Social Support Quality in Internet Based Information and Communication: From "Digital Divide" to "Voice Divide"

National and international studies demonstrate that the number of teenagers using the inter-net increases. But even though they actually do have access from different places to the in-formation and communication pool of the internet, there is evidence that the ways in which teenagers use the net - regarding the scope and frequency in which services are used as well as the preferences for different contents of these services - differ significantly in relation to socio-economic status, education, and gender. The results of the regarding empirical studies may be summarised as such: teenager with low (formal ) education especially use internet services embracing 'entertainment, play and fun' while higher educated teenagers (also) prefer intellectually more demanding and particularly services supplying a greater variety of communicative and informative activities. More generally, pedagogical and sociological studies investigating "digital divide" in a dif-ferentiated and sophisticated way - i.e. not only in terms of differences between those who do have access to the Internet and those who do not - suggest that the internet is no space beyond 'social reality' (e.g. DiMaggio & Hargittai 2001, 2003; Vogelgesang, 2002; Welling, 2003). Different modes of utilisation, that structure the internet as a social space are primarily a specific contextualisation of the latter - and thus, the opportunities and constraints in virtual world of the internet are not less than those in the 'real world' related to unequal distribu-tions of material, social and cultural resources as well as social embeddings of the actors involved. This fact of inequality is also true regarding the outcomes of using the internet. Empirical and theoretical results concerning forms and processes of networking and commu-nity building - i.e. sociability in the internet, as well as the social embeddings of the users which are mediated through the internet - suggest that net based communication and infor-mation processes may entail the resource 'social support'. Thus, with reference to social work and the task of compensating the reproduction of social disadvantages - whether they are medial or not - the ways in which teenagers get access to and utilize net based social sup-port are to be analysed.

Welfare Lobby Groups responding to Globalisation: A Comparison of the Australian Council of Social Service (ACOSS) and the UK Child Poverty Action Group (CPAG)

The past decade has witnessed a period of intense economic globalisation. The growing significance of international trade, investment, production and financial flows appears to be curtailing the autonomy of individual nation states. In particular, globalisation appears to be encouraging, if not demanding, a decline in social spending and standards. However, many authors believe that this thesis ignores the continued impact of national political and ideological pressures and lobby groups on policy outcomes. In particular, it has been argued that national welfare consumer and provider groups remain influential defenders of the welfare state. For example, US aged care groups are considered to be particularly effective defenders of social security pensions. According to this argument, governments engaged in welfare retrenchment may experience considerable electoral backlash (Pierson 1996; Mishra 1999). Yet, it is also noted that governments can take action to reduce the impact of such groups by reducing their funding, and their access to policy-making and consultation processes. These actions are then justified on the basis of removing potential obstacles to economic competitiveness (Pierson 1994; Melville 1999).

Market, Management and Profession. Social Business in the Polder

In a recent policy document of the organized employers in the care and welfare sector in The Netherlands (the MO Group), directors and board members of care and welfare institutions present themselves as "social entrepreneurs", managing their institutions as look-a like commercial companies. They are hardly criticized and there is not any countervailing power of significance. The workers are focusing on their own specialized professional fields and divided as a whole. Many government officials are in favour or do not bother. The relatively small number of intellectual workers in Dutch care and welfare are fragmented and pragmatic. From a democratic point of view this is a worrying situation. From a professional point of view the purpose and functions of professional care and welfare work are at stake. The penetration of market mechanisms and the take-over by commercially orientated managers result from unquestioned adaptation of Anglo-Saxon policy in The Netherlands in the 1990's, following the crisis of the Welfare State in the late 1980's. The polder country is now confronted fully with the pressure and negative effects of unbalanced powers in the institutions, i.e. Managerialism. After years of silence, the two principal authentic critics of Dutch care and welfare, Harry Kunneman and Andries Baart, are no longer voices crying in the wilderness, but are getting a response from a growing number of worried workers and intellectuals. Kunneman and Baart warn against the restriction of professional space and the loss of normative values and standards in the profession. They are right. It is high time to make room for criticism and to start a debate about the future of the social professions in The Netherlands, better: in Europe. Research, discussion and action have to prove how worrying the everyday situation of professional workers is, what goals have to be set and what strategy to be chosen.

