‘Disability is not a word we use’: Social workers' professional judgements about support for disabled young people leaving care

Ingri-Hanne Braenne Bennwik, Inger Oterholm, Berni Kelly

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Abstract

Disabled young people leaving care often experience a more complex transition to adulthood than other youths. Still, policy and services can fail to recognise the intersection between a young person’s care experiences and disability. Drawing on data from a qualitative interview study with fourteen social workers who work with aftercare in the Norwegian child welfare services, we investigate social workers’ professional judgements about support for this subgroup of the leaving care population. Our analysis uses the theoretical construct of institutional logics and shows that social workers did not include concepts of disability in their judgements about support for these young people. Instead, the social workers’ considerations were guided by three other organising principles: a ‘medical logic’, an ‘activation logic’ and an ‘aftercare logic’. We discuss these findings in light of critical disability studies and argue for a more nuanced understanding of disability in social work practice with care leavers. Highlighting disability rights and going beyond diagnosis and categorisations of disabled people can challenge a medical model approach to service provision.
Original languageEnglish
JournalChild and Family Social Work
Early online date27 Sept 2022
DOIs
Publication statusEarly online date - 27 Sept 2022

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