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In recent years, there has been growing interest in reflective practice as an approach that acknowledges the complexity and uncertainty inherent in contemporary social work practice. Whilst attention has been paid to how reflective practice is defined and understood, less consideration has been given to the conditions that facilitate its development. Drawing on recent doctoral research, this paper suggests that a particular type of reflective practice—holistic reflective practice—has the potential to encourage thoughtful and creative practice capable of addressing the challenges of contemporary child-care practice. Findings from this research indicate that for holistic reflective practice to be facilitated, the interdependence of the practitioner, team and organizational contexts needs to be recognized. Practitioners need to work within safe containing contexts characterized by: clear organizational and professional boundaries; multifaceted reflective forums; collaborative and communicative working practices; and open and ‘contextually connected’ managers. Drawing on these findings and theorizing them in relation to Bion’s concept of containment, the paper concludes by proposing a model of containment for the promotion of reflective practice.

Adoption has changed significantly over the last four decades, placing new demands on those affected by adoption, including adopters, adoptees and birth relatives (i.e. the 'adoption triangle'), as well as the professionals involved. Over the same period, sociological theories relating to the family have developed considerably, yet their application to adoptive family relationships has been limited. This paper reports the findings of an in-depth narrative study of twenty-two parents who adopted children over a twentyfour-year period, linking their experiences to the sociological concepts of 'family practices' and 'displaying family'. A common challenge shared by adoptive parents following domestic stranger adoption in an era of increasing openness was the requirement to create a new version of kinship that includes both adoptive relatives and birth relatives within the conceptual model of the adoptive family as well as the day-to-day 'doing' of family. The relevance of findings are explored in relation to adoptive family life, adoption practice and, specifically, post-adoption support services.

Die Trennung der Eltern ist für alle Familienmitglieder ein einschneidendes Lebensereignis. Wie geht es danach weiter? Wie kann die Bewältigung der Trennung für alle gelingen? Was brauchen Eltern und Kinder für die Entwicklung neuer Lebensformen als Familie? Dieses Buch informiert Eltern über typische Prozesse einer Trennung sowie über Möglichkeiten und Modelle gemeinsamer Elternschaft und zeigt, wie der Übergang zu einer neuen Form des Familienlebens gelingen kann. Dabei werden die Kinder und ihre Bedürfnisse in den Blick genommen, Möglichkeiten der Beratung und Begleitung vorgestellt und rechtliche Aspekte erläutert. (Sozial-)Pädagogische Fachkräfte finden in diesem Buch grundlegende wissenschaftliche Erkenntnisse zum Thema, die mit Fallbeispielen veranschaulicht werden.

The article reviews the relevance and methodological utility of welfare regime typologies for the study of professional sense-making in social work with families. Focus groups were carried out with social workers in European and Latin American countries representing four different policy regimes. A case vignette was used to elicit social workers’ descriptions of how welfare policy may influence how they understand their work task and the notion of family. The research team identified methodological challenges of general relevance in similar policy-practice studies. There were paradoxes in terms of homogeneity on the regime level vs. heterogeneity within and between national services. Pitfalls appeared in the selection of regime-typical cases, language/cultural barriers, and in deciding organisational level. The article shows that welfare typologies have potentialities in that they may provide a helpful analytical basis for theoretical and practical reasoning in which syntheses between policy and practice can be explored, discussed and challenged.

Volunteer organizations can potentially partner with mainstream professional services to provide better parenting support to immigrant parents. This qualitative study of cooperation between professional agencies and volunteer organizations known as migrant volunteer and community organizations (MVCOs) aims to understand the extent to which professionals and volunteers can transform frame divergence from an obstacle into an advantage. Using frame analysis, this article explores the difficulties these groups encountered when they attempted to work together in two immigrant neighborhoods in Amsterdam. The divergence of the frames each group employed to define cooperation and its aims fueled mistrust and prevented attempts to work more closely together. The possibility of positively employing frame divergence to develop innovative solutions through frame reflection and reframing was hampered by the frame divergence itself, which was rooted in a long-standing controversy concerning roles, power relations, and patterns of inequality between the people involved.

The final report of the Social Work Task Force in 2009 described social work in England as being at a 'watershed'. The term has been used for an earlier period of scrutiny and reform, the 1968 Seebohm report and the subsequent creation of local authority social services departments and a unified social work profession. This paper draws out messages from that the earlier period for the current reform programme, focusing on the political and organisational aspects. It argues that the nature of social work is that it is always 'in the middle'. Whatever the proposals and promises, they will not, cannot, solve the fundamental challenges of the job. Social work's complex, sometimes contradictory roles and tasks mean that change is always work in progress, never a task achieved.

