IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/gam/jscscx/v3y2014i3p441-459d39383.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Developing Child-Centered Social Policies: When Professionalism Takes Over

Author

Listed:
  • Nicole Hennum

    (Faculty of Social Sciences, University College of Oslo and Akershus, Oslo 0130, Norway)

Abstract

No nation today can be understood as being fully child-centered, but many are pursuing social policies heavily favoring children. The emphasis on individual rights and the growth of scientific knowledge underpinning many of these policies have led to the improvement of the lives of a great many children. Paradoxically, these same knowledge bases informing social policies often produce representations and images of children and their parents that are detrimental for both of these groups. Using Norwegian child welfare policies and practices as examples, I will examine some of the possible pitfalls of child-centered praxis. The key question here is one asking whether the scientific frame central to child welfare professionalism has positioned children and parents as objects rather than subjects in their own lives and, in so doing, required them to live up to standards of life defined for them by experts. A central question will involve exploring the extent to which scientific knowledge has erased political and ethical considerations from the field when assessing social problems.

Suggested Citation

  • Nicole Hennum, 2014. "Developing Child-Centered Social Policies: When Professionalism Takes Over," Social Sciences, MDPI, vol. 3(3), pages 1-19, August.
    • Handle: RePEc:gam:jscscx:v:3:y:2014:i:3:p:441-459:d:39383
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2076-0760/3/3/441/pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2076-0760/3/3/441/
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Erika Palmer, 2018. "The Heavy Cost of Care: Systemic Challenges in Norwegian Work Absenteeism," Social Sciences, MDPI, vol. 7(6), pages 1-17, June.
    2. Keddell, Emily, 2023. "Recognising the embedded child in child protection: Children’s participation, inequalities and cultural capital," Children and Youth Services Review, Elsevier, vol. 147(C).
    3. Erika K. Palmer, 2017. "Structural Disadvantage: Evidence of Gender Disparities in the Norwegian Pension System," Social Sciences, MDPI, vol. 6(1), pages 1-15, February.
    4. Turba, Hannu & Breimo, Janne Paulsen & Lo, Christian, 2019. "Professional and organizational power intertwined: Barriers to networking?," Children and Youth Services Review, Elsevier, vol. 107(C).
    5. Tarshish, Noam, 2019. "How friendly are OECD countries towards children? Conceptualization and measuring issues," Children and Youth Services Review, Elsevier, vol. 103(C), pages 156-165.
    6. Clara Siagian & Sandra Arifiani & Putri Amanda & Santi Kusumaningrum, 2019. "Supporting Children, Blaming Parents: Frontline Providers’ Perception of Childhood’s Adversity and Parenthood in Indonesia," Social Sciences, MDPI, vol. 8(2), pages 1-20, February.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:gam:jscscx:v:3:y:2014:i:3:p:441-459:d:39383. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: MDPI Indexing Manager (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.mdpi.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.