Griet Roets

Ghent University | UGhent · department of social work and social pedagogy

Child poverty remains a complex social problem in Western societies. In the context of the complex historical transformation of the institutional welfare state framework in Belgium, we discuss a qualitative study on the welfare rationales of a philanthropic foundation for children in extreme poverty situations. Our exploration of the perspectives o...

This article reports on a European project that sought to explore the relationships between social work and service user participation, using a five-country (Belgium, Czech Republic, Finland, Ireland and Portugal) case study approach. It revealed areas of comparison and contrast depending upon respective histories of social work development, organi...

Preschool teachers are crucial actors in the socialization process and the construction of gender ideas of young children. Their gender ideas influence interactions with children. Education has a profound gendered nature in which gender stereotypes are often reproduced and enacted. This qualitative study is a critical exploration of preschool teach...

Introduction: This paper examines life experiences before and during addiction recovery in a large sample of treated and untreated persons in Flanders (Belgium). Methods: A total of 343 participants in recovery from alcohol and/or illicit drug problems (≥3 months) completed the 2022 'Life in Recovery' survey online. Participants were categorized in...

Although diverse European welfare states have institutionalized an extensive infrastructure of public welfare services to redistribute resources, governments have been confronted with barriers in realizing the social rights of certain groups of citizens. Decentralization and increasingly local welfare provision has been promoted as a strategy to su...

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 familie...

Despite the central government’s rural reconstruction programme targeting rural villages, rural communities in contemporary China continue to face massive social, economic, and environmental challenges. This paper reports on a case study of a farmers’ cooperative in Puhan. Continual rural decline, alongside national economic reform and rural commun...

In this article, we critically explore the research findings of a qualitative study of local social policy and work interventions, called ‘the post-mobile project’ in Ghent, Belgium. The project provided temporary housing for families in container units, accompanied by mandatory integration assistance, and was implemented as a potential solution fo...

The concept of a positive living group climate is currently used as a key strategy to substantially realise the citizenship of youngsters in residential youth care. The concept focuses mainly on what happens inside the residential youth care facility, as the interpersonal relationships between the professionals and the youngsters are identified as...

China provides an extremely interesting contemporary case study for the international social work research community, given its questioning of the pertinence of the international definition of social work and stance in relation to the debates surrounding universalisation, internationalisation and indigenisation. This article begins by examining the...

In many European countries, one needs a permanent address to be entitled to social rights. To address this minimum prerequisite, mechanisms for administrative inclusion are in place for persons experiencing homelessness, such as the reference address in Belgium. This paper disentangles the non-take-up mechanisms behind this reference address by dra...

Since the conception of post-war national welfare states and the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948, the notions of citizenship and of civic, political and social rights were institutionalised in European welfare states. In that vein, a social work workforce acquired a professional and public mandate to implement social p...

The focus on ‘child poverty’ in policy, practice and academia (in industrialized countries) has increased significantly in recent years. This is in large part due to the increasing number of children growing up in poverty. Child poverty is generally considered as a violation of children’s rights, as they are recognized in the Convention on the Righ...

The focus on ‘child poverty’ in policy, practice and academia (in industrialized countries) has increased significantly in recent years. This is in large part due to the increasing number of children growing up in poverty. Child poverty is generally considered as a violation of children’s rights, as they are recognized in the Convention on the Righ...

Public welfare actors struggle with the question how they can guarantee children’s wellbeing. The answer to this question depends on the countries’ perspective concerning its responsibility for the care of its citizens. In the Flemish context, a maximalist child protection logic – with a focus on the realisation of rights – is adopted. In this arti...

The construction of parents' cannabis use in the context of child protection has far‐reaching implications for how their parenting is perceived and assessed and for the decisions made regarding their children's lives. Yet little is known about the meanings various stakeholders in child protection processes attribute to parents' cannabis use. This p...

This research report describes a process evaluation of the Signs of Safety (SofS) implementation process within the OSD department (OSD = ‘Afdeling Ondersteuningscentra en Sociale Diensten Jeugdrechtbank’ in Dutch = ‘Youth Care Support Centers and Youth Court Social Services’ in the Flemish part of Belgium) and its perceived impact. The process eva...

The concepts of critical reflection and reflexivity currently occupy a prominent space in social work education. Nevertheless, there is a need for more evidence on how these concepts are conceptualised and enacted in concrete social work teaching contexts. In this paper, we develop a rhetorical approach to critical and reflexive social work educati...

Based on extensive ethnographic research into internal rural–urban migration dynamics and circumstances in Mongolia, this article discusses lived citizenship practices in the ger areas situated in the country’s capital city of Ulaanbaatar. Inspired by findings showing how newly-migrated residents conduct their citizenship individually as well as co...

This book is now available through Open Access.

