Abstract
Abstract This article explores the experiences of child welfare workers in relation to families where mothers have intellectual disabilities. The study is based on data from focus group interviews with child welfare workers in municipal child welfare services. All of the child welfare workers say that mothers with intellectual disabilities have serious and widespread problems linked to parental functioning. The child welfare workers interviewed in this study conclude that these mothers often have inadequate or no education, poor economy, unstable employment, and unsatisfactory housing conditions. Although these problems are common among the parents child welfare comes into contact with in general, the mothers in question represent a special challenge because of their intellectual disabilities. The informants in this study say that they as child welfare workers need to question if ‘normal’ requirements from child welfare can be used with regard to mothers with intellectual disabilities in order to evaluate...
Highlights
Introduction and aimsThis article is based on a study which concerns Child welfare workers and their experiences with mothers who have intellectual disabilities
The perspective taken is that of child welfare workers who are responsible for the implementation of The Child Welfare Act (Act of July 17 1992, No 100), which aims to ensure that children receive necessary care from their parents, among other things
Child welfare dilemma a. child welfare must apply normal requirements to mothers with intellectual disabilities; b. child welfare does not have the appropriate tools; c. some families are in need of life-long help
Summary
This article is based on a study which concerns Child welfare workers and their experiences with mothers who have intellectual disabilities. The study has two aims: first, to search for child welfare services’ own descriptions of their practices in the assessment of the care skills of these mothers; second, to investigate how child welfare services recognize mothers with intellectual limitations. The empirical data in this study consist of interviews with 19 Norwegian child welfare workers who were interviewed in six focus groups. The perspective taken is that of child welfare workers who are responsible for the implementation of The Child Welfare Act (Act of July 17 1992, No 100), which aims to ensure that children receive necessary care from their parents, among other things. The participants focused on women in the interviews because women are more often clients in child welfare than men. Caring is so often associated with women both because they feel responsibility for caring insofar as this is the social world to which they belong (Traustadottir 2004), and because caring is a way in which women construct
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