Keywords

Introduction

The starting point of this chapter is a particular context-sensitive or situational social work practice within the Norwegian Barnahus model that can provide a safety net for children in police-reported child abuse cases (Andersen, 2019). This practice may be conceptualised as “interstitial work” (Andersen, 2019, 2022) and involves Barnahus staff—mainly social workers—identifying and compensating for gaps and shortcomings in the systems and relations surrounding each child following investigative interviews, resulting in help that is customised to each child’s and family’s particular situations and needs. Core elements of the practice can be particularly valuable for children and families who have experience with Barnahus (Bakketeig et al., 2021). The three main objectives of this chapter are to discuss (i) the structural conditions that have enabled this practice to emerge within the Norwegian Barnahus model, (ii) various potential exogenous and endogenous threats that could threaten this practice, and (iii) how the practice may be sustained over time.

These questions are used to address scholarly discussions related to the balance between standardisation and professional autonomy in social work (Healy, 2009; Munro, 2005; Ponnert & Svensson, 2016; Sletten & Ellingsen, 2020). The chapter examines exogenous threats, especially those that are relevant within Barnahus models (particularly juridification and psychologisation); the discussion also reflects on how situational practices, such as interstitial work, can be stimulated and preserved when implementing the Barnahus model in new countries.

A central backdrop for the study is the ongoing concern among social work scholars for a general reduction of situational social work practices. Researchers have related this development to the dominance of exogenous trends, such as new public management (NPM) and evidence-based practice (EBP) (Hanssen et al., 2015; Petersén & Olsson, 2015). A key argument is that the increased use of top-down standardised procedures and regulations embedded in these trends reduces clients’ problems into predefined, measurable variables and force out the professional autonomy and discretion necessary to tailor interventions to the situational particularities of each case (Petersén & Olsson, 2015; Ponnert & Johansson, 2018). An alternative (or, rather, supplementing) explanation is found in Andrew Abbott’s (1988, 1995) notion of “professional regression,” which refers to a partly endogenous process whereby professionals tend to “rule out the confusions and difficulties that clients often present to professional knowledge schemes” (Abbott, 1995, p. 550) in order to pursue “purer” jurisdictions associated with higher status. Following this line of thinking, social workers involved in situational social work will eventually be drawn towards more definable practices, such as direct interventions (in the case of psychologisation). Accordingly, previous research and theories suggest that both top-down steering and professional regression may represent potential threats to situational practices such as interstitial work. These arguments are elaborated on and nuanced in this chapter, where the focus is on the experiences of professionals (Barnahus staff) who perform situational social work within institutional frames that can be described as forming a loose regulatory context for social work practice—in this case, in the Norwegian Barnahus model.

The Norwegian Barnahus Model and the Practice of Interstitial Work

The empirical case used in this chapter is the Nordic Barnahus model, more specifically the Norwegian version of the model and the work undertaken by social workers and psychologists who are employed at Barnahus as regular staff. The Barnahus model was introduced in the Nordic countries as a response to a growing recognition of the need for more integrated and child-centred services for children who had been exposed to violence and sexual abuse (Johansson et al., 2017). It represents an inter-agency and co-located model that addresses police-reported cases of suspected child abuse. The model includes the investigative interview, a forensic medical examination, and a coordinative responsibility for follow-up work on victims—for example, referring to or guiding relevant services or providing treatment at the Barnahus. Accordingly, the model encompasses two institutional logics: one related to the penal process and the other to child welfare and health (Johansson & Stefansen, 2020; Johansson et al., 2017). In this sense, it represents a hybrid model (Johansson & Stefansen, 2020; Stefansen et al., 2023).

In Norway, the Barnahus model was first implemented as a trial project in 2007 and became a permanent national-level solution a few years later. It represents a collaboration project among the Ministry of Justice and Public Security, the Ministry of Health, and the Ministry of Children and Families. The organisation falls within the justice sector, and Barnahus is monitored by the National Police Directorate on behalf of the Ministry of Justice and Public Security. Each Barnahus (eleven in total, three with sub-units) represents a separate unit within the police district where it is located.

In practice, the coordinative responsibility related to the double mandate of Barnahus is carried out by the Barnahus staff, which consists of social workers and some psychologists. Most of the staff are clinical social workers with extensive experience from adjacent services, such as the child welfare service, the young people’s psychiatric outpatient unit (BUP), or both. Typically, staff members have also taken continued education courses in various therapeutic treatment methods and must be considered experienced social workers.

