2024, Hauss, Gisela, Bossert, Markus, Heiniger, Kevin, Barras, Vincent, Jungo, Alexandra, Sager, Fritz

2021-06-23, Hauss, Gisela, Heiniger, Kevin

The paper focuses on coercive residential care for children and youth and thus on a crystallization point for conflicts over social order. Up into the 1970s, juveniles who challenged the given structures of power and social norms were perceived as at risk or themselves posing a danger. Viewed from a perspective of education, morality or medicine, they could be classified for instance as ‘juveniles with developmental or adjustment problems’ (‘Schwererziehbare’) or ‘psychopathological’. The measures arising from this were viewed as protective or coercive and compulsory. The present paper focuses on the coercive measures in Switzerland and raises questions about the so-called ‘children and youth with adjustment problems’ and their compulsory re-education in closed coercive residential care facilities. How did the perception come to be formed of these juveniles as having ‘adjustment problems’ and what role was played in this connection by the concepts developed for specific coercive residential facilities? What attributions were accorded in their classification and what stigmatizations were codified? How did the view of these adolescents change over time, and concomitantly, how also did the measures that were conceived for them change? The paper is based on an ongoing research project, which on the basis of archival sources investigates the interplay of professional expertise and politics within an umbrella organization operating supraregionally across the whole of Switzerland (1932 – 2000). Through the example of the discussions from the 1950s to the 1970s between administration, professional experts and policy decision-makers concerning the establishment of a special type of institution for juveniles seen as most difficult and disruptive, it proves possible to impressively show how the juveniles were classified and the associated conception of their coercive residential care. It becomes clear that conflicts did not arise just in the stage of implementation of measures; rather conflicts were already present in the processes of how the juveniles were classified and in the conception of their coercive residential care.

2024, Hauss, Gisela, Bossert, Markus, Heiniger, Kevin, Barras, Vincent, Jungo, Alexandra, Sager, Fritz

2021-06-23, Heiniger, Kevin, Hauss, Gisela

2023-08-17, Hauss, Gisela, Heiniger, Kevin, Bossert, Markus

Finanzieren und Koordinieren waren Aufgaben im Sozialwesen und eine erste Antwort auf die öffentliche Kritik an fehlender Aufsicht, Regulierung und Fachlichkeit. Mit ­diesen Aufgaben wurde der Dachverband Landeskonferenz für ­soziale Arbeit in den 1930er-­Jahren gegründet. Mit ihrer gesamt­schweize­rischen und transnationalen Tätigkeit ­eröffnet die zentrale ­Koordinationsstelle den Blick auf die sich wandelnden ­Strategien und Akteurskonstellationen in der Praxis der Sozialstaatlichkeit bis hinein in die Umstrukturierungen der 1990er-Jahre. Auf der Ebene konkreter Institutionen zeigt sich der ­Wandel in einer segmentierten Professionalisierung, unter ­anderem im Feld der Heimerziehung und in den Schulen für Soziale Arbeit. Hier lässt sich die Durchsetzungsmacht von Qualitäts­standards in ihrer Abhängigkeit von Bundes­subventionen feststellen. Einige Bereiche wurden dadurch in ihrem sozial­staatlichen Ausbau gefördert, während ­andere zunächst davon ausgeschlossen blieben. Der vorliegende Band erschliesst neues Wissen zu Arrange­­ments, Finanzierungsmodellen und kom­plexen Misch­formen zwischen privaten und staatlichen ­Akteuren. Er ergänzt regionale Forschungszugänge zum privat organi­sierten Fürsorgewesen und macht diese erstmals unter einer gesamtschweizerischen, verschiedene Fürsorge­bereiche und Ebenen einbeziehenden sowie transnationalen Perspektive diskutierbar.