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Soup, soap, salvation. “Developing Faith based practices in secularised societies”
Get PDFAll rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without permission.This PhD project contributes to a better understanding of Christian social “practice development” in the context of a secularised society. Social practice development here signifies activities driven by a facilitation process where the outcomes are noticeable in terms of changed behaviour in staff or volunteersʼ values and beliefs, and the study specifically focuses on congregational social practices understood as local social outreach work done by church employees and volunteers. Based on a case study of four Salvation Army congregations or corps in Norway, the study explores how local practitioners navigate the double agenda of evangelisation and support provision. The project explores how these tensions contribute to different approaches to “practice development”. On the one hand, there are highly professionalised services being delivered on behalf of the state, often keeping the expression of faith on an organisational level primarily describing the motivation for the Salvation Army (TSA) engagement in social action, rather than directly affecting actions made and services provided. On the other hand, there are corps-based social services delivering an informal and relational based assistance that are independent of external funding and where faith has a prominent position for choice of language and identity expression as well as for priorities and actions taken. This study of the TSA social outreach environment in Norway provides insights into how churches and faith-based organisations play a role in contributing to meeting social welfare needs in a secular society. Overall, the thesis reflects on the role of faith in social work. My findings show that the role of faith is more central in some actions than others undertaken by practitioners in congregational social outreach. Faith is facilitating how the practices choose to act and engage with individuals seeking support and the needs presented in the local community. On an individual level, descriptions of how practitioners feel guided by God, through prayer and reflection regarding what actions to take renders faith a central attribute for how TSA corps-based practitioners provide support. Practitioners use faith to make sense of situations they encounter by referring to Bible stories and the way Jesus related to people, explaining the way they meet and build relations to be able to provide support to individuals. The research also shows that in relation to the wider social environment (local and national authorities that are part of the welfare state), faith can limit the scope of the practices by for example hindering collaborative efforts. This is described by practitioners as resulting in a conflict of values and value expression as they collaborate with secular actors and partners. Practitioners describe how they can experience pressure to adjust their language and faith related actions to be accepted as relevant partners in secular settings. Summary This PhD project contributes to a better understanding of Christian social "practice development" in the context of a secularised society. Social practice development here signifies activities driven by a facilitation process where the outcomes are noticeable in terms of changed behaviour in staff or volunteers' values and beliefs, and the study specifically focuses on congregational social practices understood as local social outreach work done by church employees and volunteers. Based on a case study of four Salvation Army congregations or corps in Norway, the study explores how local practitioners navigate the double agenda of evangelisation and support provision. The project explores how these tensions contribute to different approaches to "practice development". On the one hand, there are highly professionalised services being delivered on behalf of the state, often keeping the expression of faith on an organisational level primarily describing the motivation for the Salvation Army (TSA) engagement in social action, rather than directly affecting actions made and services provided. On the other hand, there are corps-based social services delivering an informal and relational based assistance that are independent of external funding and where faith has a prominent position for choice of language and identity expression as well as for priorities and actions taken. This study of the TSA social outreach environment in Norway provides insights into how churches and faith-based organisations play a role in contributing to meeting social welfare needs in a secular society. Overall, the thesis reflects on the role of faith in social work. My findings show that the role of faith is more central in some actions than others undertaken by practitioners in congregational social outreach. Faith is facilitating how the practices choose to act and engage with individuals seeking support and the needs presented in the local community. On an individual level, descriptions