In this thesis, I study the effects of the National School Nutrition Programme (NSNP) on the rural areas of Western Cape, South Africa. More precisely I try to find out how the NSNP has affected the families in this rural area and what attitudes that can be found among the two generations of people living and working on wine farms. The reason for this investigation is that NSNP was set up to increase school attendance among children living in an exposed socioeconomic environment, and I wanted to see how much the NSNP affect people’s daily life, with focus on the ones living on/near wine farms in the more rural areas in Western Cape since these areas holds socioeconomic groups that are exposed in the society.  To answer the research questions, I conducted several interviews with both wine farm workers and pupils living on/near a wine farm. But oral history is more than a method! I wanted to look upon the history from a grassroots perspective with a special focus on the working class, ethnic minorities and women´s part in the history.  My theory is based upon the terms Welfare and Social inequality. These two perspectives describe access to labor market, poverty, education and income support. These aspects highlight different forms of social exclusion which wine farm workers and pupils living on/near wine farm lives in.  With these methods I found out that the NSNP plays a crucial part in the lives of those who lives in the rural areas of Western Cape. Many pupils go to school just because their parents want it due to lack of food at home. The government’s purpose of the NSNP, to increase the school attendance can be seen in the answers giving to me during interviews with wine farm workers.

Dissertation explores the structure and level of financial support addressed to families with children in the Czech Republic and 19 other European countries as of December 2008. Attention is paid primarily to the "new" European countries, i.e. the region of Central and Eastern Europe (CEE). Through analysis of tax-benefit system this study examines where the Czech Republic stands in respect of family support within the European context and assesses which European policy is most similar to the Czech model of financial family support. There are two main parts. First one introduces the welfare state and family policy typologies and theories. Second one uses the model family method to answer the following questions: Which kind of family composition benefits most from the state support? Does the Czech tax- benefit system prioritize the traditional male-breadwinner family or does it encourage the dual-earner model? What is the position of Czech lone-parent families in comparison to other European countries? Is the Czech family policy aimed at the same types of family with children as is the Slovakian family policy or any other state policy in CEE? Are these two countries still following the same trend in respect to the financial family support? And where do the new European countries fit within the existing...

The aim of this thesis was to investigate the primary school principals' experiences and perceptions regarding the work to manage child poverty. Semi-structured qualitative interviews were conducted by meaningful selection of four principals at municipal primary schools. A conventional content analysis was performed to identify codes and categories in the data. Four main categories were identified. The results were presented on the basis of the main categories: The concept of child poverty and awareness of child poverty, Cooperation and engagement, School governance and responsibility, and The compensatory assignment. The work to manage child poverty perceived to be directly linked to the school's compensatory assignment, but there were differences in how the assignment was comprehended. At the schools where the compensatory assignment led to increased equality, rules and regulations had been introduced by the municipality and the principal. Which shows that child poverty has to be recognized, the term must be established and communal strategies and policies has to be adopted to prevent poverty from having a negative impact on children's and adolescent's schooling.

The aim of this study was to examine how teachers and leisure staff experience that differences in financial conditions among students in preschool class and grades 1-6 are expressed in school as well as how differences in financial conditions affect the students’ social interactions. The ambition was to reach a greater understanding of how children are affected early on by living in poorer financial conditions than other children. The study was conducted through six qualitative, semi-structured interviews with teachers and leisure staff. Five themes were identified in the interviews: concrete examples of differences in financial conditions that are visible in school, difficulties in identifying and talking about financial difficulties, groups that are perceived as particularly vulnerable to financial difficulties, social groupings among children and shame. These themes as well as the theory of stigma by Erving Goffman were used to analyze the results. The results show that teachers and leisure staff see several signs that indicate differences in financial conditions among the students. The students can however be good at hiding their family’s financial situation which makes it difficult to identify financial difficulties among students. Some teachers and leisure staff described children of immigrant parents, children of single mothers and children of divorced parents as particularly vulnerable to financial difficulties. The results also show that teachers and leisure staff experience that differences in financial conditions indirectly affect the students’ social interactions and groupings. The students are aware of their own and others' financial situation which can both divide and unite them.

The purpose of the study was to examine how different welfare actors perceive and work with child poverty in Söderhamn. Through a qualitative approach, empirical data was collected from semi-structured interviews with social workers and representatives from voluntary organizations. The empirical data was analyzed through thematic analysis. The theoretical starting points of the study were system theory and theories on social exclusion. The results showed that child poverty is expressed in Söderhamn on individual, group and society level, the children are socio-economically, physically and mentally affected. All informants agreed that there are both structural and local causes of child poverty in Söderhamn: closures of large companies, few jobs, migration of refugees and lack of integration. The challenges of child poverty in Söderhamn were comprehended employment, integration and lack of collaboration with other welfare actors. The opportunities highlighted were free time activities and employment for the parants.

