Koen Hermans

• Associate Professor at KU Leuven

This article explores the deployment of the Housing First for Youth (HF4Y) model across various European countries. HF4Y, an adaptation of the Housing First approach tailored for young people, prioritises immediate access to stable housing without preconditions, alongside personalised support services. The study highlights significant variability i...

_ Homelessness, an extreme manifestation of poverty and social exclusion, poses a complex challenge for both definition and measurement in Europe. At present, there is no consensus concerning the most valid and reliable methods to measure and monitor homelessness in Europe. Definitions and measurements vary significantly across Europe, making it di...

Young adults experiencing homelessness face multiple challenges and are often confronted with additional barriers stemming from adverse past experiences. Whereas youth homelessness rates appear to increase across Europe, our knowledge on its nature in Belgium remains limited. Based on recent local point-in-time counts on homelessness in Belgium (20...

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...

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...

As aresponse to traditional (top‐down) urban planning processes, placemaking engages local citizens in the process of shaping the form, social activity, and meaning of places around them. However, placemaking practices similarly face political challenges regarding inclusion and emplacement. These challenges relate to who participates, facilitation...

In 2020 in Belgium the coronavirus crisis generated a widespread solidarity between the housed and the homeless. This paper adopts a policy assemblage approach to investigate policy responses to the pandemic with regards to actions, discourses and spatial materialities around homelessness. Three areas of contingent reassembling emerged from the ana...

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...

This article uses the latest Spanish Survey on Homeless People to address whether traumatic experiences, sociodemographic characteristics, and homeless categories are associated with being an abstainer, a risky drinker, or a high-risk drinker. The sample was composed of 3,407 Spanish homeless adults ranging from 18 to 93 years old ( M age = 41.30,...

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...

Sociaal werkers en hun organisaties zoeken manieren om de resultaten en meerwaarde van hun werk zichtbaar te maken. Daarnaast dienen sociaalwerkpraktijken zich te verantwoorden door aan te tonen of en welke ‘impact’ ze realiseren. Tijdens de eerste sociaalwerkconferentie werd impactevaluatie naar voor geschoven als een van de grote uitdagingen waar...

In het 'Actieplan Sterk Sociaal Werk' (2020-2024) werd impact als een belangrijk thema en prioritaire uitdaging binnen het sociaal werk naar voren geschoven. Naar aanleiding hiervan werd in een samenwerkingsverband tussen UA (Prof. Peter Raeymaeckers & Jan Depauw), KU Leuven (Prof. Koen Hermans), KdG Hogeschool (Prof. Kristel Driessens) en SAM, ste...

This study explores the palliative care capacity of social workers in Flanders. First, it examines the frequency with which social workers in Flanders are currently performing palliative care tasks. Second, this study assesses their attitudes and competencies regarding the performance of these tasks. Third, as contextual factors also influence this...

Traditional interpretations of homelessness focus on people living on the streets or in shelters. However, homelessness encompasses many more living situations. This article reports on a scoping review of studies on hidden homelessness. A systematic search in scientific databanks was combined with an exploration of Google Scholar. The results of th...

Introduction: An important challenge for future palliative care delivery is the growing number of people with palliative care needs compared with the limited qualified professional workforce. Existing but underused professional potential can further be optimised. This is certainly the case for social work, a profession that fits well in multidisci...

In the last 15 years, transdisciplinary research of sustainability transitions has become an increasingly powerful approach. We discuss it as a perspective for social work discipline, and as a theoretical-conceptual frame of a new international doctoral training and research programme in social work taking place in seven European countries. In our...

One of the main characteristics of social work is the fundamental tension between the profession's conservative and critical rationales. In the last three decades, this tension has informed the development of critical resistance to the deprofessionalisation effects of neo-managerial rationality, which establishes cost reduction and fiscal accountab...

In het ‘Actieplan Sterk Sociaal Werk’ (2021-2025) werd impact als een belangrijk thema en prioritaire uitdaging binnen het sociaal werk naar voren geschoven. Naar aanleiding hiervan werd in een samenwerkingsverband tussen UA (Peter Raeymaeckers & Jan Depauw), KU Leu- ven (Koen Hermans), KdG Hogeschool (Kristel Driessens) en SAM, steunpunt Mens en S...

