoken, but they may be good or bad. From some points of views the services and practitioners themselves may be looked upon as both part of the problems and the solutions to deal with and to overcome the issues concerned.

Methods
Qualitative interviews with parents and some children (> 12 years) in ten families, and interviews with their responsible practititoners in the services, are conducted. In NAV the practitioner is mostly named “supervisor”, but in the CWS they are named “contact person” or “child protection worker”.There have been workshops with the supervisors / contact persons and their leaders and meetings in the project team with practitioners and professional leaders from the services. All these are documented and used as data.

Data are produced and interpreted within frames of practice oriented research.The researcher is seen as an actor who participates actively in cooperation with practitioners and others involved. It is a learning process for all parts.

So what?
Our results so far are preliminary. We are still in the phase of analysing data.
From the parents’ and children’s stories we see that important elements and nuances in their everyday lives become invisible in their cases, in both services. NAV’s rhetoric “work pays” and a rather tough “work-line” to be followed lay stress to minimize social benefits. It also seems to minimize the practitioners’ vocabulary to influence decisions. The CWS obligations often results in scrutinizing the relationship between child and parent(s), at the expense of more material conditions for the family.

Different discourses challenge boundaries between rights and duties, as well as require and challenge professional judgment. Attention towards the children may act as “bridging” between the services and this creates an arena for sharing knowledge and developing competences and reflexive consciousness about spaces for agency. The role of the middle managers (the “in-betweens”) is crucial to catch up and support these everyday innovation processes.