Resisting Postmodernity: Swedish social policy in the 1990s

The purpose of this paper is to introduce ideas that have emerged during the course of writing a book on Swedish welfare in the 1990s. The book is the result of many years of writing about two subjects: Swedish drug policy and the Swedish welfare state. The one very specialised, the other, more general. I first became interested in Swedish drug policy on a research visit to Örebro Län in 1986. A social worker showed me a copy of the county's drug policy programme and explained the significance of the 'restrictive line'. I have spent the years since that visit, trying to understand and explain the Swedish goal of a drug-free society (Gould 1988, 1994, 1996b). I only began to write about the welfare state in Sweden in the early 1990s, just as things were beginning to go wrong for the economy (Gould 1993a, 1993b, 1996a, 1999). For the last few years I have intended to write a book on the events covered by the period 1991-1998 - the years of a Bourgeois and a Social Democratic Government -which would bring the two halves of my work together. Material for this study has been accumulated over many years. A number of research visits have been made; large numbers of academics, politicians, civil servants, journalists, unemployed people, social workers and their clients have been interviewed; and extensive use has been made of academic, administrative and public libraries. Since September 1991 I have systematically collected articles from Dagens Nyheter about social services, social insurance, health care, employment, social issues and problems, the economy and politics. The journal Riksdag och Departement (Parliament and Ministry), which summarises a wide range of public documents, has been invaluable. Friends and informal contacts have also given me insights into the Swedish way of life. The new book is based upon all of these experiences. This paper will begin with a brief account of major global social and economic changes that have occurred in the last twenty years. This is intended to provide a background to the more recent changes that have occurred in Swedish society in the last decade. It will be suggested that the changes in Sweden, particularly in the field of welfare, have been less severe than elsewhere and that this is due to political, institutional and cultural resistance. The paper will conclude by arguing that Sweden, as an exemplar of an Apollonian modern society, has had much to fear from the Dionysian characteristics of postmodernity.

Decentralisation and Social Services in England

Although Great Britain is not normally credited with the achievement of having been the first nation state to implement measures characteristic of a welfare state (this honour goes to Germany and Bismarck's strategy of promoting social insurance in the 1880s) it nevertheless pioneered many models of welfare services in view of the early onset of industrialisation in that country and the subsequent social problems it created. Organisations like the Mutual Insurance and Friendly Societies, the Charity Organisation Society or the Settlement Movement characterised an early approach to welfare that is based on initiatives at the civil society level and express a sense of self-help or of self-organisation in such a way that it did not involve the state directly. The state, traditionally, dealt with matters of discipline and public order, and for this reason institutions like prisons and workhouses represented the other end of the scale of 'welfare' provisions.

Youth Work and Schools in ‘Full-day’ education systems: International Comparison of Links between Formal and Non-formal Education

In this article I will outline the methodological approach of a non-empirical comparative research project which I began in 2003. The project is situated in the context of the research training group “Youth Welfare in Transition” at the universities of Bielefeld and Dortmund, funded by the German Research Council (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft). In that context I have organised an international conference about the modes of cooperation between school and youth work agencies with colleagues from Canada, France, Finland, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Russia, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, the United States, Israel, and Germany. Meeting in Bielefeld from the 9th to the 11th of October 2003, we compared the respective national arrangements of formal and non-formal education (www.uni-bielefeld.de/paedagogik/agn/ag8/Ganztagsbildung.html). This note is based on the scheme of comparison which was given to the contributors in order to help them preparing their presentations. At the moment the scheme is nearing completed with significant data prepared by the contributors/authors (see Otto/Coelen 2004), supplemented with data from research works published in German and English. The next step will be to set up an empirical project about the relationships between schools and youth work agencies in three European countries (probably France, Finland and the Netherlands).