Qualitative research on the trajectories of youth homelessness in Belgium

In contemporary European welfare states, poverty reduction strategies can currently be characterised as individualistic rather than solidaristic, focusing on welfare recipients’ merit rather than securing their rights. Based on the findings of a recent research project in Belgium, we explore how social workers develop strategies to combat child pov...

A recent body of research draws on the concept of child welfare inequality and shows that social inequalities, such as poverty, are reproduced in and through child welfare and protection interventions. We therefore examine how the recent preoccupation with risk relates to ways in which frontline social workers in child welfare and protection deal w...

The existing international research evidence shows that second- and third-generation migrant women often have a family history of labor migration and experience mental health problems due to the multi-dimensional problems and precarious life situations in which they are enmeshed. Our qualitative study builds on the suggestion of diverse authors to...

This paper examines how an intersection of critical cultural disability studies and rhetorical studies can inform a critical education on ‘mental health (problems)’ for psychology students. Building on cultural theories of disability/impairment, a conception of ‘mental health (problems)’ as culturally constituted is introduced. We propose the rheto...

In the face of growing social, economic, political and demographic challenges, many European welfare states have been confronted with barriers in realising the social rights of certain groups of citizens. This phenomenon has often been referred to as ‘the non-take up of social rights’. Considering the core mandate and key principles of social work...

Since the 1990s, a paradigm of participation has gained prominence and become a dominant policy rhetoric in anti‐poverty policymaking in Europe, embracing the key idea that people in poverty should participate as equal citizens in political decision‐making processes. Based on a historical case study of the production process of a Belgian white pape...

The United Nations declared 17 October 1994 to be the first ‘World Day against Poverty’. On that occasion, the General Report on Poverty (GRP) was launched, which acquired a great symbolic value in the history of the fight against poverty in Belgium. The report is generally considered to be a significant milestone in Belgian’s poverty policy as it...

This article presents a critical analysis of the challenges global social work standards present for mainland China (hereafter China) with its authoritarian political ideology that is in tension with the profession’s universal values grounded in liberal individualism. China is caught between the Scylla of universal standards and Charybdis of indige...

Aims: Although treatment barriers are different for men and women, research is dominated by males’ and practitioners’ perspectives rather than women’s voices. The purpose of this study in Belgium was to identify and obtain a better understanding of the barriers and facilitators for seeking treatment as experienced by substance (ab)using women thems...

Ervaringsdeskundigheid is ‘hot’, maar zorgt ook voor heel wat polarisering. Sommigen zijn lyrisch over de meerwaarde voor cliënten, anderen staan erg kritisch tegenover deze vorm van participatie. Ervaringsdeskundigen botsen zelf vaak op weerstand of komen terecht in geïsoleerde posities. Professionals op hun beurt worstelen met onzekerheid en ondu...

The linguistic, historical, social, cultural, economic, political and ideological divisions of Belgium are reflected in social work. Whereas social work has recently received full academic recognition in the Dutch-speaking part of Belgium with BA programmes at University Colleges of Applied Sciences (‘Hogescholen’) and MA programmes at the universi...

In the early 1990s, several European welfare states embraced the idea that the voice and life knowledge of people in poverty should be recognised in policymaking. In that regard, many authors proclaimed a paradigm shift from advocacy to self-advocacy, emphasising the agency of people in poverty to speak for themselves. Emblematic in these developme...

Social work scholars have argued that poverty reminds us of the necessary commitment to educate professional social workers. Being inspired by a conceptual framework that captures how poverty-awareness can be the subject of teaching in social work programmes, this article offers a qualitative analysis of the reflections being made by a cohort of st...

In the international realm, inter‐organizational networking is perceived as a highly relevant instrument in social policy that enables welfare organizations to deal with “wicked issues.” In this article, we discuss the central empirical findings acquired from a recent qualitative research project that focuses on inter‐organizational networks that w...

Notions of citizenship and disability rights denote abstract, ambiguous, and contested principles, and realizing these ideas entails complexity in practice. This is particularly the case since the welfare state is no longer conceived as the principal provider of welfare services and resources in many European welfare states. In that vein, we critic...

The United Nations declared 17 October 1994 to be the first ‘World Day against Poverty’. On that occasion, the General Report on Poverty (GRP) was launched, which acquired a great symbolic value in the history of the fight against poverty in Belgium. The report is generally considered to be a significant milestone in Belgian’s poverty policy as it...

Continuity of care is seen as a challenge for youth care services. Research on continuity of care in relation to youth care services is scarce, and there is a strong tendency to overly stress the managerial and technical aspects of care. However, research on continuity from a youngster’s perspective suggests a more complex construction of continuit...

In its engagement towards anti-poverty-strategies, social work has become strongly embedded in a politics of recognition and respect. Nevertheless, this raises critical questions in regard to how such a politics connects to the socio-economic and political dimensions of poverty. We build on an intensive qualitative study in five Associations where...