When the Barnahus model was implemented in Norway in 2007, it had a loose mandate, and few regulations existed to guide or monitor the practices of the social workers. Initial reports (Skybak, 2004; Norwegian Ministry of Justice and the Police, 2006) provided some key guiding principles for practice; for example, the Barnahus staff should not take over tasks or responsibilities from previously existing agencies involved in working with child victims of violence or abuse. The purpose of the strategy was to avoid conflict and tension around the model; Barnahus was not intended to involve changes in the mandate of other services (Bakketeig et al., 2012; Stefansen et al., 2012). Accordingly, the police were still to be responsible for criminal investigations, the child welfare services for placement of children in need, and the BUP system for providing therapy to children with severe trauma symptoms.

Apart from this principle and the designated coordinative responsibility, the model was introduced without specific Barnahus regulations or national legislative changes connected to the implementation. Some regulations and legislation, however, were introduced later on. In 2015, the Criminal Procedure Act was amended, and the use of Barnahus became mandatory in child abuse cases (Johansson et al., 2017). The Criminal Procedure Act of 2015 also provides regulations for the responsibilities of social workers related to the investigative interviews; for example, they must attend collaborative meetings before and after investigative interviews and advise the investigative interviewers on how to approach children. Tasks related to the penal process thus have become more strongly regulated in recent years.

Moreover, National Barnahus Guidelines (National Police Directorate et al., 2016) were issued in 2016. Here, the social workers’ key roles related to both the investigative interview and the follow-up work are described. These national guidelines are currently under revision (as of 2023), meaning that new and possibly more detailed and/or stronger regulations related to follow-up work may be expected in the near future. In many ways, social work practice evolved at Barnahus before regulations were introduced in Norway.

Within these institutional frames, experienced Barnahus staff have been observed to engage in a particular context-sensitive or situational social work practice conceptualised as “interstitial work” (Andersen, 2019, 2022). The conceptualisation is meant to grasp a pattern in practice in which contextual features of the case (the response of other services and the child’s significant others) play a more significant role than the type of case (e.g. type and severity of the suspected abuse, the child’s age, or the child’s relation to the abuser) when these staff members decide on how to proceed in their casework. In practice, this situation means that the way in which the experienced staff members evaluate the content and quality of other agencies’ responses to the child’s situation and needs (as well as the responses of the child’s significant others) represents the determinant factors when they decide if and how to intervene. Accordingly, if the local system lacks important knowledge or has no adequate measures to provide for the child, or when the child must wait a long time for such treatment to start, the staff provide the child with direct interventions (e.g. follow-up conversations or therapy) at the Barnahus.

Staff members also engage in indirect interventions when they identify that someone (such as a professional or significant other in the child’s life) is not currently a resource for the child, although they could be if provided with guidance and/or support. In practice, such support could mean having follow-up conversations with (non-abusive) parents, guiding professionals over the phone, inviting to or attending collaborative meetings, or pursuing community work and presentations in schools or kindergartens. Much of the work conducted by the staff falls within the category of indirect work. When “interstices” at the relational and/or system level are identified and compensated for, the practice ensures that someone is continuously there to look after the child in a potentially critical phase and that these people are sensitive towards the struggles the child faces (Andersen, 2022). In this way, the response of the staff is customised to the situational and particular needs of each child in every case.

This chapter’s subsequent analysis includes a discussion of which factors within the structural terms of the Norwegian Barnahus model have enabled the situational practice of interstitial work to emerge, as well as future challenges the practice could face.

Theoretical Framework

This chapter draws on literature focused on both exogenous and endogenous threats to situational social work practices. As noted above, a number of scholars have related the ongoing reduction of the situational focus in social work to exogenous processes, more specifically to NPM and EBP (Ferguson, 2008; Hanssen et al., 2015; James, 2004; Lorenz, 2005; Munro, 2014; Petersén & Olsson, 2015; Rogowski, 2010), which have gradually come to dominate the public sector and social work in most European and Anglo-Saxon countries since the 1980s and the 1990s.

