This study explores the impact of having a child with a disability in Saudi Arabia, with a focus on the challenges involved and the implications for the development of relevant family support services. A qualitative approach was employed for the study, using individual interviews and focus groups, with a total of 42 parents, both fathers and mothers. A total of twenty individual semi-structured interviews were conducted in Riyadh, the capital of Saudi Arabia, in Jeddah, its second largest city and in two rural areas. Three focus groups were also held in each city, two of which comprised four mothers and the third three fathers. Data analysis suggests that having a child with disability often profoundly affects the perceptions of parents about disability, their feelings, and their way of life. In addition, many face particular challenges in relation to education, health care, regulations and the community. Finally, the study highlights that the current provision of services for people with disability and their families in Saudi Arabia is modest and that many parents lack awareness about the existing as well as potential services. Overall, the views of parents reflect the medical model of disability, which is also reflected in the position of Saudi Arabia as a whole, as illustrated by official policies. Religion and culture were found to be instrumental in shaping such attitudes and should therefore be factored into the design of related services. The study outcomes suggest that the development of a more inclusive approach for these children will require the perceptions of disability to change among parents and the wider society. Education on disability with regards to religious and cultural issues, supplemented by the provision of appropriate services through family support services centres, can enable the development of awareness and knowledge to better meet the rights and needs of children with disability and their families.

In 2007-08, the Mexican-American border town of Tijuana showed an unusually high density of residential care settings for children and young people, typically founded and run by members of religious congregations based in the USA. Drawing on concepts from childhood and youth studies, international development, sociology of religion and urban sociology as analytical devices, this study centralises its view on one of these care homes; while at the same time exploring the broader geographical, political, economic and social context in which the high density of care homes occurs. Recurring themes are social order and the various initiatives to establish, maintain or change it, as well as interactions between members of different social groups that are shaped by and based in misrecognitions (‘non-encounter’). The areas of originality of this study are threefold. First of all, it integrates analysis at micro and macro levels. At the micro level it explores the institutional set up, staffing arrangements and the experiences of children and young people within the institution. Structures and mechanisms of governance, daily life in the institution and the social meanings ordering it are examined; allowing for a microscopic view that is embedded in a macro level analysis. The latter is concerned with recording factors such as migration into and through the border zone, the constitution of urban space that is specific to Tijuana, drug commerce and its consequences, poverty and inequality, conceptualizations of gender roles, principles of aid work, the structure of the religious field, including faith-based charitable activities taking place, and the formal and informal ramifications pertaining to the local economy. Secondly, this piece of work is a qualitative longitudinal study, employing an innovative multi-method research strategy consisting in real life and long-term online ethnography, child-led research methods, interviews and document analysis. Thirdly, the concept of the non-encounter is introduced to describe social interaction taking place under false premises. Key findings include the identification of peculiarities of the overall social and political situation, of the particular features of the urban agglomeration of Tijuana and of the religious field and the ways in which they relate to each other. Additionally, there is the insight that this unique combination is particularly conducive to the emergence and persistence of the kind of child- and youthcare under examination. The main argument is that residential child- and youthcare is a moral and political endeavour, undertaken in pursuit of specific aims and goals and informed by the norms and values of those carrying it out. Also, that residential child- and youthcare needs conditions conducive to its existence to spread and flourish. Located in time and space these vary in their specific characteristics across the different environments.

This thesis critically examines how informal child-care, performed for money, was subject to sustained scrutiny between 1867-1908. This period saw women who took children into their home in exchange for payment being subject to judicial sanction,press comment and legislative intervention. The passage of the 1908 Children Act marked the point at which all women who took in children for money were subjected to legislation for the first time. Existing scholarship on this topic has largely been confined to a small and unrepresentative sample of women who were convicted of murdering children they were paid to look after and concentrated on exploring the manner in which these women were demonised and labelled with the pejorative term 'baby-farmer.' Thisthesis makes a contribution to scholarship by demonstrating the need to study a wider range of women who took in children for money. It also shows that the template of the criminal 'baby-farmer' was only one possible representation of such women who took in children for payment. To this end, the study utilises a selection of under-analysed case files, court records and campaigning literature. The thesis has found that the term 'baby-farmer' has limited analytical value. A range of social actors told different stories, in different contexts for different purposes. As the period covered by this study drew to a close, narratives were increasingly likely to emphasise functional aspects of childcare performed for money; a shift informed by and informing changing ideas around, female employment, the role of the state, parental authority and the value of the child.

