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BJSW Advance Access published online on November 3, 2009
British Journal of Social Work, doi:10.1093/bjsw/bcp124
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© The Author 2009. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of The British Association of Social Workers. All rights reserved.

A History of the Present: Uncovering Discourses in (South African) Child Welfare

Jeanette Schmid

Jeanette Schmid is a social worker with experience in South Africa, Canada and Switzerland in a variety of fields including child welfare, early childhood intervention, trauma, disability and justice. She recently completed her doctorate focused on South African child welfare. Her interests include child welfare, international social work, im/migration and social policy issues.

Correspondence to Jeanette Schmid, Wasserfallenstrasse 7a, 5417 Untersiggenthal, Aargau, Switzerland. Email: jeabry{at}gmail.com


  Abstract

Foucault's analytical methods of archaeology and genealogy reveal that South African child welfare thinking cannot be clearly divided into an apartheid and post-apartheid epoch. Rather, this history of the present identifies that a Child Protection discourse continues to dominate current child welfare legislation and policies, both at a state and an agency level, even while the language of a Developmental Social Welfare discourse is utilised. The dominance of the Child Protection discourse allows service users and service providers to be constructed in such a way that maintains the use of an intrusive, individualistic approach to child welfare that effectively overlooks the impact of structural factors on the lives of vulnerable children and their families. Archaeology and genealogy provide valuable tools for uncovering the dominant and marginalised discourses and for analyzing the circulation of power within a particular child welfare system.

Keywords: Child welfare, genealogy, developmental social welfare


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