NPM may be described as a “structure of organisations as well as a way to obtain efficiency” (Marthinsen, 2018, p. 355). In short, it refers to a cluster of ideas whose aim is to restructure the public sector, with the main goals being increased efficiency and higher service quality through control and monitoring based on goal attainment (Marthinsen, 2018; Petersén & Olsson, 2015). EBP is commonly defined as the “conscientious, explicit and judicious use of current evidence in making decisions about the care of individuals” (Sackett et al., 1996, p. 71). The central idea in EBP is that interventions should be “systematically based on proven effectiveness derived from sound empirical research” (Otto et al., 2009, p. 472). Typically, and similarly to NPM’s logic, this approach involves a structured use of standardised manuals to ensure the execution of standardised practice. Scholars have argued that NPM and EBP must be considered interrelated trends and perceived as an integral part of the development of a managerialised social work practice (Petersén & Olsson, 2015; Ponnert & Svensson, 2016). Petersén and Olsson (2015, p. 1585) describe both NPM and EBP as involving a “top-down rationalistic view, incorporating the belief that policy goals, rules and evidence have general relevance independently of context.” Consequently, scholars have argued that a tension exists between organising social services in the welfare state and the opportunity for social workers to practise their profession according to their code of ethics (Hanssen et al., 2015). Other scholars have challenged the “degree of autonomy such professionals possess and the discretionary expertise they are allowed to exhibit” (Maillard & Savage, 2021, p. 2). Links may hence be drawn between a high degree of professional autonomy and the ability to perform situational social work in practice.

An alternative position, which also notes endogenous driving forces, is found in Abbott’s (1988, 1995) theoretical framework. Abbott’s (1995) starting point is that professions and occupational practices—such as social work and interstitial work—emerge when social actors tie social boundaries together in certain ways. Once an entity has emerged, however, intergroup competition arises to define the central determining factors around a profession at any given time. A central concept is Abbott’s (1988, 1995) notion of “professional regression,” which refers to the process through which professions “withdraw into themselves, away from the tasks which they claim professional jurisdiction” over (1988, p. 118). This situation stems from the desire for professional “purity” and is generally driven by status. According to Abbott, status in the professions goes with the ability to talk pure professional talk. Subsequently, it is “the complexity and interwoven character of clients’ problems that present (…) the most glaring challenge to professional knowledge, even though the whole point of professional knowledge [is] to deal with client problems” (Abbott, 1995, p. 550). Within this logic, professionals who can spend most of their time talking to their colleagues in their fields, such as surgeons and lawyers, represent high-status professions; these are also the professions with the purest jurisdictions. In contrast, professions with less defined jurisdictions are more vulnerable to professional regression and will eventually “try to slide into something that could be made and kept pure” (Abbott, 1995, p. 551). The latter scenario applies to social work in general, perhaps even more so to situational social work, such as interstitial work. Abbott (1995) states that for social work, the obvious alternative is psychiatric knowledge, which would involve direct work with individuals (see also Stefansen et al., 2020).

This idea of professional regression implies that eventually, if enough professionals pursue a high degree of status, entire professions (and professional practices) could move away from their original areas of work (Abbott, 1995). This potential drive towards a purer jurisdiction exactly fits the type of professionalisation embedded in the exogenous trends of NPM or EBP; hence, both endogenous and exogenous processes may pull in the same direction and lead to a gradual dilution of situational practices, including interstitial work. The concept of professional regression also suggests that the absence of regulation and a high degree of professional autonomy alone represent no guarantee for the continuance of situational practices. Rather, the idea implies that professional autonomy must be combined with alternative ways of ensuring the status of professionals who practise situational work, if situational practices are to emerge and be maintained in institutions. These insights are elaborated on and nuanced in the empirical parts of this chapter.

Methods and Materials

The empirical material used in this chapter consists of interviews conducted as part of larger fieldwork, where the observational method of shadowing represented a key strategy (Andersen, 2019, 2022). Individual interviews were conducted with ten Barnahus staff members and one leader in two Barnahus units. The respondents were all women and were in the 40–55 age group. Like the rest of the Barnahus staff, the staff members interviewed for the study were experienced, having considerable education and extensive experience from adjacent services. Their experience with Barnahus work varied, however. Half had worked at Barnahus for a number of years, while the remaining half had less experience with Barnahus, having worked at a unit for about a year and a half or less. Verbal consent was obtained from the interviewed and observed staff members and the leader.

Each interview lasted approximately one hour, and all were conducted during the spring and autumn of 2018. A technique loosely inspired by Holloway and Jefferson’s (2008) free-association narrative interview method was used. This approach involved using a select few open-ended questions and pursuing themes that the respondents themselves talked eagerly or intensely about in the interviews, including what appeared to be “free associations.”

