The research group “Social Inequality, Class, and Child Welfare” focuses on the societal context of child welfare and how social structures, inequality, and power relations influence the design and practice of child welfare services. We understand child welfare in a broad sense—not only as the work of child welfare services, but as a wider societal responsibility for children's upbringing and well-being.
Child welfare services wield significant formal power, and social inequality and class-related factors can affect who receives help, how families' challenges are understood, and what interventions are implemented. Social inequality and class also influence which groups are most frequently reported to the services and which groups rarely come into contact with child welfare. This raises questions about structural mechanisms that maintain and reinforce inequality in society, as well as about the role, function, and legitimacy of child welfare.
There is a persistent and clear connection between socioeconomic conditions and families’ contact with child welfare services. Research shows that families’ experiences with child welfare and decision-making processes are also linked to their social class affiliation (Kojan & Storhaug, 2021). Despite strong political emphasis on early intervention and prevention in Norwegian welfare policy, there is limited research-based knowledge about the effects of child welfare interventions in relation to social inequality and class background. A lack of knowledge may lead to unintended consequences of these interventions.
Key questions for the research group include how social inequality and class-related power relations are reflected in child welfare assessments and decisions, and how factors such as cultural, economic, and social capital influence children's life chances and family care environments. We also examine how child welfare services understand and interact with different social groups, and what this can tell us about societal dynamics.
The research group is based on a broad understanding of social inequality and class, and applies both class theories and an intersectional perspective. This means that social class is analyzed in interaction with other inequality-producing categories such as family structure, gender, ethnic minority background, and functional capacity, in order to gain a holistic understanding of how inequality is created and maintained.