Citizenship and rights conventionally refer to the ways in which the relationship between the individual and the state is constructed. These concepts concern the vital political and democratic values of freedom, equality and solidarity. As realising the citizenship and rights of disabled people has become an explicit aim of many western democratic...

Continuity is seen as an important aim for the quality of youth-care services. However, views on continuity are predominantly guided by experts, without much attention to user perspectives. This paper focuses on youngsters’ experienced continuity in relation to youth-care services. Twenty-five youngsters, who were in residential care or reached by...

Over the last forty years, Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) has gained recognition by governments, parents, employers, local communities, and researchers for various reasons. The importance of ECEC provision has been stressed, supported by the argument that it enables the early learning of children as a foundation for reaching higher educa...

In this article, we argue that research ethics in the doing of oral history research are inadequately addressed in the existing body of research. Although oral history researchers have paid considerable attention to procedural ethical issues, there is currently a lack of attention on situational research ethics in the doing of oral history. We addr...

Purpose – In Flanders, the subventions in the cultural sector are mainly divided and decided upon within the framework of the Arts Decree. Within this policy framework, art organizations may choose in their funding applications for “participation” as one of the five possible functions to describe their artistic and cultural practices. However, ques...

In this contribution, we focus on the question of how social workers actually deal with the complexity of sharing private information in three local networks of social provision that aim to combat child poverty. Building on the existing body of social work research, we discuss how practices for exchanging private information are enmeshed in a field...

De vermaatschappelijking van de zorg gaat gepaard met een toenemende inzet van ervaringswerkers in de geestelijke gezondheidszorg in Vlaanderen. Er zijn echter heel wat onduidelijkheden over het belang van ervaringswerk en de concrete inzet van ervaringswerkers. Op basis van recente ontwikkelingen en uitdagingen realiseren we een exploratief onderz...

Research has focused on the question if and how leisure can create social cohesion and can alleviate cultural segregation in divided community contexts. Community sport in particular is believed to create socio-cultural cohesiveness, as it aims at a sense of community, a task in which regular sports often seem to fail. However, the experiences of p...

At the beginning of the 1990s, several European welfare states embraced the idea that the voice and life knowledge of people in poverty should be recognised in policy making. In that regard, Beresford and Croft (1995) even proclaimed a paradigm shift from advocacy, which implies that non-poor allies advocate 'for' the poor, to self-advocacy, emphas...

Since people in poverty often lower their aspirations in line with their position in society, an important role of social workers is to encourage people in poverty to reflect on the connection of their situation to the socio-political context and to address their internalised oppression. While drawing on the ideas of Paulo Freire, our study in Asso...

Despite the growing involvement of people in poverty in social policy, their participation does not necessarily take place on a par with policymakers, as the latter often do not really embrace their demands for social justice. It is, therefore, argued that social work has a role to play in the process of merging knowledge of people in poverty with...

In this research, we zoom in on twenty local networks that are installed in the fight against child poverty of which nine are located in Flanders, eight in Wallonia and three in Brussels. We look into the network governance, the network structures and the organization of these networks. We also gain insight into the experiences and perspectives of...

Continuity is seen as an important aim for the quality of youth-care services. However, views on continuity are predominantly guided by experts, without much attention to user perspectives. This paper focuses on youngsters’ experienced continuity in relation to youth-care services. Twenty-five youngsters, who were in residential care or reached by...

In this article, we focus on how social workers use their agency when implementing top-down policy measures as street-level bureaucrats. We report on findings of a case study that was conducted in Flanders, the Dutch-speaking region of Belgium, about the top-down introduction of an electronic information system (IS) in the field of Child Welfare an...

Despite indications that the mental health of diasporic Muslims is under pressure, some evidence suggests that they are under-represented in established mental healthcare services. Studies indicate that, although diasporic migrants are at higher risk for mental health problems, they do not find their way to established mental healthcare services. T...

In recent years, the historical abuse perpetrated against children in residential child-welfare and protection services has increasingly been perceived as a public concern. In the context of this European and global development, several formal inquiries commissioned by authorities into the alleged historical abuse of children in social work service...

This article theorises the role of educational agents in democratic education in urban contexts by engaging in the discussion about the relationship between citizenship, democracy and education. Therefore, we confront Gert Biesta’s conceptualisation of a ‘pedagogy of interruption’ with the empirical insights that emerge from a qualitative research...

Based on an oral history study that retrospectively explores the life histories of former orphans in the city of Ghent (Belgium) after the Second World War, we analyse and critique the role of historical research in the current apology trend. Due to the crucial role of (oral) history in these out-of-home care inquiries, these official public apolog...

Since the 1990s, the notion of participation gained prominence and became a dominant policy rhetoric in anti-poverty policies and social work interventions in Europe. This "participation paradigm" aimed to recognize people in poverty as full worthy citizens as well as subjects shaping their own lives. Since then, people in poverty are expected to g...