For the purpose of this chapter, a thematic analysis was conducted. Following Braun and Clarke’s (2006, p. 82) definition, “[a] theme captures something important about the data in relation to the research question and represents some level of patterned response or meaning within the data set.” During the analysis process, transcripts were carefully read and searched for themes related to the structural conditions for (as well as dilemmas related to) practising Barnahus work (interstitial work) within the Barnahus model. Three partly interlinked themes were identified. The first, especially evident in the interviews with staff members with previous experience from working in the BUP system, was the importance of having “room for manoeuvre” in their day-to-day work. As will be revealed in the subsequent sections, the staff members believed this flexibility to be crucial for customising their interventions to the particularities of concrete cases and providing proper help to victimised children and their families. The second consisted of challenging aspects related to the very same flexibility of conducting a type of work that was not clearly defined or regulated. The third referred to the lack of understanding of the type of work conducted among steering ministries and directorates, as well as the fear of an increase in top-down steering. Within the interviews, the third theme was primarily voiced by the leader. (One study limitation is that only one leader was interviewed and that questions regarding steering were not included in interviews with the Barnahus staff.)

Analysis

The following analysis is described in two steps. In the first subsection, Barnahus as an institutional frame or structural condition for the emergence of interstitial work is analysed in light of the theoretical framework. The subsequent subsections, which are based on the interview analysis, address endogenous and exogenous threats to the practice, as well as how it may be preserved for the future.

Barnahus as a Structural Condition for the Emergence of Interstitial Work

Following Abbott’s (1995) theoretical framework, professional practices originate from social actors tying boundaries together in certain ways. In this logic, the practice of interstitial work at Barnahus may be viewed as the result of staff members (and leaders) merging tasks and responsibilities in the border territories of adjacent services to solve the concrete problems of the children who come to Barnahus. In many ways, this practice is also what they were assigned to do. The few principles—found in the initial reports that guided the work performed by Barnahus staff members in the first phase of the model—instructed these workers against taking over tasks from adjacent services; rather, they were assigned to bind them together and compensate for system gaps. This mandate thus may have played a noteworthy role in the emergence of interstitial work.

The placement in a hybrid organisation was also likely beneficial, since drawing boundaries together from a position in the midst of other services and sector responsibilities would likely provide a particularly clear and experience-based overview of how the very same services responded to the children’s problems, and hence, what to compensate for and how to mediate between them. But it seems evident that none of this would have been possible if the Barnahus staff’s role and tasks had been strongly regulated from the beginning. From a top-down position, if the question of how the Barnahus staff should approach the casework had been decided at a detailed level, and which types of system gaps they had to compensate for, then they would have been unable to customise their interventions to the situational and particular needs of each child in any given case. This notion suggests that the absence of regulation—hence, the presence of professional autonomy and room for manoeuvre in shaping the Barnahus units’ roles and practices—was crucial for the emergence of the situational practice of interstitial work. Following Abbott’s argument (1988, 1995), the status related to Barnahus’ placement in the justice sector might also have played a significant role; it might have provided status to the type of situational work performed and could have prevented the Barnahus staff from pursuing “purer” or more definable tasks.

In the literature, the links that scholars draw between professional autonomy and situational social work also suggest that the prospects of interstitial work within Barnahus rely on allowing the flexible regulatory frames to remain. This approach seems unlikely, in a time when increased standardisation and top-down regulation represent the dominant discourse. Knowing that the national Barnahus guidelines will be amended, this present situation may also be altered in the near future. The concept of professional regression also indicates that continued status (through the organisational affiliation within the justice sector) and the continued absence of detailed regulations or standardisation seem necessary for the practice to continue in future. This set of arguments is both acknowledged and nuanced in the following subsections of the chapter, where the focus is on the Barnahus staff’s experiences related to practising situational social work within the loose regulatory frame of the Barnahus model. As the material below reveals, some tendencies suggest that status may not be enough to prevent professional regression; other tendencies suggest that the absence of regulation is not exclusively beneficial.

Necessary Professional Autonomy

The relation between professional autonomy and standardisation represented a central theme in the interviews, especially when the staff members started comparing the situation at the Barnahus with their previous experience from the BUP system. One staff member (R3) said that although she “really, really enjoyed” her time in the BUP, her experience was that the system was becoming increasingly standardised:

The focus was quantity, counting everything (…); it became very rigid. Although I had fantastic colleagues and my closest leader was great, the system became more and more [rigid]. So, to come here and (…) experience a large degree of freedom and to get to pull up your sleeves and work where it’s needed, when it’s needed—it felt very good.

