Pathways to permanence in England and Norway: A critical analysis of documents and data

Skivenes, Marit and Thoburn, June (2016) Pathways to permanence in England and Norway: A critical analysis of documents and data. Children and Youth Services Review, 67. pp. 152-160. ISSN 0190-7409

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Abstract

The English language term ‘permanence’ is increasingly used in high income countries as a ‘short-hand’ translation for a complex set of aims around providing stability and family membership for children who need child welfare services and out-of-home care. From a scrutiny of legislative provisions, court judgments, government documents and a public opinion survey on child placement options, the paper draws out similarities and differences in understandings of the place of ‘permanence’ within the child welfare discourse in Norway and England. The main differences are that in England the components of permanence are explicitly set out in legislation, statutory guidance and advisory documents whilst in Norway the terms ‘stability’ and ‘continuity’ are used in a more limited number of policy documents in the context of a wide array of services available for children and families. The paper then draws on these sources, and on administrative data on children in care, to tease out possible explanations for the similarities and differences identified. We hypothesise that both long-standing policies and recent changes can be explained by differences in public and political understandings of child welfare and the balance between universal services and those targeted on parents and children identified as vulnerable and in need of specialist services.

Item Type:	Article
Additional Information:	© 2016 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
Uncontrolled Keywords:	care orders,child protection,england,norway,permanence,policy
Faculty \ School:	Faculty of Social Sciences > School of Social Work
UEA Research Groups:	Faculty of Social Sciences > Research Groups > Child Placement (former - to 2017) Faculty of Social Sciences > Research Groups > Child Protection (former - to 2017) Faculty of Social Sciences > Research Centres > Centre for Research on Children and Families
Related URLs:	http://linkinghub.elsevier.com/retrieve/...
Depositing User:	Pure Connector
Date Deposited:	22 Jun 2016 12:00
Last Modified:	14 Jun 2023 12:36
URI:	https://ueaeprints.uea.ac.uk/id/eprint/59460
DOI:	10.1016/j.childyouth.2016.05.020

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