This qualitative study explores and examines how local authority Directors of Children’s Services (DCSs) experience and make sense of their professional identity as senior public leaders. Through extended in-depth interviews with fourteen DCSs from a northern region of the UK, it focuses on perceptions and representations of how they construct, reconstruct and enact their identity in everyday practice and social encounters in a turbulent, complex and often uncertain organisational and policy context. With occupational backgrounds largely in education or social work, DCSs are held ‘professionally responsible’ - under statute, for the leadership and effective delivery of children’s services through thousands of multi-disciplinary practitioners and increasing numbers of organisations they do not directly manage. They are also accountable in law for safeguarding children: implementing and monitoring institutional systems and procedures which minimise risk, while meeting demanding performance standards. As hybrid leaders, DCSs face the experience of straddling two professional identities - that of their original practitioner background and that of the senior leader-manager they have become. Despite the role being established in 2004, identity perceptions and identity work in this public sector leadership role do not appear to have been the focus of previous research. In this study, the findings are illuminative of, and illuminated by, sociological discussions of ambiguous occupational domains and insecurity in a fastmoving policy landscape; responding to questions about the precariousness of identity construction and notions of professionalism in a neo-liberal knowledge economy. Drawing on Critical Management Studies, this interpretive study is guided by a philosophy that treats the notion of identity as ‘struggle’ and as enduring and recursive processes of becoming, rather than ever arriving at a fixed identity: refracting what can be seen as a “permanent dialectic” between the self and social structures (Ybema, 2009). Reaching beyond simply telling the story, the critical interpretivist approach informing the research design interrogates new empirical data on identity perceptions of children’s services leaders in the context of agency-structure dynamics and concerns. Social Domains Theory (Layder, 1997) which is concerned with the different, yet interrelated social and structural domains that constitute social reality, is utilised as a sensitising device. Methodologically, this provides an analytic frame to reveal, connect and disrupt the rich narrative emerging from the empirical research in relation to prevailing discourses and theories of identity, emotion and professionalism which are often left unchallenged in traditional interpretivist studies and literature. The contribution of this study is three-fold. First, it offers new insights into how senior leaders experience and perceive their identity work and struggle. Here identities are shaped and reshaped along a continuum between participants’ original occupational values-base, and new discourses of the professional public manager role and its enactment in contemporary organisations. Second, the application of Social Domains Theory to aid critical interrogation of the data adds to, and advances, current understandings in identity studies. Third, the dominant narrative presented by DCSs of their everyday experiences, emotion work and leadership practices is refracted through a ‘touchstone’ of espoused child-centred values - as they bend and angle in searches for identity. This image is conceptualised in the study as a new identity construct: the Refracted Professional Leader.

The selfhood of social professionals in children’s services is under-researched, and where the primary focus is on practice ‘outcomes’. Informed by a critical social policy frame this thesis focuses on the selfhood of social professionals in children’s services to ask how it might, or might not, be possible to think, and do, self differently. I bring into play a critical posthumanist (non-sovereign) becoming self alongside, and in relation to, the other ‘allowed’ or ‘prescribed’ selves of neo-liberalism, professional practice and (critical) social policy itself. Utilising theoretical resources, in particular from Arendt, Deleuze and Guattari, and Foucault, I characterise this as thinking with both ‘surveillance’ and ‘appearance’, and self as an explicitly political project. In a post-structural frame I pursue a post-methodological rhizomatic and cartographic methodology that aims to open up proliferations in thinking and knowledge rather than foreclose it to one clear answer, and where I also draw on a small number of interviews with experienced professionals and managers in children’s services. A rhizomatic figure of thought involves irreducible and multiple relations that are imbricated on the surface; it is a flattened picture where theory, data, researcher, participants and analysis are not separate, where all connections are part of an overall picture, and in movement. I argue that social professionals occupy a deeply striated landscape for being/knowing/practising, a particular ontological grid that tethers their selfhood to the pre-existing, and to intensifications in a neo-liberal project. Here, ‘rearranging the chairs’ becomes more of the same, where the sovereign humanist subject is “a normative frame and an institutionalised practice” (Braidotti, 2013, p.30). In thinking otherwise, beyond traditional critical theory, a posthuman lens draws attention to the ways in which we might be/live both inside and outside of the already existing and where we become with others, human and non-human in shifting assemblages. However, the self prescribed and prefigured in dominant discourses constitute the historical preconditions from which experiments in self, and other possibilities may emerge. Practices of de-familiarisation, a radical, non-linear relationality, and a hermeneutics of situation are suggested as strategies for thinking forward, for appearance, and a self beyond self.