The purpose of this study is to study how social workers experience their work with the children's perspective within financial assistance. A qualitative methodological approach has been applied with the aim of collecting empirical data through semi-structured interviews with four social workes in financial assistance. The data collection has in turn been analyzed based on previous research on the subject and Michael Lipsky's theory of street-level bureaucrats and their discretion. The study gives an indication that social workers see the importance of, and have the will to apply a child perspective in their work, but the conditions are not optimal. The results of the study show that factors such as high workload in the form of lack of time, high number of cases and unclear guidelines are the main limitations in the application of the child perspective and thus in the assessments of the best interests of the child.

Children whose families live in economic hardship tend not to participate in social activitiesthat involve money. Economically disadvantaged children are described as those who, due toinsufficient financial resources, have difficulty living a life similar to other children in thesame community. Social workers are legally obligated to specifically consider the bestinterests of the child in measures concerning children and to use both the Social Services Actand the Convention on the Rights of the Child in their decisions. Thus, a social worker isobliged to consider the child's rights, the child's perspective, and the child's best interests intheir work. The purpose of this study is to investigate how social workers in financial aid usetheir discretion to protect children's rights in accordance with the four core principles of theConvention on the Rights of the Child. The study employs a qualitative method withsemi-structured interviews to obtain the perceptions of two different professional groups onwhether social workers in financial aid are considered to uphold the four core principles ofthe Convention on the Rights of the Child and whether they believe that social workers usetheir discretion sufficiently to consider children's rights. The collected empirical material wasthen analyzed in various themes connected with previous research and Lipsky's theories ondiscretion and street-level bureaucracy. Research indicates that social workers in financial aidfail to use their discretion to protect the child's rights and to uphold the four core principles ofthe Convention on the Rights of the Child. The study revealed results indicating that socialworkers' decisions regarding children can be influenced by the organization's management, asenior social worker, lack of knowledge, ambiguities in guidelines within the organization,and the absence of child participation in decisions affecting them. Furthermore, it was foundthat social workers' individualized assessments and priorities were crucial in how they choseto use their own discretion. With more opportunities for education on the child's perspectiveand child rights and a developing practice on how children's rights should be considered andapplied in financial aid work, social workers can help prevent more children from becomingvulnerable and experiencing the consequences of such vulnerability. / Barn vars familjer lever i ekonomisk utsatthet tenderar att inte delta i sociala aktiviteter sominkluderar pengar. Ekonomiskt utsatta barn beskrivs vara barn med anledning av otillräckligaekonomiska resurser och har därmed svårigheter med att leva ett likadant liv likt andra barnsom lever i samma samhälle. Socialsekreterare har en skyldighet enligt lag att särskilt beaktabarnets bästa vid åtgärder som rör barn och använda sig av både socialtjänstlagen ochbarnkonventionen vid beslut. En socialsekreterare har därmed skyldighet att beakta barnetsrättigheter, beakta barnperspektivet samt barnets bästa i arbetet. Studiens syfte är attundersöka hur socialsekreterare inom ekonomiskt bistånd använder sitt handlingsutrymme föratt tillvara barnens rättigheter i enlighet med Barnkonventionens fyra grundprinciper. Studienanvänder sig av en kvalitativ metod med semistrukturerade intervjuer för att få de två olikayrkesgruppers uppfattningar om socialsekreterare inom ekonomiskt bistånd anses leva upp tillbarnkonventionens fyra grundprinciper samt om de anser att socialsekreterare använder sitthandlingsutrymme tillräckligt för att ta hänsyn till barnens rättigheter. Det insamladeempiriska materialet analyserades sedan i olika teman som anknöts med tidigare forskningoch Lipskys teorier om handlingsutrymme och teori om gräsrotsbyråkrater. Undersökningarpekar på att socialsekreterare inom ekonomiskt bistånd brister i sitt arbete att använda sitthandlingsutrymme för att tillvarata barnets rättigheter samt leva upp till barnkonventionensfyra grundprinciper. Studien fick fram ett resultat som pekade på att socialsekreterarensbeslut rörande barn kan påverkas av organisationens ledning, en förste socialsekreterare,kunskapsbrist, otydligheter i riktlinjer i verksamheten samt inte har barn delaktiga i beslutsom rör dem. Det framkom dessutom att socialsekreterarnas individanpassade prövningar ochprioriteringar var avgörande för hur de väljer att använda sig av sitt handlingsutrymme. Medfler möjligheter till utbildning inom barnperspektivet och barnets rättigheter och enutvecklande verksamhet om hur barns rättigheter ska beaktas och tillämpas i arbetet inomekonomiskt bistånd kan socialsekreterare bidra till att hindra flera barn att bli utsatta och attuppleva konsekvenserna av vad utsattheten för med sig.

