Family support and child protection approaches. Historicising perspectives on contemporary discourses of social work

This paper examines the impact of two prevailing and seemingly opposed ideologies in child welfare in Western societies over the last century (‘family support’ and ‘child protection’) on social work practice. It scrutinises social work practice in two cases of Dutch-Curaçaoan single-mother families experiencing multiple problems. An ethnographic approach was chosen to study the two families in depth. It shows that, although the cases share many characteristics and circumstances, the social work outcomes diverge. This suggests there is a thin dividing line between support and protection. We argue that the interrelationships between the two base categories and social work practice can be better understood through a historicizing conceptualization of discourses. We suggest that an ethnographic enquiry is suitable for grasping the processual dimensions of social work practice with families as it leads to a more in-depth understanding of, paraphrasing Foucault: the historical interweaving of relations of discourse, of power, of everyday life and of truth