This thesis uses an ethnographic study to interrogate the policy discourse of capturing ‘child voice’ specifically in relation to a ‘looked after’ child. In recent years, attempts have been made to involve children who are ‘looked after’ in discussions and decisions about their care arrangements to ensure that their voice is heard. To ensure this happens, children ‘in care’ are asked about their care placement regularly as part of the care planning review process and their views are incorporated into decisions about their care plan. This study focuses on the lived experiences of a seven-year old female child, who I have referred to as ‘Keeva’, who is ‘in care’ under a Kinship Care arrangement. Over a period of a year, I was based in Keeva’s home one afternoon a week to gain insights about her lived experience as a ‘looked after’ child and how she represented herself. I also observed three care planning review meetings to see how her voice was captured by those charged with her care and how she was represented. I relate Keeva’s experience through seven narrative episodes to capture the rich complexity of the social world she inhabits. I explore aspects of her home and family, her interactions with others and her experience of exploring physical spaces both inside and outside the home. I suggest that these experiences underpin her sense of self and how she relates to others. Drawing on the ideas of Bourdieu, I suggest these experiences and her sense of place in the social order write themselves ‘onto her’ through her habitus and dispositions. Using a Foucauldian lens, I problematise the notion of voice as I contest that the child I observed engaged fully in the statutory processes that surround her. I suggest Keeva, a child who is ‘looked after’, will neither have nor feel she has the agentive properties to influence the care planning process. Instead, as her voice is irrevocably bound up in a bureaucratic process that is uncritically accepted as representative of her, she is obscured as a consequence. I also examine the multivocity in representations of Keeva highlighting the competing discourses of safeguarding, child protection and the ’rights-based’ agenda. I conclude that Keeva was not well represented in care planning reviews and had very little influence in decision-making about her care plan. Despite believing the opposite, those charged with her care failed to hear her or take note of what she said. Furthermore, there was an absence of criticality in representations of Keeva allowing Keeva to be constructed by those professionals involved with her care, in an unchallenged way. As a consequence she was silenced and less visible than the process itself.

Background: According to the guidance to the Children Act (1989 and 2004), ‘Working Together to Safeguard Children’ (2010; 2013), all organisations that work with children have a responsibility to protect children from maltreatment. However, previous research on child contact centres raises questions about how well this service is meeting the responsibility. This study seeks to explore in more detail how well contact centres manage their responsibility to protect children and what factors may influence them in this task. Research in the area of safety management has shown the limits of top-down guidance in achieving the desired level of practice. It provides a systems framework for studying how guidance is being implemented on the ground, including how it is interpreted by different actors in the system, and how they interact to produce the observed level of practice. Methods: Mixed methods were used to undertake a systems approach to studying the management of child protection responsibilities in contact centres. This approach aims to provide an in-depth understanding of what is happening in child contact centres, in terms of child protection, and why. Findings: Despite the introduction of reforms which aimed to improve safety in child contact centres, problematic child protection practice has persisted. It is argued that this is because common weaknesses in voluntary sector provision of human services have not been fully addressed. These weaknesses are insufficient funding, inadequate professionalization and narrow organisational focus. The findings suggest that these issues informed how actors in the system experienced and understood the practice of protecting children. The findings suggest that the safety of children in contact centres is also affected by the persistence of problematic inter-professional working. It is argued that the tools which have been introduced to address this have not been effective because they do not in themselves address the difficulties actors face in working together. There remains a lack of capacity amongst some centres and referrers who do not necessarily have the skills required to safely make and accept referrals. In addition, actors in the system experience role ambiguity. Finally, the thesis suggests that although organisations that work with children are encouraged to take account of children’s wishes and feelings in order to protect them, workers in child contact centres engaged with children in diverse ways. A typology of engagement, which was developed from the data, suggests that engagement can be conceptualised as ranging from ‘coercive’ to ‘limited’ to ‘meaningful’. The findings suggest that workers’ engagement with children was influenced not just by factors within contact centres but by individuals’ personal values and the wider family justice system, which contact centres operate in. Implications: This research suggests that in the empirical context of child contact centres, the ‘Working Together’ guidance to organisations working with children does not in itself produce predictable effects which will fulfil the guidance aims. Rather, when the guidance combines with local factors it produces unexpected effects. The meaning that actors attributed to their actions was not static. Instead, socially constructed, local rationalities influenced how actors understood and experienced the process of protecting children. The findings contribute to the growing body of research which argues that policy makers need to focus, not simply on telling organisations what do, but on enabling them to do it. In addition, the findings contribute to the systems approach literature, which suggests that safety needs to be understood within the socio-technical system that actors inhabit.