The author argues that the definition of education policy should be expanded to include the consideration of economic policies. She asserts that the impact of economic policies, such as minimum wage laws, have large and often ignored impacts on the experiences of urban students. She then argues that even small annual salary enhancements can have direct effects on the experiences of urban families living in poverty, and particularly on the educational experiences of children in those families. Ultimately, the author posits the need for the inclusion of economic policies under the rubric of educational policies as divorcing the two creates an artificial divide; one cannot hope to impact urban schools without first addressing the economic needs of the families who attend those schools. (DIPF/Orig.).

Backlash against Welfare Mothersis a forceful examination of how and why a state-level revolt against welfare, begun in the late 1940s, was transformed into a national-level assault that destroyed a critical part of the nation's safety net, with tragic consequences for American society. With a wealth of original research, Ellen Reese puts recent debates about the contemporary welfare backlash into historical perspective. She provides a closer look at these early antiwelfare campaigns, showing why they were more successful in some states than others and how opponents of welfare sometimes targeted Puerto Ricans and Chicanos as well as blacks for cutbacks. Her research reveals both the continuities and changes in American welfare opposition from the late 1940s to the present. Reese brings new evidence to light that reveals how large farmers and racist politicians, concerned about the supply of cheap labor, appealed to white voters' racial resentments and stereotypes about unwed mothers, blacks, and immigrants in the 1950s. She then examines congressional failure to replace the current welfare system with a more popular alternative in the 1960s and 1970s, which paved the way for national assaults on welfare. Taking a fresh look at recent debates on welfare reform, she explores how and why politicians competing for the white vote and right-wing think tanks promoting business interests appeased the Christian right and manufactured consent for cutbacks through a powerful, racially coded discourse. Finally, through firsthand testimonies, Reese vividly portrays the tragic consequences of current welfare policies and calls for a bold new agenda for working families.

Innerhalb der Kooperation von Kinder- und Jugendhilfe und Schule sind die Hilfen zur Erziehung ein wenig erforschtes Feld, obwohl in den letzten Jahren die Aufmerksamkeit für die schulische Situation von jungen Menschen, die in oder mit Hilfen zur Erziehung leb(t)en, zugenommen hat. Der Beitrag untersucht einen spezifischen Ausschnitt des Kooperationsfeldes Hilfen zur Erziehung mit Schule. Es werden auf der Grundlage von Gruppendiskussionen die bildungsbezogenen Familienbilder rekonstruiert, die Fachkräfte der Heimerziehung und der Sozialpädagogischen Familienhilfe hervorbringen. Die Analyse zeigt, dass für die Legitimation der Kooperation mit der Schule insbesondere auf diejenigen Familienbilder zurückgegriffen wird, die mit einem geringen Bildungsniveau der Eltern einhergehen. Zugleich kommt der Verteilung von Bildungsverantwortung eine besondere Rolle zu.

This paper examines fertility and family policies in 15 Central and East European (CEE) countries to establish firstly, likely directions of cohort fertility trends for the coming decade; and secondly, to provide an overview and analysis of family policies in CEE countries, and to assess their impact on cohort fertility trends. Demographic analysis suggests that the cohort fertility decline of the 1960s cohorts is likely to continue at least among the 1970s birth cohorts; stagnation cannot be ruled out. Births that were postponed by women born in the 1970s were not being replaced in sufficient numbers for cohort fertility to increase in the foreseeable future, and shares of low parity women (childless and one child) were larger than shares of high parity women among the late 1960s cohorts than in older cohorts. Also, childbearing postponement which started in the 1990s is reflected in dramatic changes of childbearing age patterns. As period fertility rates have been increasing in the late 2000s throughout the region an impression of a fertility recovery has been created, however the findings of this project indicate that no such widespread childbearing recovery is underway.For the first time ever an overview and analysis of CEE family policies is conceptualized in this paper. It demonstrates that fertility trends and family policies are a matter of serious concern throughout the region. The following family policy types have been identified: comprehensive family policy model; pro-natalist policies model; temporary male bread-winner model; and conventional family policies model. The majority of family policies in CEE countries suffer from a variety of shortcomings that impede them from generating enhanced family welfare and from providing conditions for cohort fertility to increase. The likely further decline of cohort fertility, or its stagnation, may entail long-term demographic as well as other societal consequences, such as continuous declines in total population numbers, changes in age structures, as well as implications for health and social security costs.