Although participatory social work approaches have been considered as a fruitful strategy, critical questions are raised in relation to the social justice aspirations of participatory social work with people in poverty. Inspired by the work of Nancy Fraser, we provide an in-depth insight in the complexities of supporting participatory parity in ‘As...

Following massive socioeconomic reforms over the past three decades, social work in the People’s Republic of China (hereafter China) has developed at an unprecedented pace. To respond to social issues arising from accelerated economic development, the government has launched a large-scale programme to train a professional social work workforce of 1...

In this chapter, the key messages and policy implications arising from the chapters making up this volume are drawn together. The research demonstrates the need to increase the development of young people’s agency and voice, and to put it at the centre of policy design, implementation and evaluation. Currently young people often feel undermined by...

In 2015, Leanne Schubert and Mel Gray wrote a critical commentary in the British Journal of Social Work entitled ‘The death of emancipatory social work and birth of socially engaged art practice’. In this commentary, the authors argue that artists have moved in to fill the void that increasingly emerges as social workers vacate the public spaces of...

In this article it is assumed that the documentary impulse that gave the impetus to Courage, a photobook on people in poverty published in Belgium in 1998, is related to how the General Report on Poverty, published in 1994, accused the child welfare sector and protection services of having far too authoritative and coercive an approach. This articl...

In response to the global financial crisis, social policies in Europe and elsewhere incorporated a logic of social investment to reduce (child) poverty and social inequality. Several critiques, however, have been raised against the narrowness of this discourse. In order to introduce another way of seeing, an interview study was conducted inspired b...

It is argued that recent shifts and changes in welfare paradigms have induced a depo-litisation of the problem of poverty, within both society and organisational settings. In this contribution, we adopt the idea that social workers are political actors who co-construct policy in practice rather than passive objects of these developments. While rese...

Although provisions for young children are increasingly considered as ideal places to foster an inclusive and socially just society by embracing issues of social support and social cohesion, there is no in-depth understanding of the role these provisions can play in enabling supportive and cohesive encounters in contexts of diversity. Even more str...

Both in the international context and in Flanders (the Dutch-speaking part of Belgium), research shows that many young people experience social exclusion in relation to education. However, research evidence concerning structural social inequality in education is predominantly underpinned by an outcome-based approach, since educational policies and...

Southern feminist theorists make a pertinent call for the democratisation of knowledge between the North and the South. In this article, we embrace a southern perspective in feminist theory while embarking on a genealogical analysis of gender constructs in research about Igbo women in South-Eastern Nigeria. In that sense, the study of gender constr...

Purpose In this contribution, we would like to reflect on how Eric Broekaert perceived “Ortho-pedagogy” as an academic discipline. We first try to get a grasp on Broekaert’s point of view while cross-reading three central articles in which he explains his integrated and holistic paradigm of education. Secondly, we reflect on how he enabled us to c...

The article focuses on the roles of users with experience in poverty, who were trained since 2003 as experts and interpreters of the poverty problem in Belgium. From a methodological stance, we adopted a qualitative and interpretative research approach to study 10 federal policy units in which a service user with experience of poverty was employed...

At the beginning of the 1990s, several European welfare states installed a policy on poverty that explicitly recognised the voice and life knowledge of people in poverty. The idea of talking ‘with’ the poor came to prominence instead of talking ‘about’ or ‘to’ people in poverty. Beresford and Croft (1995) proclaimed a possible paradigm shift from a...

In order to take into account the power imbalances typically implicated in knowledge production about the complex social problem of poverty, social work researchers have increasingly acknowledged the importance of grasping the viewpoints and perspectives of people in poverty situations. In this contribution, we accordingly reflect on a current life...

Scholars in several European countries have documented the recent turn to parenting (see e.g. Mary Daly's contribution in this issue). Inspired by this analysis and informed by on-going and recent research in our Department, we discuss the emergence of a new vocabulary (or new meanings given to older words) in a polemic essay. Presently, the terms...

The mental health of Muslims with a migration background in Belgium seems to be particularly at risk. Inspired by the work of Nikolas Rose on the question of subjectivity, our sociological research analyses processes of subjectification that occur within existing mental health services, and the subsequent “proper” subject of mental health that is c...

A recurring feature of outreach work is that outreach tries to reach people who are left without care and not effectively reached by existing services. In this article, we discuss the importance of outreach practices in the context of changes in society. We suggest that the pressure on the managing of access to social services is increasing along w...

Migrant and diasporic communities who identify as Muslim are underrepresented in mental health care across Western Europe. At the same time, they are particularly at risk of suffering from mental health problems. We seek to explore this underrepresentation in theoretical terms and do so through a critical analysis of sociological literature focused...