This idea was also thematised by another staff member (R5):

[At the Barnahus,] it’s very much up to you what you’re able to come up with, you know? You don’t have these predefined standardised clinical pathways that you have in some BUP clinics. “If it’s this type of problem, we do this, and if it’s that type, we do that,” right? You don’t get much of that here. You have to draw on your own bag of experience and knowledge, but that’s a positive thing. You have the opportunity to do that here; you’ll be understood if you see the need to follow up with a family for a year or something like that. (…) Of course, we have to have systems so that everything’s done properly and all that, but we can’t lose our freedom (…) counting types of interventions …. You know, every time you met with a person [in the BUP], the outpatient clinic received a certain amount of money. Every time you made a phone call, they received a different amount of money. And then we were supposed to have a certain number of specific types of interventions every day, which was unrelated to the types of cases we were working with. So … we need to make sure we don’t become part of such a system.

For these staff members, as for other staff members at the Barnahus, it was important that the model remained one where predefined, detailed standards for how to proceed in concrete cases did not represent an imposed procedure. The staff members considered this idea important if they were to relate their interventions to the types of cases they were working with, and hence to be able to customise interventions to the particular situations of the children and their families. By contrasting the situation at the Barnahus with that in the BUP system, these staff members also implied a connection between what may be interpreted as psychologisation and the increased use of exogenous standardisation. Subsequently, some staff members were worried that if the health authorities became too involved in governing Barnahus, increased standardisation would result.

The leader also contrasted the situation at Barnahus to that in the BUP system. When doing so, she addressed the lack of “exercise of discretion” in a similar manner to the staff members above. But she also pointed to another dimension related to possible consequences of psychologisation: a shift in the professional focus of social workers. As she noted:

To a larger and larger degree, the psychologists have taken over the driver’s seat there [in the BUP system], which forces out the interdisciplinary thinking. I have no experience from BUP myself, but so I’ve been told by my co-workers here and by people I know who work in other places. Hence, out there, skilled and experienced clinical social workers are losing their room to manoeuvre. And then, they search for new places where they’ll be seen for the skills they possess. That’s very important for me; although clinical competence is crucial here [at Barnahus], it’s only one side of it. I think that the key when employing new people at the Barnahus is interdisciplinarity and (…) an interest in social change and system work.

In this extract, the leader described a process that resembles Abbott’s (1988, 1995) notion of professional regression (although she related it to the dominance of the psychologists, not an “inner drive”): a shift in focus from system work to direct interventions and therapy (for which clinical competence is required). This scepticism against psychologisation must not be interpreted as a general disbelief among Barnahus staff and leaders in direct interventions or the use of evidence-based psychological treatment methods. In another article (Andersen, 2022), I have described how social workers at Barnahus draw quite heavily on evidence-based methods and other formal knowledge sources in their casework when practising interstitial work. When they do so, however, it is typically in a “phronetically guided” way, meaning that they consult evidence in “an abductive interplay with case particularities and value-based judgement through the phronetic question of ‘What does the client in this particular situation need?’” (Andersen, 2022). Following this logic and the logic of interstitial work, direct work is typically provided when situational factors call for it—for example, if the system lacks a measure to provide for the child or the child has to wait a long time for such treatment to commence.

Together with the status related to the organisational affiliation with the justice sector, this previous experience with (and awareness of possible consequences related to) psychologisation that some staff members and the leader expressed might function as barriers against a potential endogenous process of professional regression towards psychologisation at the Barnahus. Other tendencies pointed to the opposite direction, however.

Endogenous Threats

One tendency that suggested possible future professional regression was that the fear of potential increased standardisation related to psychologisation was neither shared among all social workers nor by the psychologists at Barnahus. Another tendency involved the challenging aspects related to possessing a high degree of professional autonomy and hence having to make situational adjustments to each case with vague guidelines to lean on. The staff members with the shortest experience at Barnahus typically brought up such issues. These staff members were concerned about whether they were doing things “the right way”:

Then there’s the following-up part, how to make that meaningful and find your part in that. What can I say and do, and what can I not do? I’m still figuring that out. (R8)

