International obligations articulated in human rights standards are not fully met in the majority of Member States. A more complete understanding of the differing policies might be obtained by considering the relationship between the formal and informal economy, as well as the role of human rights standards within the current 'moral economy'.

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Children’s right to involvement in practices that address their well-being is frequently highlighted, yet how children exercise involvement in face-to-face encounters has remained fairly unknown. To fulfil our aim of identifying, describing and defining children’s involvement, we conducted an inductive microanalysis of face-to-face dialogue on audiovisual recordings of naturally occurring therapy sessions with children attending social services departments and mental health clinics. The resulting operationalisation generated six dimensions of children’s involvement: participatory, directive, positional, emotional, agentive and narrative. By operationalising how children exercise involvement, we render the abstract concept more amenable to fine-grained analysis, systematic evaluation and criticism. The domains also offer tools to recognise children’s involvement in practice. Lastly, the article discusses practical implications and presents a compass for orientation. Since many conversational elements in institutional talks are generic, the dimensions are potentially transferable to other settings, including school counselling, child protection investigation and clinical psychology. A high inter-analyst agreement, together with similar findings on utterance functions and interactional dominance in other types of dialogues, also enhance the dimensions’ transferability.

The Nordic states have extensive welfare systems in which the local social services are an important component. Despite a growing research on societal disaster resilience, we lack research examining in systematic way whether and how local social services in the Nordic countries contribute to such resilience. Aiming to fill this gap, this article asks whether we can identify a common Nordic model of the role of local social services in disasters, or whether the countries have taken different paths.We use policy documents and legislation to examine the extent to which roles for local social services are embedded in the disaster management systems of the five Nordic countries. We analyze the institutional organization in each country, as well as the models of social services related to disasters from a comparative perspective. We find that the Nordic countries have chosen quite different paths regarding local social services' role in disaster management. A general conclusion is that the governments of the five countries ought to strengthen the position of local social services within the disaster management system as a way to enhance disaster resilience in the Nordic countries as a whole.

The aim of this study is to contribute to knowledge as regard the relationship between the social services and the public system for crisis preparedness as seen from the perspective of social services staff with direct contact with clients and/or first-line leaders. Empirically the study concerns the staff’s experience of severe events and of activities and processes pertaining to crisis preparedness, such as risk and vulnerability analysis, education and exercises. Further, it concerns staff’s valua- tion of major risks and of crisis preparedness as an area of operation. The material was obtained with a web based questionnaire (N=1020) with closed and open questions and with room for free text. The material was analysed in terms of frequencies and subjected to open qualitative coding. The results suggests that the staff are not involved in the activities and processes of crisis prepared- ness to a significant extent, although they seem to be motivated. They do not seem to have been given opportunities to develop an understanding of crisis preparedness and how it affects social services. They also seem to have a composite understanding of central concepts in the area of crisis preparedness such as crisis, extraordinary events, risk and vulnerability. Their understanding seems to be underpinned by considerations involving intersubjective dimensions of security. It is concluded that it would be beneficial for the system of crisis preparedness if the social servi- ces were systematically involved and differing notions of central concepts were clarified. Further, given an acknowledgement of the role of intersubjective dimensions of security the social services could contribute perspectives informed by their close contacts with users and the general popula- tion as regards risks, vulnerability and consequences of crisis and disasters. It is argued that this would contribute qualitatively to crisis preparedness as an area of operation.