Construction of vulnerability among frontline workers – between “the usual suspects” and the political emphasize on prevention and early detection

Abstract, 4th International Conference on Practice Research

Construction of vulnerability among frontline workers – between “the usual suspects” and the political emphasize on prevention and early detection

The objective of this paper is to discuss the construction of the term of vulnerability at different levels in a public organization in order to investigate the connection between the different conceptualizations of the term vulnerable children and young people and their impact on the political aim of reducing the social inequality and early detection of vulnerable children and young people.
A survey study including 4500 employees who directly or indirectly are professionally engaged in vulnerable children and young people – from the political administrative level, through the professional management level and to the level of the frontline workers - combined with qualitative interviews constitutes the theoretical framework of the research project.
Preliminary findings indicate that the construction of vulnerability seems to lean up against classical risk factors like socio economic background, which leads to identification of a certain and already well known group of children and young people rather than identifying vulnerable children and young people in a broader target group perspective which is the aim for a new policy focusing heavily on prevention and early detection of vulnerability.
Even though the reduction of the numbers of vulnerable children and young people have been a highly prioritized policy area for many in Denmark as well as in many European countries little change can be observed when looking a share of children and young people facing vulnerabilities. We argue that one important explanation for this is that the construction of vulnerability leads to a practice where a substantial share of the de facto vulnerable children and young people are not recognized as vulnerable and therefore not given the preventive or early help they much need.