During the fieldwork, staff members who had less Barnahus experience were observed to identify fewer interstices and expressed that they would have wanted more regulations or guidelines related to the follow-up work (Andersen, 2019, 2022). But staff members with long experience at Barnahus also addressed certain challenging aspects. These staff members stressed that performing Barnahus work required a “clear mind” and “full attention,” as they had to simultaneously consider many different aspects related to the case—both during the hectic day of the investigative interview and eventually in follow-up work—for them to be involved in the right ways. One experienced staff member (R1) thought that it would be difficult to perform the work properly if she (for example) experienced problematic issues in her private sphere that got “hold of her mind.” She also mentioned her inability to understand how colleagues with small children at home were able to carry out their work in practice: “I honestly believe [parenthood] would have consumed too much of my mind and energy.”

This staff member and other experienced social workers also expressed their surprise at the low turnover of staff members in Barnahus units. They related this situation to both the nature of the cases they were working with and the personal responsibility following the high degree of professional autonomy when discerning how to proceed with the casework. Such challenging aspects, which can be related to the link between professional autonomy and situational practice, may eventually lead the Barnahus staff to pursue a “purer jurisdiction”; hence, situational work may be vulnerable to professional regression, even when status is provided.

Exogenous Threats

Another challenging aspect linked to practising a type of work that does not fit in predefined boxes was the experience of the lack of understanding among governing ministries and directorates regarding the type of work performed and the latent possibility of either increased juridification or psychologisation. This notion represented central themes in the interview with the leader:

(…) We’ve had and still have much room for manoeuvre. Until further notice, at least. Hopefully, this will continue (…). I recently had a correspondence concerning potential guidelines related to the treatment and follow-up work that we do here. Allegedly, the Directorate of Health is doing ongoing work on developing such guidelines. And we’ve said …. You know, they can’t make such guidelines without talking to us first. A challenging aspect for us is that the Police Directorate is not responsible for the quality of the content related to the follow-up work. They don’t have a clue, quite frankly, when we talk about how we follow up with the children coming here, and they’re open about this; they’re here for the penal side. (…) Working and thinking the way we do, dynamically, I really do believe that everyone wants us to keep doing that. Nevertheless, the Ministry of Justice stresses that we may not do much follow-up work and treatment. And that worries me a little; it means that we’re relying on the Directorate of Health getting the point.

Later in the interview, it became evident that the leader did not feel that the Directorate of Health was “getting the point.” She referred to a previous process in which representatives of the Directorate of Health were involved:

They wanted us to do a lot more treatment and follow-up work. They wanted us to really … work extensively with these children. We don’t think that’s our job. The way we see it, a lot of the children have problems that obviously belong to the BUP system. But we do think, you know, there are children with PTSD [post-traumatic stress disorder] symptoms who are not ill enough for BUP, and those are children whom we should follow up on directly, among others.

These extracts show the difficulties related to the specifics of Barnahus being an institution governed by multiple directorates and ministries, driven by partly conflicting institutional logics pulling in different directions. While the leader experienced that the Ministry of Justice wanted less follow-up work, the Directorate of Health wanted more direct work (psychologisation). The Barnahus staff thus found themselves in a “‘crossfire’ of competing expectations” (Bakketeig, 2017, p. 318), where none of the expectations matched the type of work performed there.

Subsequently, if any of these authorities “tightened their grip,” exogenous processes of either juridification or psychologisation could follow. Juridification would be the downfall of interstitial work, as it would involve reductions in follow-up work and treatment and increased focus on tasks related to the investigative interviews. Psychologisation would mean a shift in focus from situational work to direct treatment (Andersen, 2019, 2022). As indicated, psychologisation could also mean increased pressure on using standardised tools and predefined clinical pathways, which could prevent social workers from approaching each case individually. Among the steering ministries and directorates, their lack of understanding of the type of work carried out by Barnahus staff hence represents a key challenge to the continuance of interstitial work at Barnahus and makes the practice particularly vulnerable for the latent possibility of increased top-down steering.

As Bakketeig (2017, p. 319) has indicated, “clarity of roles may inhibit juridification.” A clarification of roles concerning the follow-up work at Barnahus could also prevent future (exogenous) psychologisation, as it would define who would be responsible for which services. Clarification also would likely attenuate the tendencies that suggest the possibility of future professional regression. The less experienced Barnahus staff would know more about how to approach the cases, which would reduce some of the more challenging aspects related to the personal responsibilities of staff members with an high degree of professional autonomy.