The thesis examines pay among British childcare workers from 1994 to 2008. It uses childcare as an example of female care occupations and selects the UK as a case study because in recent years childcare services have expanded substantially. As childcare provision has become increasingly formal, the issue of the rewards attached to this type of work has become more pressing. The thesis asks why childcare workers in the UK have traditionally received low pay and to what extent they continue to do so. It explores the changes in childcare policy that have taken place since the mid-1990s in order to understand whether Government’s increased commitment to childcare services has resulted in an improvement in workers’ pay. The thesis develops a multi-layered analysis. First, based on a review of policy documents and secondary sources, the thesis examines British childcare policy and identifies the challenges to higher pay in the sector. Second, the thesis investigates changes in the characteristics and pay of the childcare workforce between 1994 and 2008 by using data from the Labour Force Survey (LFS) and from the Early Years and Childcare Providers survey. Finally, cultural assumptions about caring motivations and pay are explored on the basis of data from the LFS as well as findings from interviews with childcare workers. The thesis makes three main contributions. Using a combination of quantitative and qualitative methods and a variety of information sources, it offers evidence on changes in the remuneration of British childcare workers, paying close attention to the way childcare policy, education policy and labour market institutions influence wage levels. Furthermore, drawing from the example of childcare in the UK, the thesis contributes to the wider debate on the undervaluation of women’s work by pointing to some of the institutional dynamics that account for low pay in the sector. Finally, the thesis highlights the direct labour market impact of a childcare and early education policies, thus exploring an important dimension of welfare state analysis.

Ever since the late 1950s, one of the main objectives of child protection policies in the United States has been to reduce the amount of time children spend in out-of-home care. For nearly four decades, policymakers have sought to achieve this goal primarily by providing various types of services to help children reunify with their parents more quickly. However, in recent years a new approach has emerged which emphasises the use of quantitative targets to expedite exits from care, even when this entails terminating parental rights or pursuing alternatives to family reunification such as child adoption. Since then, states have adopted very different policy approaches to promote timely exits from out-of-home care. Yet relatively few comparative studies have been undertaken to examine which approaches have yielded better outcomes. Further, the evidence base on whether some approaches may be associated with negative distortionary effects, particularly with regard to permanency outcomes, remains limited. In this research, I focus on performance-based contracting (PBC); a type of policy approach which links compensation of child welfare agencies to the achievement of specific quantitative targets. My analysis focuses on four states: two that have employed PBC to reduce the amount of time children spend in care—Illinois and North Carolina—and two that have not—New Jersey and Washington state, using multi-year, multi-state entry cohorts based on the Adoption and Foster Care Analysis and Reporting System (AFCARS). I find that PBC states recorded greater improvements in the timeliness of permanency outcomes compared to states that do not employ PBC during the period considered. I also find that compositional effects related to the race of children entering care and the type of placement setting chosen, in combination with other influences including secular trends, may play a part in shaping this outcome for particular groups. I am, however, unable to conclude whether these outcomes are the result of PBC alone or a combination of other factors, which I am not able to capture or control for with the data utilised. Further, my analysis cannot conclusively determine whether some of these outcomes might be accompanied by various distortionary effects, including “cherry picking” or other types of gaming. My research, however, does cast doubt on some of the “mechanisms” through which changes in the timeliness in permanency outcomes are achieved as well as raises the need for a more nuanced and complex theoretical framework to explain how PBC might shape the timeliness of permanency outcomes.

This thesis focuses on efforts to improve the provision of effective help to children and their families who are suffering or likely to suffer from significant harm from abuse or neglect through making better care plan decisions for them. The research evaluates the operation, process and outcomes of a recent national reform in the Israeli child protection decision making framework of Planning, Intervention and Evaluation Committees (PIECs) designed with the ambition of establishing a new way of working so that children and families will get the right help. A systems approach was undertaken as a conceptual framework in order to allow a whole-organisational understanding of what is happening in the field, and why. The research employs a qualitative method of inquiry and a case study design. The cases of 21 families brought before the PIECs were investigated and their situation was followed up after six months. Data were collected through interviews with professionals and parents, field observations of the committee meetings and document review. The key finding of the research is that there is a very limited realisation of the reform’s aims of strengthening practice and improving the safety and well-being of vulnerable children. The reform’s lack of success is explained by being ill-suited to the organisational working environment and culture. The analysis identified key systemic forces that came together to interfere with the reform having the hoped for impact across the various stages of the child protection process, including: workforce lack of skill, time, professional support, and organisational messages about practice priorities. The main conclusion of this thesis is that for good child protection work to be accomplished just drafting good reforms and telling the workforce what to do is not enough. This thesis advocates adopting systemic multi-professional working models to deliver services to children and families.