Cities and dense urban areas are dynamic environments, always adapting to changing circumstances and shocks, such as the recent COVID-19 pandemic. The Vaartkom (or the Canal Bowl in English), a neighbourhood in Leuven, provides an interesting case study, having undergone a drastic transformation in the past two decades from a dilapidated industrial...

In dit artikel bespreken we enkele belangrijke principes omtrent de evaluatie van sociaalwerkpraktijken. Evalueren heeft als doel te begrijpen hoe een praktijk werkt en te verklaren waarom een praktijk werkt, voor wie en in welke context. Daarnaast willen we ook het verband begrijpen tussen onderdelen van een praktijk, het proces en de resultaten....

Qualitative research on the trajectories of youth homelessness in Belgium

In deze bijdrage analyseren we het referentieadres bij een OCMW dat sinds 1997 administratieve verankering biedt aan dak- en thuisloze personen in België. We stellen daarbij de vraag of dit referentieadres er na vijfentwintig jaar in slaagt om deze groep sociaal te beschermen, of hen eerder belemmert.

Palliative care is a holistic practice using a multidisciplinary approach in addressing multidimensional needs. Although the social aspects surrounding the end-of-life phase suggest a place for social work in it, the profession is often inadequately involved in daily practice. This contrasts strongly with the potential meaningful contributions of s...

Democratic professionalism challenges social workers to see social institutions as potential fields for democratic action and to act as bridge agents between citizens and social institutions. Although scholars have identified democratic professionalism as a promising theory, the relevance of this approach has hardly been empirically explored and op...

De COVID-19 crisis heeft de term solidariteit weer binnengebracht in het publieke leven. Erwerd ons gevraagd solidair te zijn met de meest kwetsbaren en met de zorgverleners. Er werden veel solidariteitsacties opgezet. Tegelijkertijd doken al snel signalen op dat deze crisis bestaande ongelijkheden versterkte en nieuwe ongelijkheden deed ontstaan....

In deze bijdrage reflecteren we op de strijd tegen dak- en thuisloosheid in België tijdens deCOVID-19 crisis. We baseren ons daarvoor op de resultaten van de tellingen dak- en thuisloosheid die in de tweede helft van 2020 zijn uitgevoerd in Limburg en in Gent. Ondanks de vaststelling dat er heel wat crisismaatregelen zijn getroffen, heeft de pandem...

Professional standards state that social workers in public welfare organisations should act as state and citizen-agents. However, the literature provides little insight into how social workers navigate this dual responsibility in their daily work. To address this gap, we used Maynard-Moody and Musheno’s theory on state and citizens-agent narratives...

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...

Background Mapping social inclusion often focuses merely on a specific aspect of interpersonal relationships or community participation and is often executed from one perspective (either the person with a disability or a proxy). Objective This paper explores whether the ecological model of Simplican, Leader, Kosciulek and Leahy (2015) can serve as...

Retour réflexif sur le développement d'un projet expérimental d'accompagnement visant à soutenir la "réaffilitation sociale" des locataires Housing First au sein de différents territoires : Bruxelles, Charleroi, Namur, Liège, Gand, Hasselt et Courtrai. Analyse de pratiques innovantes de travail social en matière de lutte contre le sans-abrisme.

_ Given the growing superdiversity of European societies, more detailed data on migrant homelessness are needed. Measuring and monitoring the intersections between migration and homelessness needs a fundamental reflection and operationalisation of this diversity. In this contribution, we firstly look into the available evidence produced by (members...

_ This paper explores the challenges around the measurement of all homelessness in Europe. The paper begins by reviewing challenges in relation to definition and measurement and moves on to consider the political and ethical dimensions of measuring homelessness that occurs within housing. The paper concludes by proposing new definitions, including...

#Sociaalwerk is een studieboek over sociaal werk. Het is het product van een samenwerking van een grote groep docenten van twee Antwerpse hogescholen (AP Hogeschool en KdG Hogeschool) en de masteropleiding sociaal werk van de Universiteit Antwerpen. Het is een omvangrijk boek geworden van meer dan 500 pagina’s en maar liefst 17 hoofdstukken. Het bo...

