Abstract
I conducted a longitudinal ethnographic PhD study between June 2009 and June 2012 to examine how intervention practices took place in 30 Dutch and Dutch-Curacaoan single-mother families with multiple problems, because interventions were often regarded as ineffective in 'multi-problem families'. Drawing on this study, this article aims to demonstrate that cultural assumptions, along lines of, among other things, gender, ethnicity and socio-economic class, play a major role in family care and child protection intervention processes in the Netherlands. I will provide different examples of both social work text and talk to illustrate underlying categorical presumptions. It will be seen how the culturally embedded social policy category ‘multi-problem family’ plays a role in Dutch social work policy and practice. I will then demonstrate how important cultural notions are (made) in social work encounters between the mothers and the institutional representatives in question through giving an insight into how cultural beliefs are mobilized in encounters. I argue that one should be more aware of how (essentialist) cultural notions are mobilized in child welfare and protection intervention processes in order to bridge the gap between the life worlds of the mothers and the professionals, as disconnection appears to lie at the core of why family care and child protection intervention practices are often flawed.
Highlights
There is an official state policy on so-called ‘multi-problem families’ in the Netherlands.2 ‘Multi-problem families’ are often underprivileged families who are subjected to preventive and protective intervention practices to prevent their children from developing emotional and behavioural problems, delinquent behaviour, or child abuse and neglect.[3]
Since so many single-mother families are involved in the child welfare and protection system while intervention practices take place away from the public gaze, it is in my view crucial to examine the processes of child welfare and protection interventions in single-mother families in practice
In this article I aimed to show how cultural categories are mobilized in social work encounters between the single mothers experiencing multiple problems and the institutional representatives involved in the families, and how these categories primarily along lines of ethnicity, class and gender play a major role in the intervention processes of the families
Summary
There is an official state policy on so-called ‘multi-problem families’ in the Netherlands.2 ‘Multi-problem families’ are often underprivileged families who are subjected to preventive and protective intervention practices to prevent their children from developing emotional and behavioural problems, delinquent behaviour, or child abuse and neglect.[3]. There is an official state policy on so-called ‘multi-problem families’ in the Netherlands.. ‘Multi-problem families’ are often underprivileged families who are subjected to preventive and protective intervention practices to prevent their children from developing emotional and behavioural problems, delinquent behaviour, or child abuse and neglect.[3] Normative judgments about ethnic, cultural or socio-economic class status being deficient are, in this regard, motives for intervention.[4]. -called ‘multi-problem families’ either enter the legal child welfare and protection system directly, through referral,[5] or indirectly, if voluntary interventions are inadequate or no longer adequate.[6] More than 75 per cent of child welfare and protection measures are undertaken with single-mother families[7] while the number of these measures increased between 2002 and 2011 by 151% to 51,3268 and are expected to rise even further.[9].
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