of how practitioners feel guided by God, through prayer and reflection regarding what actions to take renders faith a central attribute for how TSA corps-based practitioners provide support. Practitioners use faith to make sense of situations they encounter by referring to Bible stories and the way Jesus related to people, explaining the way they meet and build relations to be able to provide support to individuals. The research also shows that in relation to the wider social environment (local and national authorities that are part of the welfare state), faith can limit the scope of the practices by for example hindering collaborative efforts. This is described by practitioners as resulting in a conflict of values and value expression as they collaborate with secular actors and partners. Practitioners describe how they can experience pressure to adjust their language and faith related actions to be accepted as relevant partners in secular settings. 3 4 The research methods used in this study were individual and group interviews, focus groups, participatory observation and document analysis. The analytical process started by identifying core themes in the empirical material collected during the fieldwork. Following this, I distilled my main findings, and these were analysed using elements from the “Community of Practice” (CoP) theory (Buch, 2021; Wenger, 1998, 1999,2001). Using elements from CoP theory, namely the ideas of “domain”, “community” and “practice”, I was able to describe the practicesʼ inner structures, ways of communicating and relating to each other and guests accessing the practices and how they build knowledge. The chosen elements from the CoP theory also facilitated the observations of how practitioners relate to the surrounding community and wider society. This analysis revealed faith as an inspiration to why practitioners participated in the work and as a tool used for reflection around topics and situations to further learning and to develop practice actions. Building on the manner in which TSA corps practices use faith for developing methods and attitudes as they support people in vulnerable situations, I have suggested using the diaconal conceptual framework “Vocatio- Advocatio-Provocatio” (VAP) (Nordstokke, 2021; WCC & ACT Alliance, 2020) to describe possible ways forward based on the findings in the study. The overarching research questions guiding the study, and which are discussed in the three peer reviewed journal articles produced as part of the thesis are:
“How is Christian social practice developed in a secular context?”
“How do TSA corps practitioners navigate tensions related to the double agenda of evangelisation and support provision?”
Paper I: Brooke, P. (2023). Professionalism and faith: a case study of Salvation Army congregational social work in Norway. Journal of Comparative Social Work, 18(1), 5–33. https://doi.org/10.31265/jcsw.v18i1.571
Paper II: Brooke, P. and Haugen, H. M. Anti Human Trafficking: The Salvation Army and Advocacy (To be published in Diaconia- Journal for the Study of Christian Social Practice)
Paper III: Brooke, P. and Tomalin, E. Discursive constructions of international and domestic social outreach in the Salvation Army: parallel worlds or an integrated mission? (Under review, Journal Religion and Development)publishedVersio
Minding the gaps in managers’ self-realisation: The values-based leadership discourse of a diaconal organisation
Get PDFThis article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by/ 4.0/).Work is an important source of meaning for managers in modern organisations. This article explores a leadership discourse in a diaconal organisation and aims at analysing managers’ notions of self-realisation. Based on a case study of a Norwegian diaconal hospital, the article answers the follow ing research question: What characterises managers’ self-realisation within the leadership discourse in a diaconal organisation? The findings foreground how managers emphasise individuation through pro-social values, draw on the hospital’s distinct leadership discourse when addressing dilemmas and connect values to core work. However, the managers are also marked by individualisation in that they adopt elements from a generic leadership discourse, where managerial work is a means to launch their own potential, express personal ideals and foster individual development. The article discusses how self-realisation in this diaconal organisation primarily emerges as individuation rather than individualisation, which is prominent in generic leadership discourses. These two categories of self-realisation intersect within the hospital’s predominant values-based leadership discourse.publishedVersio
TIBIR foreldrerådgivning – balansekunst mellom metodelojalitet og individuell tilpasning i møte med unike familier. En kvalitativ studie om helsesykepleieres erfaringer med TIBIR foreldrerådgivning som veiledningsverktøy
Get PDFMaster i sykepleie med kommunehelsetjenesteperspektiv, fordypning helsesykepleieDenne masteroppgaven består av to deler. Del I er en vitenskapelig artikkel og del II er en fordypningsoppgave i forskningsmetode.
