The logic of the database and responsive social work

Over the last decade, western child welfare and protection has been subjected to many reforms. This is no different in Flanders - the Dutch speaking part of Belgium - where child welfare and protection has been reconstructed by integrating the various child welfare and protection services into one shared organisational framework. This reform has been defined as a way forward to a more emancipatory and needs-driven instead of supply-driven youth care system and even has been called a Copernican Revolution towards more responsive social work, stressing the welfare logic above the protectionistic logic. In order to realize this Copernican Revolution, the Flemish government invested to a great extent in the enhanced introduction of more and better information and registration tools to better capture and respond to the needs of children and families. In this presentation we draw on preliminary results of an empirical study where we performed 1) a conventional qualitative content analysis of policy documents relating to the subject of information and registration tools in child welfare and protection and 2) qualitative semi-structured interviews with key policy actors in the field of Flemish child welfare and protection in order to gain insight into the governmental logics and goals for installing information and registration tools. These results show that there are various "underlying" governmental logics regarding the use and installation of these information and registration tools. In this oral presentation, we will argue that these various underlying logics raise severe questions concerning the development a Copernican revolution towards responsive social work, as these instruments are mainly driven by a protectionistic logic rather than child welfare logic.

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