Sustainable Family Life and Child Welfare: A Conceptual Framework

Abstract

Although there have been developments in family and child welfare services, these have not been prioritized from a sustainability perspective. This article aims to provide a framework for supporting sustainable provisions for family and child welfare. We demonstrate how the need for a socially sustainable stance on family and child welfare arises from the recognition of global changes that constantly influence families as well as children’s rights, which ground child- and family-centered actions. The conceptual framework includes three overarching dimensions and four levels of actors that provide a body for 16 conceptual entities in providing socially sustainable family and child welfare. The analysis showed that functional child welfare and family policies, systems, and practices appear essential elements, even necessary preconditions, of sustainability and sustainable development in general. Leaning on the concept of children’s rights, we conclude that the idea of child welfare promises citizens that society has committed to promoting all children’s wellbeing. Implementation of this requires a shared understanding that the conceptual framework provided in this paper urges to actualize.

Considering Family and Child Welfare in Lithuania in Terms of Social Sustainability Pursuant to Observations of Everyday Professional Practice

“…The observations by child welfare professional actors of their everyday professional practice offered an analytical standpoint for creating an initial broad picture of the child welfare system in Lithuania. The substantial provisions of child rights, such as protection, provision, and participation, have been included, following the proposed framework by Hämäläinen et al [8]. Child rights such as the child's best interests, accessibility to services, the right to be heard, protection against violence, child identity, development assurance, and so forth were included in the data collection instrument.…”

“…Empowerment of parents and the assessment of parenting risk and needs were accentuated as the prevalent features of the mode of intervention. From a social sustainability perspective, the empowerment of children is seen as an ambition [8]. Meanwhile, the empowerment of parents is an attribute of a family services orientation and is characterized by a "therapeutic response to a family's needs, in which the initial focus involved the assessment of need" [2] (p. 3).…”

“…In this paper, we aim to link the concept of child welfare used by Gilbert et al [2] with the concept of social sustainability to discuss child rights as a bridge between child welfare and social sustainability concepts. Concerning the social sustainability concept, we refer to the concept of Hämäläinen, Pihlainen, and Vornanen that "social sustainability can be linked to the alleviation of poverty and promoting participation, inclusion, cultural identity, institutional stability, and social cohesion" (p. 2), and also that "child welfare is an essential element of sustainable social development, even sustainable development in general" [8] (p. 15). In our paper, we adhere to the authors' idea that "social sustainability ultimately refers to recognizing the children's rights" [8] (p. 15).…”

“…The analysis provides meaningful empirical grounds for a link between the social sustainability of child and family welfare policy and practice in Lithuania. Our discussion provides input for research "on child protection systems and child and family policy promoting social sustainability" [8] (p. 15) that considers the national context. Schoch et al noted that the development of sustainable child protection "provides effective support for children and parents, guaranteeing their integrity by allowing for the interaction of mutual recognition and making sufficient information available to the persons concerned for full participation in the child protection system" [10] (p. 15).…”

The Digital Exclusion of Vulnerable Children: Challenge for Sustainability Issues in Czech Social Work Practice

“…Based on the cost-benefit analysis, it turns out that, for evaluation of the financial impacts of the implementation of experimental verification (focused on the use of ICT in SAS), it would be desirable to further monitor the school achievements of the involved children or their social resilience, the family living trajectory, and their parents' employment. According to Hämäläinen, Pihlainen, and Vornanen, the changing social structures and social situations of families with children in working life, education, and digitalization are not discussed in terms of social sustainability [64], which opens up further space for social scientists dealing with digitalization of social work. For SAS, it would be desirable to model a simulation of the costs of using ICT in social work interventions (with an emphasis on the time aspect) and to compare this with the baseline.…”