Foreldreveiledning har blitt en viktig del av det forebyggende og helsefremmende arbeidet i norske kommuner over de siste tiårene. Tidlig innsats for barn i risiko (TIBIR-programmet) er et av mange veiledningsprogram som brukes i Norge i dag. Det er utviklet for bruk i primærhelsetjenesten, og TIBIR foreldrerådgivning er én av seks moduler i programmet. Denne studiens hensikt var å få innsikt i, og utvikle kunnskap om helsesykepleieres erfaringer med å bruke TIBIR foreldrerådgivning som verktøy i veiledningssituasjoner. Studien har et kvalitativt design, og det er gjennomført åtte individuelle intervjuer. Data er innhentet fra et strategisk utvalg helsesykepleiere, og analysert ved hjelp av Braun og Clarkes refleksive tematiske analyse.
Studiens funn viser at helsesykepleierne oppfatter TIBIR foreldrerådgivning som et nyttig og konkret veiledningsverktøy. Deltakerne var opptatt av programlojalitet, men beskrev samtidig at de gjorde individuelle tilpasninger for at veiledningen skulle oppfattes mest mulig nyttig for foreldrene. Deler av grensesettingsverktøyene ble problematisert, og det ble beskrevet et behov for mer fokus på å forstå og bekrefte barnets følelser samtidig som man setter grenser. Helsesykepleierne utfordres av spenningen mellom atferdsfokusert og emosjonsfokusert veiledning, og bruker sitt faglige skjønn for å balansere dette.
Fordypningsoppgaven i del II redegjør for de metodiske valgene som er tatt underveis i forskningsprosessen, fra valg av tema til ferdig skrevet masteroppgave. Ved å gi en slik detaljert redegjørelse forsøker jeg å gjøre forskningsprosessen transparent, og ved det styrke studiens troverdighet utover det som kommer frem i artikkelen i del I
Changes in work tasks and organization of general practice in Norway during the COVID-19 pandemic: results from a comparative international study
Get PDFThis article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativeco mmons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated in a credit line to the data.Background: The COVID-19 pandemic led to huge and rapid changes in general practice in Norway as in the rest of Europe. This paper aims to explore to what extent the COVID-19 pandemic changed the work tasks and organization of Norwegian general practice.
Material and method: We analysed data from the Norwegian part of the international, cross-sectional PRICOV-19 study, collecting data from general practice via an online self-reported questionnaire. We included 130 Norwegian general practices, representing an estimated 520 Norwegian general practitioners (GPs). All Norwegian GPs were invited to participate. In the analyses, we focused on items related to the use of alternatives to face-to-face consultations, changes in the workload, tasks and delegated responsibilities of both the GPs and other personnel in the GP offices, adaptations in routines related to hygiene measures, triage of patients, and how the official rules and recommendations affected the practices.
Results: There was a large and significant increase in the use of all forms of alternative consultation forms (digital text-based, video- and telephone consultations). The use of several different infection prevention measures were significantly increased, and the provision of hand sanitizer to patients increased from 29.6% pre-pandemic to 95.1% since the pandemic. More than half of the GPs (59.5%) reported that their responsibilities in the practice had increased, and 41% were happy with the task shift. 27% felt that they received adequate support from the government; however, 20% reported that guidelines from the government posed a threat to the well-being of the practice staff. We found no associations with the rurality of the practice location or size of the municipalities.
Conclusion: Norwegian GPs adapted well to the need for increased use of alternatives to face-to-face consultations and reported a high acceptance of their increased responsibilities. However, only one in four received adequate support from the government, which is an important learning point for similar situations in the future.publishedVersio
Sámi ecotheology as a resource for the church of Norway
Get PDFThis is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. The terms on which this article has been published allow the posting of the Accepted Manuscript in a repository by the author(s) or with their consent.In several church declarations dating as far back as the 1990s, it is stated that Sámi spirituality provides an important impulse for churches that want to develop ecotheology. In this article, I examine how two well-known Sámi priests, Bierna Leine Bientie and Tore Johnsen, have received this encouragement and what characterizes their ecotheological responses. By studying selected publications from these two, using established methods for the analysis of ecotheological texts, I show that they present an ecotheology that places more emphasis on building ecocentric worldviews than on promoting concrete solutions. This stands in contrast to the dominant theology in the Church of Norway, which places great emphasis on ethics in its statements. I conclude that Sámi theologians, measured against the findings in this analysis, challenge the church of Norway and other western churches to focus more on the connection between humans and other species and on the value of non-human nature in future ecotheological statements.publishedVersio
Promoting dignity in nursing education – How educators manoeuvre to promote dignity
Get PDFThis is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).Background: Dignity is a core value in nursing. One of the objectives in nursing education is to promote dignity and contribute to the students' discovery of this value. Research shows that dignity in nursing education is threatened, due to lack of attention and an increasing problem with incivility.