Hence, and perhaps a bit paradoxically, to clarify the content of the work for governing authorities and Barnahus staff themselves, it seems that more regulation or standardisation is necessary for interstitial work to be maintained within the Barnahus model—but it is important to note that such regulation cannot be too detailed. As previous research indicates, regulations must leave adequate room for manoeuvre and professional autonomy to allow the preservation of the situational focus. Such regulation or standardisation thus cannot provide detailed prescriptions on how clients’ problems have to be solved in practice, but they must provide information about what the Barnahus staff’s main roles, tasks, and responsibilities in the follow-up work should be.

It seems evident that the process of developing such standardisation can neither exclusively take place from a top-down position nor be based on predefined understandings of sector responsibilities or pure jurisdictions. Rather, one might argue, a good starting point would be to map out the main characteristics of interstitial work as practised by experienced staff members and then use these features as points of reference when developing new guidelines or regulations.

Conclusion

In this chapter, I have argued that the combination of a mandate to compensate for system gaps from a position in the midst of adjacent services and the absence of detailed regulation in the first phase of the Barnahus model in Norway was crucial for the emergence and initial development of the situational social work practice of interstitial work. This organisational setup enabled the staff to have a general and experience-based overview of how services responded to the children’s needs in practice, and hence, which potential gaps to be aware of and how to complement existing services in practice in a potentially critical phase following the investigative interview. For authorities implementing the Barnahus model and wanting to integrate interstitial work or a similar practice as part of it, this notion suggests that an initial phase of loose guiding principles and much room to manoeuvre is necessary. The analysis indicates that a high degree of professional autonomy is important, not only to maintain situational practices within institutions but also to stimulate their development.

But potential endogenous and exogenous threats suggest that operating in the interstices between other professions represents a vulnerable jurisdiction in the long term (see also Abbott, 1995). Situational practices are vulnerable to increases in top-down steering from governing authorities who lack understanding of the type of work performed. Within Barnahus models—being hybrid organisations that balance a dual mandate—the staff’s work may face a crossfire of expectations by governing authorities, as illustrated in the analysis above. In such cases, organisational affiliation may play a significant role. In Norway, scholars have expressed consistent concerns that the justice-sector affiliation could eventually lead to a juridification where the penal track gains priority over the follow-up track (Stefansen et al., 2012, 2023). Recent research (Stefansen et al., 2023) also shows that the Norwegian model has undergone a consolidating phase wherein the organisational affiliation has become deeper and more potent in pulling the Barnahus towards the penal track (see also Bakketeig et al., 2021). A key takeaway from this research, however, is that this pull is not a result of affiliation alone, and that the effect of affiliation on service delivery in Barnahus must be studied in relation to other factors, such as systems of governing and monitoring (Stefansen et al., 2023). Traces of juridification have also been found in Barnahus models that are not organisationally affiliated with the justice sector, such as the Swedish model (Johansson, 2011, 2017), which suggests that juridification may represent a potential risk in all Barnahus models.

While juridification represents a risk to situational social work in Barnahus, in the sense that it would involve a general reduction in the possibility to engage in follow-up work and treatment, psychologisation may have consequences for how follow-up work or treatment is conducted in practice. As the analysis above indicates, psychologisation might lead to a focus on direct work, and possibly also an increase in standardised assessment methods of how to approach concrete cases. This approach would also have severe consequences for situational practices, as the type of the chosen approaches depends on the case context, and direct interventions are provided to clients who do not receive adequate interventions from other agencies for the time being (if at all).

Psychologisation also represents a “double threat,” in the sense that staff members may eventually be drawn towards more clearly defined tasks in order to pursue clarity and status. Regulation that would define “the situation” as a key responsibility of the Barnahus staff hence seems necessary. Stronger regulation and monitoring of the follow-up mandate has also been suggested as a measure to restore balance in the Norwegian model without changing its organisational affiliation (Bakketeig et al., 2021).

Accordingly, it seems that while the absence of regulation may be important for situational practices to emerge and develop, once a practice is established, increased (but not overly detailed) regulation or standardisation seems necessary to clarify its content—for both practitioners and governing authorities—to maintain the practice over time. Within Barnahus models, this approach may prevent both juridification and psychologisation. Such regulation should be based on key components of established good practice and continue to leave adequate room to customise interventions to the particularities of each case in everyday practice. The regulation must also be at the same level as regulation related to the penal track in order to avoid a general unbalance in the model.