In this article, we discuss how the flow of private information about children and families in poverty situations is managed in interorganizational networks that aim to combat child poverty. Although practices for sharing information and documentation between child and family social work services are highly encouraged and recommended to create supportive features for parents and children, this development often results in undesirable forms of governmentality. Interorganizational networking also creates controlling side effects because the exchange of information in networks of child and family services may wield a holistic power over families. We theorize this issue by using the Foucauldian concepts of the panopticon and pastoral power, which allows us to grapple with the major tension between support and control in the information‐ and documentation‐sharing practices of social workers. A critical analysis of our empirical data reveals four central fields of tension in which social workers and their organizations must position themselves: (a) craving control and handling uncertainty, (b) using and misusing private information and trust, (c) constructing families as subjects and objects of intervention, and (d) including and excluding families.

In the international realm, inter-organizational networking is perceived as a highly relevant instrument in social policy that enables welfare organizations to deal with "wicked issues." In this article, we discuss the central empirical findings acquired from a recent qualitative research project that focuses on inter-organizational networks that were formed at the local level to deal with the wicked issue of child poverty as a complex and multidimensional social problem. We explore how the network discussions about normative value orientations in four inter-organizational networks evolve, and identify three central fields of tension that illustrate the complexity for local welfare actors in and across networks to create network strategies in dealing with child poverty: (a) selective versus universal provision, (b) conditional versus unconditional strategies, and (c) instrumental versus lifeworld-oriented approaches. Our findings show that networks can function as valuable forums for collective debate and reflection, since different approaches and perspectives to tackle the problem of child poverty can be confronted with each other. Creating such a forum has the potential to challenge dominant conceptualizations and undesirable assumptions of complex social problems that are present in welfare practices and policies.

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In this contribution, we focus on the question of how social workers actually deal with the complexity of sharing private information in three local networks of social provision that aim to combat child poverty. Building on the existing body of social work research, we discuss how practices for exchanging private information are enmeshed in a field of tension between both regulation and discretion. This complexity reveals a major challenge for social workers to justify their interventions. Based on a combination of qualitative semi-structured interviews with social workers in the network and participant observation during the network meetings, we examine the strategies of discretion, considerations and potential justifications of social workers in dealing with private information. Our analysis reveals three major themes: (i) legitimacy to act, (ii) deserving versus undeserving families and (iii) powerlessness to collectively act. We conclude that a rights-based approach can be crucial as a normative value orientation and as a point of reference to enable social workers in justifying how and why they exchange private information about families in poverty situations.

In contemporary European welfare states, poverty reduction strategies can currently be characterised as individualistic rather than solidaristic, focusing on welfare recipients’ merit rather than securing their rights. Based on the findings of a recent research project in Belgium, we explore how social workers develop strategies to combat child poverty in local municipalities. Inspired by the work of the critical French scholars Robert Castel and Serge Paugam, our qualitative analysis reveals how social workers construct stereotypes, conditions and binaries between ‘deserving’ and ‘undeserving’ poor in their everyday practice. Our results elucidate how social workers strengthen processes of social disqualification when they support children and sanction parents living in poverty. Interestingly, our analysis also shows how social work takes a critical stance in relation to the recent shifts in the normative value orientation of social policy and social work.