Purpose: The study aims to explore how nursing educators experience their contribution in promoting dignity in nursing education.
Method: Five focus group conversations were conducted with nursing educators, and Gadamer's philosophical hermeneutics was chosen as the study's scientific theoretical approach.
Findings: The educators experienced that they promoted dignity by safeguarding the dignity in the nursing profession in general, by promoting the dignity of the nursing students in particular, and through promoting dignity in challenging situations.
Conclusion: The study emphasizes the importance of promoting dignity in nursing education. It found that the nursing educators promoted dignity by safeguarding the dignity of both the nursing profession and the nursing students, and by manoeuvring judiciously between these two when there was disharmony between them. By manoeuvring challenging situations using discretion, the ethical demand will be given room. Dignity can then be fulfilled between people in harmony with professional, social and cultural norms, and in that way promote dignity in nursing education.publishedVersio
Living with chemotherapy-induced peripheral neuropathy
Get PDFAttribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)Background: The increasing number of cancer survivors means that many people are living with long-term effects after cancer treatment. Chemotherapy-induced peripheral neuropathy is a long-term effect that can impact on the life quality of those affected.
Objective: The aim of the study was to gain greater insight into what it is like to live with chemotherapy-induced peripheral neuropathy.
Method: The study has a qualitative design. We conducted semi-structured in-depth interviews with eight participants who all had symptoms of peripheral neuropathy more than a year after concluding chemotherapy treatment. The transcribed interviews were analysed using systematic text condensation. The findings of the study are discussed in the light of Antonovsky’s concept of ‘sense of coherence’.
Results: The analysis led to the overall theme of ‘A changed life’. Two main categories emerged: ‘Bodily changes’ and ‘Learning to live with it’. The subcategories showed different aspects of these. Bodily changes affected activities of daily living and life-giving activities. The factors that had a bearing on how they learned to live with the changes included adaptations of various kinds to a new normal, their attitude towards the challenges they faced and an acceptance of side effects as the price they had to pay for surviving cancer. However, they also had expectations that life would be the same as before their cancer treatment. This made it more difficult to accept that their lives had changed.
Conclusion: It is important that health personnel know about how long-term chemotherapy-induced peripheral neuropathy can impact on the daily lives of those who are affected. In order to help patients cope better with a changed way of life as a result of cancer treatment, health personnel should prepare them for the fact that life might not be the same as before.publishedVersio
Infant colic and abdominal pain; associations with infant multimorbidity and maternal perceived stress up to 3 months postpartum—A cross-sectional/cohort study in the PreventADALL study
Get PDFThis is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License, which permits use and distribution in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, the use is non-commercial and no modifications or adaptations are made.Aims and Objectives: The primary aim was to explore whether infants with pain symptoms (colic, abdominal pain and visit to healthcare provider with pain or other discomforts) had increased multimorbidity (common infections, eczema and food sensitivity) compared with infants without these conditions. Secondarily, we aimed to determine whether infant pain symptoms were associated with maternal perceived stress in pregnancy and 3 months postpartum.
