Search results for "Social Work"
showing 10 items of 343 documents
Social service professionals in Finland under the pressures of a depressed economy and European integration
1993
The Nordic welfare states are known as women-friendly. However, during the last years their policies have been to turn the back on women. At least in Finland there seem to exist two powerful forces that have advanced the non-egalitarian development: the economic recession of the 1990s and the integration of Europe. The decline of the Nordic welfare states is going to have considerable consequences for social service professionals, the great majority of whom are women. Therefore, they should create new strategies and find new allies in order to defend their own as well their clients rights.
Meeting the challenges of the 21st century: Social change and the family
2020
The article recounts major changes in the European family and challenges it creates in accounting and supporting families. Fragility and diversity of family relationships, individualization and shrinking size of households are seen both as a result of change in the system of values and the processes of economics. Statistical tools used to assess the family dynamics increasingly become inadequate to monitor and interpret the change and situation in families. Statistical figures also construct the way families are imagined in policies. Fertility, marriage and divorce rates are connected to reproductive functions of the society while employment figures feature the productive needs in societies…
Managing the flow of private information on children and parents in poverty situations : Creating a panoptic eye in interorganizational networks?
2018
In this article, we discuss how the flow of private information about children and families in poverty situations is managed in interorganizational networks that aim to combat child poverty. Although practices for sharing information and documentation between child and family social work services are highly encouraged and recommended to create supportive features for parents and children, this development often results in undesirable forms of governmentality. Interorganizational networking also creates controlling side effects because the exchange of information in networks of child and family services may wield a holistic power over families. We theorize this issue by using the Foucauldian…
Whether and How Social Work Could Address the Long-Term Socio-environmental Risks Caused by the Mining Industry in Northern Finland
2018
Despite underlining the importance of the commitment of states and international organizations, the discourse on human security is seldom explicit about who the actors or frontline workers are that operationalize the framework. One such group of practitioners that is possibly involved, but largely unacknowledged, is social workers, especially as social work as a discipline, profession and social movement has a value base and overall goals that are very similar to the human security approach. In social work, the categories of economic, food, environmental and community security fall within the discourse of human security, particularly with the currently evolving ecosocial (ecological/environ…
Citizens' participation and community orientation – indicators of social sustainability of rural welfare services
2011
The article discusses the issues of social services in rural areas from a theoretical view point of sustainability paradigms of social work. The ecological crisis existing beyond the ongoing global economic crisis is not separated from the increasing urbanization and weakening perspectives in rural areas. The paper is based on results from a participatory action research project in Finland, which aims at strengthening social service provision in rural areas through citizens' participation and community-orientation. The neoliberal politics of centralization, marketization and privatization are heavily transforming rural regions also in the Nordic welfare states right now. The debates in the …
Unaccompanied Minors in Greece and Italy: An Exploration of the Challenges for Social Work within Tighter Immigration and Resource Constraints in Pan…
2021
The number of unaccompanied minors (UAMs) arriving in the European Union (EU) has been increasing dramatically over recent years resulting in the formulation of EU policy directives around safeguarding and well-being. Notably, the majority of UAMs enter Europe irregularly through two main gateways to the European continent: via Italy, using the Central Mediterranean Sea route
Internationalisation of social work doctoral studies : experiences and perspectives in the changing context of European higher education
2016
The internationalisation of doctoral education in social work has become a newly developing area particularly in Europe during the last two decades. It has been promoted by two factors: (1) the reform of higher education (Bologna reform), which contributed to the development of doctoral study and (2) the establishment of European funding programmes that would allow international cooperation and ensure the quality of the programmes. Also, in the European Qualification Framework the knowledge, skills and competences gained by doctoral qualification are defined. In this article, we analyse three international doctoral projects that were developed in Europe in last 10 years. We focus on what th…
An eco-social approach to tackling social exclusion in European cities: A new comparative research project in progress
2000
In this article we would like to introduce a three-year Research Project called 'New Local Policies against Social Exclusion in European Cities', financed by the Targeted Socio-Economic R ...
Policy Alienation in Frontline Social Work – A Study of Social Workers’ Responses to a Major Anticipated Social and Health Care Reform in Finland
2021
Change in the policy and ideology governing social and health care has been much debated in the Western welfare states, including in Finland, where the public sector has witnessed a shift towards a market and managerial ideology in a climate of austerity. These changes affect organisations as well as individual workers. Social workers implement social policies in their daily work, and are thus positioned in between policies and clients. This may expose them to feelings of unease in the implementation of certain policies. In this study, we apply the policy alienation framework of Tummers and colleagues (2009. “Policy Alienation of Public Professionals: Application in a new Public Management …
Digital ageing in Europe: a comparative analysis of Italian, Finnish and Swedish national policies on eHealth
2023
AbstractAgeing Europeans are today healthier than previous generations and often manage to live independently up to a high age. The proportion of people 80 years of age and older has increased significantly, and with high age the risk of multi-illness and dementia increases. Strong urbanisation processes have changed the demographic structure in rural areas, and young women and men have migrated towards the urban areas to study and work, while older persons have remained behind. This demographic challenge of increasing numbers of persons older than 80 years with care needs living in remote rural areas has become a major European social problem. In tackling this dilemma, many European countr…