This research project seeks to gauge the autonomous power of the European Commission within the Open Method of Coordination (OMC), a new mode of governance coined at the Lisbon European Council in March 2000 and based on the principle of the voluntary cooperation of Member States. Two cases form the basis of this inquiry, namely, quality in work, a policy issue addressed under the banner of the European Employment Strategy, and child poverty and social exclusion, a key item on the agenda of the OMC for Social Inclusion. A primary impetus at the heart of this project is one of ontological pluralism. Rejecting a zero-sum interpretation of the rationalist/constructivist debate, this study constitutes a plea for a conversation across paradigms. The domain-of-application model employed here works by preserving the integrity of individual theories while specifying a particular scope condition under which constructivist and rationalist insights are likely to prevail. Selecting two cases on the basis of the critical scope condition of issue sensitivity, a central postulate informing this integrative research design is that high issue sensitivity (quality in work) invites strategic interaction among pre-constituted social actors driven by a behavioural logic of utility-maximization, while low issue sensitivity (child poverty and social exclusion) allows for a fundamentally norm-guided behaviour. Concretely, in effecting this theoretical dialogue, two sets of causal hypotheses are examined. On the one hand, rational choice institutionalism (principal-agent theory) offers a number of suppositions about the Commission’s institutional power, that is, its ability to transform the conditions of action of self-seeking national governments. On the other hand, sociological institutionalism conceptualizes the Commission’s productive power (i.e. its power to constitute the interests and identities of individual agents) through the lens of discourse analysis. Testing theoretical predictions against collected data makes plain the superior explanatory value of independent variables and causal mechanisms of rationalist lineage in capturing the essence of the Commission’s autonomous power in the case of quality in work and the congruity of sociological institutionalism’s original conjectures in the area of child poverty and social exclusion. Crucially, this strict correspondence corroborates the pertinence of the critical scope condition of issue sensitivity in delineating the explanatory ambit of both theories and attests to the co-existence of different forms of autonomous power wielded by the Commission within the framework of the OMC.

Die Wahrnehmung der Kinderarmut in Kamerunischen Familien in Berlin Laut Professor Thomas Pogge ist die Armut eine Frage der Gerechtigkeit. So stellt Kinderarmut ein mehrdimensionales Phänomen dar. Aber die Kinderarmut wird in der kamerunischen Kultur nicht wahrgenommen, denn das Kind ist ein Symbol des Reichtums für kamerunische Familien, und die kamerunische Eltern in Berlin versuchen ihre Kinder durch ihre afrikanischen Netzwerke mit ihren eigenen kulturellen Werten großzuziehen. Durch ein Empirisches Vorgehen sind vier kamerunischen Familien in Berlin untersucht worden, und es hat sich erwiesen, dass die untersuchten Eltern in Berlin sich nicht vorstellen konnten, dass eine Kinderreiche Familie in Armutsgefahr sich verrät. Je mehr Kinder man hat, umso reicher fühlt man sich. Kamerunische Sprachen sind untersucht worden, mit dem Beschluss, dass der Begriff „Kinderarmut“ existiert in keinen von den untersuchten Sprachen. Der kamerunische Autor Simplice Kitleur Lekoumo argumentiert in 2007, dass die Armut des Haushalts mit der Armut jedes einzelnen Kindes nichts zu tun hat. Die Eltern können Beispielweise materiell arm sein, aber durch die Solidarität zwischen Familienmitglieder können die Kinder eine Ausbildung bekommen. Diese Denkweise wird von kamerunischen Familien in Berlin auch so erlebt und sie bekommen auch wesentlich mehr Kinder im Vergleich von deutschen Verhältnisse. Die Ergebnisse dieser Untersuchung haben auch festgestellt, dass die Kinder eine ganz andere Wahrnehmung der Armut haben als ihre Eltern, und dies prägt ihre „Capabilities“ unterschiedlich. Die Kraft und die Motivation, um von ihrem Leben das Beste daraus zu machen, die diese Kinder von zu Hause gut gebrauchen können, haben sie meistens durch ihre verschiedenen Freundschaften in Berlin und dadurch entwickeln sie sonderliche Fähigkeiten wie hervorragende deutsche Sprachkenntnisse, und sehr gute soziale Netzwerke. / Why should the perception of child poverty in Cameroonian families in Germany be analysed? This is a question we had to deal with all through this research phase. Why does it matter to take time trying to understand how Cameroonian people perceive child poverty and how it can impacts the Capabilities of their children in the German setting? Although the concept of poverty may seem obvious, experiencing it is a different story because of the way people perceive it. An interesting point in Cameroonian families in Berlin is that the concept of child poverty does not exist in their cultural background based on their languages. This is because children are viewed as their wealth. This study is an investigation of the Cameroonian perception of child poverty in Berlin and the application of the Capability Approach on it. The aim is to find out according to this, the future life opportunities of children with Cameroonian background in Germany. The concern in this study is to give this particular migrant group in Berlin the opportunity to express themselves on their opinion of child poverty in connection to opportunities their children are likely to have for their future in Germany. The choice of the perception of child poverty in Cameroonian households in Berlin is guided by several factors. First of all, Cameroonian migrants in Berlin leave their home country for the long term to a better life in Germany. It is therefore interesting to analyse their perception of child poverty in the new life setting. The second step is to analyse and establish if their particular perception of child poverty impacts their children´s capabilities. Thirdly, the German population is ageing and reproducing less children than before, meaning that children with migrant background will play a central role in the future German society.

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