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 contemporary welfare states, the non-take-up of rights is a pervasive and considerable problem. Yet, our empirical and theoretical understanding of this phenomenon is still rather limited. In this context, the historical role of social work practice in bridging between citizens and the welfare state cannot be overlooked. To adequately tackle non...

Background: Professionals play an important role in supporting the social relations of persons with a disability. This study looks at professional practices supporting or strengthening social relations of persons in independent supported living, by integrating the perspectives of adults with a disability, network members and professionals. Method:...

Available studies on the accountability relation between social work and the government are mainly conducted in Anglo‐Saxion countries. This limits the generalizability of these findings to other countries. Moreover, these studies hardly descent to the street‐level, making the perceptions and actions of social workers barely visible. To address thi...

Social workers are accountable to many different actors (e.g. service users, peers, employer, government) who all have their own perspective on practice and how it should be accounted for. Little is known about how social workers account their work to these multiple actors. Therefore, we conducted a scoping review of recent studies to review which...

Contextualizing professional accountability strategies of social workers in municipality social services. A cross-national case study of Dutch, German and Belgium social workers

Homeless individuals often find that welfare services are inaccessible, despite being designed to meet their needs. This frictions with access which is a fundamental principle in western welfare states. Adaptations in social policy and service delivery are therefore made to deal with the problem of inaccessibility to services and welfare rights. On...

Societal and political developments in European welfare states challenge the core principles of social justice, human rights, collective responsibility and respect for diversity that underpin social work. At the same time, however, in many European countries, there is a revival of a more transformative social work discourse aimed at the fight for s...

The gap between research and practice has been a long-standing challenge in social work (e.g.Richmond, 1917;Rubin, 2014). Partnership structures between research facilities and social care organisations are seen as a possible way forward, but knowledge on how such partnerships can be successfully elaborated and implemented in local social work prac...

Despite the growing interest of users in online services, social workers are still reluctant to offer their services in an online environment. Moreover, little is known about online working methods and their contribution to an effective online session. This paper reports on the findings of a Dutch case study of the online intervention “Clickforhelp...

This literature review analyses the adoption and development of a street‐level perspective in public management, social policy and social work. The last years have seen a prominent revival of a perspective based on Michael Lipsky's street‐level bureaucracy approach in the debates conducted within all three disciplinary fields. Based on 71 key publi...

Intended and realised accountability in social work: a scoping review of the use of accountability mechanisms by social workers. Social workers have an accountability relation with multiple stakeholders: the government, peers, users and the broader society. These stakeholders all have their own perspectives on how social workers need to account for...

The tension between ‘front-’ and ‘backstage’ in intensive pedagogical home-based family support. A multiple case study Both in Flanders and in the Netherlands, there is a growing attention to family preservation programs. Research on family preservation is, however, mainly conducted within a positivist framework. Because of that, we have gathered s...

In the margin of the ongoing experimental and quasi-experimental research projects on family preservation, some research projects focus on the process through which families accomplish change and acknowledge the importance of the working alliance. There is, however, little information about barriers and facilitators in building this working allianc...

Background For some time now, integrated care has been put forward to create a more demand-driven, patient-centred and cost-effective care system. Various conceptual frameworks have been developed to shed light on the complex concept. However, they lack insight into the mechanisms driving integrated care in practice. The aim of this paper is to gai...

Theorizing social interventions using a Program Theory approach: a case study of five Dutch buddy programmes Trust in the effectiveness of social work practice is rather limited. As a consequence, social workers are increasingly urged by policymakers and other societal stakeholders to justify their practices and interventions and to demonstrate the...

Dit voorjaar raakte bekend dat het Antwerps stadsbestuur het inloopcentrum De Vaart via een tender of openbare aanbesteding op de markt gooit. Ondertussen weten we dat G4S Care samen met de groep Corsendonk de beste papieren heeft om het inloopcentrum uit te baten. CAW Antwerpen dat dit centrum reeds achttien jaar openhoudt, vangt bot. Maar de stad...

Dirk Geldof. Superdiversiteit. Hoe migratie onze samenleving verandert. Leuven: Acco, 2015, 230 p., €23,35. ISBN 978 94 6292 295 2

Belgium has an elaborate, but complicated and fragmented health and social care system that differs between regions. Looking at the system in the Dutch speaking community from a life course perspective, we see that many services are available, at low or no cost for the client, and developmental problems are often detected at a young age. However, t...