Background: Infant colic and abdominal pain are common concerns in early infancy. Nevertheless, to our knowledge, little research exists on the relationship between infant pain and common infant infections, eczema and food sensitization as comorbidities, and the impact of infant pain on the development of maternal perceived stress from pregnancy to infancy is inconsistent.
Design: This study was cross-sectional and partly prospective.
Methods: The sample consisted of mother–infant pairs (N = 1852); information regarding infant pain and multimorbidity was collected from the 3-month questionnaire and postpartum visits in the PreventADALL prospective cohort study. Chi-square tests and regression analyses were conducted. The STROBE checklist was followed.
Results: Our results showed a statistically significant higher proportion of respiratory and other infections in infants with pain symptoms. The odds of infant pain were higher for infants with multimorbidity compared to those with no comorbidity. Mothers of infants with colic and of infants visiting healthcare with pain and other discomforts reported statistically significant higher perceived stress by 3 months compared with mothers of infants with no reported pain.
Conclusion: Our results indicate an association between infant pain symptoms and the presence of infections. Mothers of infants with colic and visiting healthcare had higher perceived stress compared to the no pain group.
Implications for Practice: Our study indicates that infant pain is associated with infant multimorbidity and maternal perceived stress, which may be useful when planning diagnostic, treatment and coping strategies in infant and family care.
Patient or Public Contribution: The PreventADALL is a collaborative study with governmental and patient organisation representation. Selected infants with parents were also contributing during calibrating courses on eczema assessment for the data collectors.
Trial Registration: The study was approved by the Regional Committee in Norway (2014/518) and Sweden (2014/2242–31/4) and registered at clinicaltrial.gov (NCT02449850). Link for clinical trials: https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT02449850publishedVersio
Diaconia as the art of the possible: Diaconal engagement for roma migrants in Oslo, Norway
Get PDFItinerant Roma migrants travelling from Eastern European countries have featured across the European Economic Area (EEA) since the European Union’s eastward expansions in 2004 and 2007. Being unskilled, many Roma migrants engage in casual work and street work such as playing music, selling magazines, collecting and recycling bottles and cans, and begging, making them conspicuously visible in countries with public welfare services and low poverty levels. Citizens of EEA countries can enter and stay legally in other countries in the EEA for up to three months, after which they must register as workers or jobseekers, and generally leave. It is well documented how the countries Roma citizens of EEA countries travel to have enacted migration control measures, often in the form of complex and fine-grained regulations, that exclude them from public welfare services. This is also true of the Nordic countries, such as Norway, where they coincide with universalistic welfare states aiming to cover everyone living in their territories with the same benefits and services. In the Nordic countries, as in other countries, service provision for Roma migrants is largely in the hands of non-governmental organisations, many of them diaconal organisations running emergency shelters, soup kitchens, and other humanitarian services to alleviate suffering for people at the margins of the welfare state. The diaconal organisations also engage in case work and advocacy work to ensure the realisation of the Roma migrants’ rights. Many of the organisations depend on public grants, making their relationship to the welfare state ambiguous. This article investigates Christian social practice in the form of diaconal engagement for Roma migrants in Oslo, Norway at the intersection of migration control, the universalistic welfare state, and the theological underpinnings of the organisations.publishedVersio
Bridges and barriers. Support in the transition to adulthood for disabled young people leaving care
No full textAll rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without permission.This study explores support for disabled young people leaving public care in Norway. Such support, called aftercare, is offered by municipal child welfare services to care-experienced people aged 18-24 years. Some people receiving aftercare have experiences of disability, and the support provided to this group of young people is the core focus of this study. While the study is an intersectional analysis of factors related to both disability and aftercare, its focus is directed on professional practice with disabled young people leaving care in the context of Norwegian child welfare services. As such, it is situated within social work practice research in broad terms and, more specifically, the field of care-leaving research.
The following is the overall research question that guides this study:
How do ruling constructions of aftercare and disability shape support for disabled young people leaving care in Norway?
