Hegemony, Common Sense and Good Sense: A Gramscian Study of Policymakers’ Perspectives on Dealing with Poverty in Child Welfare and Protection

Abstract

Abstract The existing international research on the prevalence of poverty in Child Welfare and Protection (CWP) services points to a persistent discourse of ‘pedagogicalisation’, meaning that CWP interventions often construct social problems, such as poverty, as emerging from a failing education of families, and leave the social circumstances of the families unchallenged. Although front line practitioners in CWP can exercise professional discretion in dealing with poverty, policy and organisational cultures have a crucial impact on whether their efforts to engage with the lack of adequate societal resources of families remain informal and hidden or are being supported to transform CWP’s dominant approach to poverty. This study applies a Gramscian framework to examine instances of hegemony, common sense and good sense in policymakers’ discourses on CWP and poverty. Based on a qualitative content analysis of semi-structured interviews with n = 16 policymakers of the governmental organisation on CWP in Flanders, we provide insight into the hegemonic discourses of pedagogicalisation in Flemish CWP policy. Nevertheless, our results also provide evidence of counter-narratives. Although embryonic, instances of good sense hold seeds of change based on a recognition of the impact of poverty on families and of CWP’s role to strive for social justice.