Acerca del trabajo social y la antimodernidad

En los últimos tiempos, distintos docentes de Carreras de Trabajo Social de varias Universidades Nacionales, nos consultaron e indujeron -a la vez- a opinar acerca de los orígenes de nuestra profesión y, en particular, sobre su relación con la llamada modernidad. La inquietud de estos y estas colegas estaba originada en la caracterización (que ellos no compartían) realizada por Gustavo Parra, quien afirma que el Trabajo Social en la Argentina surgió con un carácter antimoderno y conservador. Este posicionamiento de Parra está planteado en su libro "Antimodernidad y Trabajo Social", publicado originalmente por la Universidad Nacional de Luján, en 1999. En ese mismo año, participamos de la presentación del libro, llevada a cabo en la Capital Federal, acerca de lo cual reproduciremos, al final de la presente nota, el contenido textual de nuestra intervención en dicha oportunidad, con el ánimo de contribuir a procesar distintos puntos de vista relacionados con esta importante temática de la historia de la profesión. Previo a ello, igualmente plantearemos algunas breves consideraciones, dejando para otra ocasión el análisis más particularizado de esta cuestión. Nuestras opiniones están fundamentadas, básicamente, en la investigación que llevamos a cabo en el año 1977, y cuyos resultados fueron publicados en 1978 por el Centro Latinoamericano de Trabajo Social (CELATS), con sede en Lima, Perú, bajo el título "Antecedentes del Trabajo Social en Argentina (Primera Aproximación)". La cuarta edición de este libro fue publicada por Espacio Editorial de Buenos Aires, en 1992, con el título "Historia del Trabajo Social en la Argentina".

Workfare Work: The Impact of Workfare on the Worker/Client Relationship

This article details the American experience of welfare reform, and specifically its experience instituting workfare programs for participants. In the United States, the term "welfare" is most commonly used to refer to the program for single mothers and their families, formerly called Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) and now, Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF). In 1996, politicians "ended welfare as we know it" by fundamentally changing this program with the passage of the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 (PRWORA). The principal focus of the 1996 reform is mandatory work requirements enforced by sanctions and strict time limits on welfare receipt. While PRWORA's emphasis on work is not new, the difference is its significant ideological and policy commitment to employment, enforced by time limits. When welfare reform was enacted, some of its proponents recognized that welfare offices would have to change in order to develop individualized workfare plans, monitor progress, and impose sanctions. The "culture" of welfare offices had to be changed from being solely concerned with eligibility and compliance to individual, intensive casework. In this article, I will discuss how implementing workfare programs have influenced the relationship between clients and their workers at the welfare office. I start by describing the burdens faced by offices even before the enactment of welfare reform. Local welfare offices were expected to run programs that emphasized compliance and eligibility at the same time as workfare programs, which require intensive, personal case management. The next section of the paper will focus on strategies welfare offices and workers use to navigate these contradictory expectations. Lastly, I will present information on how clients react to workfare programs and some reasons they acquiesce to workfare contracts despite their unmet needs. I conclude with recommendations of how to make workfare truly work for welfare clients.

Differences in Internet Usage - Social Inequality and Informal Education

In the public debate the internet is regarded as a central resource for knowledge and information. Associated with this is the idea that everyone is able and even expected to serve himself or herself according to his or her own needs via this medium. Since more and more services are also delivered online the internet seems to allow its users to enjoy specific advantages in dealing with their everyday life. However, using the internet is based on a range of preconditions. New results of empirical and theoretical research indicate the rise of a social divide in this context. Within the internet, different ways of use can be identified alongside social inequalities. Boundaries of the "real life" are mirrored in the virtual space e.g. in terms of forms of communification and spaces for appropriation. These are not only shaped by invidual preferences but particularly by social structures and processes. In the context of the broader debate on education it is stated that formal educational structures are to be completed by arrangements which are structured in informal respectively nonformal ways. Particularly the internet is suggested to play an important role in this respect. However, the phenomenon of digital inequality points to limitations consolidated by effects of economic, social, and cultural ressources: Economical resources affect opportunities of access, priorities of everyday life shape respective intentions of internet use, social relationships have an impact on the support structures available and ways of appropriation reproduce a specific understanding of informal education ("informelle Bildung"). This produces an early stratification of opportunities especially for the subsequent generation and may lead to extensive inequalities regarding the distribution of advantages in terms of education. Thus the capacity of the virtual space in terms of participatory opportunities and democratic potentials raises concerns of major relevance with respect to social and educational policy. From the perspective of different disciplines involved in these issues it is essential to clarify this question in an empirical as well as in a theoretical way and to make it utilizable for a future-orientied practice. This article discusses central questions regarding young people's internet use and its implications for informal education and social service delivery on the basis of empirical findings. It introduces a methodological approach for this particular perspective and illustrates that the phenomena of digital divide and digital inequality are as much created by social processes as by technical issues.