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Summary: An interview study was conducted with persons receiving home care services and personal assistance in Sweden (13 individuals, 25 interviews) with the aim to analyze their experiences of managing personal and intimate care. The analytical approach was guided by phenomenologically informed research and Erving Goffman's theoretical work on self-presentation and social life as it differs in frontstage and backstage settings. Findings: A reflected approach to the complex challenges associated with becoming and being a person in need of personal and intimate care was revealed. This involved continuous adaptations and attuning to organizational and relational conditions of formal home care. Being a recipient of personal and intimate care does not mean being passive. It entails relating to and sustaining the care relation, where even choosing to accept suboptimal conditions is an act of agency. The recipients' private homes were hybridized, transformed both into a waiting room, with the recipient on standby and into a workplace. The homes thus partly lost their character as a backstage realm where one could avoid the gaze of others. This also led to a hybridization of the personal sphere, in the form of marginal scope for true privacy, necessitating strategies for protecting one's own space. Applications: It is important both to acknowledge the intrusive nature of personal and intimate care, which results in extensive hybridization of the home and personal sphere and to recognize care recipients' agency in the relationship that care establishes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary : While scholars have examined how neoliberal ideas and policies manifest at the front lines of the welfare state, far less is known about how the neoliberal approach prevalent in such states shapes decisions that senior state actors make about social welfare policy. The current study advances the literature by examining the processes and motivations behind the decision to withdraw from enacting a law designed to secure the social rights of all Israeli citizens. The study is rooted in a critical research paradigm, combining both inductive and deductive analyses of in-depth interviews with 15 senior officials and legislators in the field of social services. Findings : Despite their purported support for equality in the provision of social services, their acknowledgment of the shortcomings of current legislation in this respect, and their active role in promoting an alternative thereto, participants were persuaded to act in such a way as to support free-market measures. These findings illustrate an arena of policymaking wherein some state actors "purchase" other actors' cooperation and compliance with the neoliberal approach. Applications : The "behind-the-scenes" account of the legislative process, set against the backdrop of neoliberal welfare governance, provides insights useful to all those who seek to promote parity-enhancing legislation aimed at supporting marginalized social service recipients, in Israel and beyond. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary: Given the global and local social inequalities and the complex life circumstances of people living in poverty, social workers are called upon to broaden their knowledge with the purpose of developing social services that respond to the needs of this growing population. However, very little research has been done on the kind of knowledge that social workers require in order to care for this population. The present article focuses on the epistemological aspects of service development for people living in poverty and reviews three main issues: What is "poverty knowledge," where does it come from, and what are the barriers to and opportunities for its development? These questions are investigated through a qualitative paradigm among social workers employed in Israel's public social services. Findings: Findings reveal a profound epistemological controversy about what poverty knowledge means: Is it objective, consistent, readily available, and transferrable knowledge, or is it a dynamic and reflexive process affected by a great number of fluctuating contexts? Findings stress the dominance of positivist views of poverty knowledge, mostly derived from practice while other sources of knowledge development, such as service users' local knowledge, theory, and research knowledge were seen as less relevant to their needs. Applications: Practical recommendations are offered relating to the need for poverty knowledge development processes in social services as well as in social-work education through collaborative, contextual, and reflective learning with and from service users and other stakeholders. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]