The use of information and communication technology (ICT) in child welfare services has increased significantly during the last decades, and so have the possibilities to process health data. Parton (2009) states that this evolution has led to a shift in the nature of social work itself: from ‘the social’ to ‘the informational’. It is claimed that s...

De Vlaamse regering sprak zich begin dit jaar uit over de toe-komst van het OCMW. Dat moet zich tegen 2019 inkantelen in de gemeente. Sommigen zien dat niet zitten en houden vast aan het OCMW en haar Raad voor Maatschappelijk Wel-zijn als hoeders van het recht op maatschappelijke dienst-verlening. Maar de praktijk toont aan dat dit oude OCMW-model...

Social work research is inherently normative and as such the assumptions about social problems in social work research should be open to scrutiny and contestation. But although researchers often face tussles and huge contradictions, they rarely articulate them. In this article, we report on a small research project in which a collective of social w...

Given that integrated care includes many different aspects, this paper seeks to design a comprehensive research approach and explains how this approach is applied in the CORTEXS research project on integrated care in the Flemish Community in Belgium. A systemic view on integrated care is translated into a multi-level, multi-disciplinary, multi-meth...

Background: In line with international developments, the Flemish government is concerned about the quality of care in Flemish nursing homes. In 2003, new legislation shifted the attention from structural quality aspects to introducing quality processes. From from 2010 on, this evolved further with growing interest in the outcomes of quality managem...

Integrated care is seen as an important new method towards more demand-driven and costconscious health systems. In November 2013, a 4-year, multidisciplinary and multi-method research project on integrated care in Flanders (Belgium) was launched: CORTEXS – Integrating Care. The €3 million project focuses on long term care. CORTEXS strives to combin...

The signal function and structural social workBased on the Dutch and Belgian social work profiles, signalling is considered as one of the main tasks of social workers. However, it remains unclear which underlying assumptions guide this task and how social workers do it in practice. This paper focuses on the first aspect and asks the question if str...

Method-development, evaluation research and the body of knowledge of social workDuring the last ten years, a revival of the debate concerning the body of knowledge can be observed. During the same period, evidence-based practice caused a lot of resistance inside the social work profession. In this paper, we develop a broad view on evidence-based pr...

One of the main goals of primary care is providing equitable health-care, meaning equal access, equal treatment and equal outcomes of healthcare for all in equal need. Some studies show that patients from lower socioeconomic groups visit a GP more often, while other studies show that they are more likely to postpone a visit to a GP. In this study,...

Achtergrond In een getrapte zorg is het essentieel dat de signalen van depressie en suïcidale ideatie goed worden herkend in eerstelijnszorg zodat een doelmatige aanpak kan gestart worden of hiervoor kan door-verwezen worden (Everaert, e.a., 2007; Scheerder, 2009). In de eerstelijnszorg in Vlaanderen komt men in principe bij een huisarts terecht of...

In een getrapte zorg is het essentieel dat de signalen van depressie en suïcidale ideatie goed worden herkend in eerstelijnszorg zodat een doelmatige aanpak kan gestart worden of hiervoor kan doorverwezen worden. In de eerstelijnszorg in Vlaanderen komt men in principe bij een huisarts terecht of bij een welzijnsvoorziening zoals OCMW, CAW, ICAW. D...

This article presents a pragmatic approach of evidence-based practice (EBP). The first part distinguishes between a narrow and a broad definition of EBP, which takes into account the peculiarity of social work. The second part examines the question how EBP relates to practice theory. A broad definition of EBP acknowledges the surplus value of pract...

This article explores how the three positions in a Flemish Public Centre for Social Work, being the chair(wo)man, the secretary and the social workers, evaluate the implementation of ‘the individualised project for social integration’. This measure aims at the societal integration of young social assistance clients and fits in the current social ac...

Gedurende de jaren negentig heeft zich in België een verschuiving voorgedaan in het discours omtrent de welvaartsstaat. In plaats van (alleen maar) te voorzien in passieve uitkeringen werd meer en meer benadrukt dat uitkeringsgerechtigden geactiveerd moeten worden. Achter deze consensus gaan echter tegenstrijdige ideologische legitimeringen schuil....