This question is explored through three sub-studies that elaborate on the following themes:
- What aims are expressed in Norwegian policy regarding public support for disabled young people with care experiences?
- How do disabled care-experienced young people encounter aftercare support in their transition to adulthood?
- What characterises social workers' professional considerations about support for disabled young people ageing out of care?
The study involves a document analysis of eight Norwegian government white papers on disability and aftercare services, qualitative interviews with eight young people, and a qualitative vignette study with 14 social workers in child welfare services who were engaged in providing aftercare support. Data were generated from May 2018 to August 2020. The analysis was informed by concepts stemming from institutional and critical theories. Institutional perspectives explain how the individual experiences of young people and social workers are connected to the larger social organisation of aftercare and how practices and understandings are influenced by certain institutional premises in the Norwegian child welfare system. These critical perspectives help question how disability as a form of social oppression is produced and enacted within the context of aftercare in Norway.
The findings of the study have been reported in three papers, each highlighting one of the three sub-studies:
1 The review of government policy shows that disability receives no attention within the policy on aftercare and aftercare or experiences of public care are not emphasised within the policy on disability. The analysis suggests that aftercare policy expresses the overall value of adult independence. It also highlights the absence of adequate guidance regarding the transition process for young people with ongoing needs when they exit child welfare services.
2 The interviews with disabled young people leaving care reveal that their needs and experiences related to disability are ignored as they are perceived to fall outside the remit of aftercare services, and the young people are largely left to manage alone. While many of these young people expressed a sense of agency and capability during their transition out of care, they also shared accounts of their interactions with adult services as draining and reported insufficient support for their needs.
3 The interviews with social workers bolster these findings, suggesting that their considerations about aftercare support are not influenced by concepts of disability but rather are guided by three institutional logics that are categorised as a medical logic, an activation logic, and an aftercare logic.
Overall, the study suggests that support for disabled young people leaving care is built upon an individualised and medical concept of disability and the overall value of adult independence. These constructions of disability and aftercare materialise in legal, organisational, and financial structures that do not facilitate the kind of support necessary to satisfactorily address the intersectional and ongoing needs of disabled young people leaving public care.
It is argued that disability, through the medical model understanding, is constructed as an exception category within aftercare services. The aftercare institution's response to this 'exceptionality' is the segregation and assimilation of disabled young people leaving care. Segregation is how young people with a clear diagnosis are perceived to belong to other services and are rapidly transferred out of child welfare services after the age of majority. Assimilation is an 'unresponsive' response to disability based on ableist norms and an assumption of homogeneity within the care-leaving population. This materialises in an interaction between child welfare services and young people where nobody addresses disability. The young people often contribute to the assimilation by adjusting their wishes and needs to fit within what they perceive as the responsibility of child welfare services.
Both the assimilation and segregation of disabled young people leaving care render their needs unmet by child welfare services. This lack of support constructs barriers in young people's transition out of care, rather than building a bridge to services that can support them in achieving their aims and wishes for adulthood. It is argued that child welfare services will benefit from social and critical perspectives of disability to better respond to intersecting experiences of disability and leaving care and to better address the disabling barriers that young people face in their transition out of care.
Paper I: Bennwik, I.H.B., & Oterholm, I. (2021). Policy values related to support for care leavers with disabilities. European Journal of Social Work, 24(5), 884–895. https://doi.org/10.1080/13691457.2020.1751589
Paper II: Bennwik, I.H.B., Oterholm, I., & Kelly, B. (2023). ‘My disability was my own responsibility’: An institutional ethnography of the transitional experiences of disabled young people leaving care. Children and Youth Services Review, 146, 106813. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.childyouth.2023.106813
Paper III: Bennwik, I.-H. B., Oterholm, I., & Kelly, B., (2023). ‘Disability is not a word we use’: Social workers' professional judgements about support for disabled young people leaving care. Child & Family Social Work, 28(2), 443-453. https://doi.org/10.1111/cfs.12975publishedVersio