Minela Kvakic

• Kvakic, Minela; Fineide, Mona Jerndahl & Hansen, Heidi Aarum (2023). If digitalization is the answer–what is the problem? An analysis of policy documents related to the digitalization of Norwegian child welfare services. Nordic Social Work Research. ISSN 2156-857X. doi: 10.1080/2156857X.2023.2277255. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  In this article, we have analysed policy documents related to the digitalization of the Norwegian child welfare services. The project ‘DigiBarnevern’ is a national initiative intended to develop and improve the digital tools in child welfare services. In our article, we explore which arguments for digitalizing child welfare are used in Norwegian policy documents. The analysis is inspired by Carol Bacchi’s analytical approach of ‘What’s the problem represented to be?’ This approach starts with the premise that policy documents are produced and implemented as answers to specific problems. Our analysis shows how the problems represented are inefficient services, a lack of systematization, arbitrary practices, and the lack of a quality system. Thus, digitalization seems to be the answer to comprehensive problems in child welfare services. By drawing on the literature of street-level bureaucracy and professional discretion, we discuss features of digital systems such as their potential to measure quality and how they can serve as tools to meet the aim of regulating frontline workers` room for discretion. Policy documents are not neutral tools. Instead, they are instruments and carriers of values that affect service provision and ultimately the clients.

• Kvakic, Minela & Wærdahl, Randi (2022). Trust and Power in the Space Between Visibility and Invisibility. Exploring Digital and Social Media Practices in Norwegian Child Welfare Services. European Journal of Social Work. ISSN 1369-1457. doi: 10.1080/13691457.2022.2099350. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  In this article, we explore how caseworkers in the Norwegian Child Welfare Services and their clients use digital and social media in information sharing. By applying Foucault’s description of Bentham’s Panopticon as an analytical tool, we show how caseworkers’ use of digital and social media without the client’s knowledge, while making themselves invisible, contribute to increase the power asymmetry of a professional–client relationship. The clients, on the other hand, have less possibilities of making themselves invisible. If they discover that caseworkers have invaded their private information, this is experienced as a breach of trust. While some studies discuss the equalising potential of using digital and social media in welfare communication, this study reveals some of the pitfalls in using these medias for communication and information exchange. Regardless of the type of media in question, their use becomes vital for visibility, trust and power. Our findings underscore that it is not only the digital tools that needs regulation. Regulations should address the participation of clients in deciding on communication tools and the all-important openness and non-covert practices necessary to build and maintain trusting relationships between caseworkers and clients.

• Kvakic, Minela; Fineide, Mona Jerndahl & Hansen, Heidi Aarum (2021). Navigering med ustø kurs: Om bruk av digitale og sosiale medier i barnevernet. Tidsskriftet Norges Barnevern. ISSN 0800-1014. 98(3), p. 164–180. doi: 10.18261/ISSN1891-1838-2021-03-02.

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• Kvakic, Minela & Larsson, Karl Kristian (2024). Caseworkers on the digital streets. Discretion in the digital decision-making process.
• Kvakic, Minela (2024). Krav til digitalisering setter barnevernsansatte i skvis. [Internet]. forskning.no.
• Kvakic, Minela (2023). Barnevernet har bedt om hjelp til å løse digitale utfordringer i årevis uten å bli hørt. https://forskning.no/. Show summary

  https://forskersonen.no/barn-barnevern-bufdir/barnevernet-har-bedt-om-hjelp-til-a-lose-digitale-utfordringer-i-arevis-uten-a-bli-hort/2242500 Flere ganger har det hendt at digital post og meldinger til barnevernet har forsvunnet som følge av overgang til digitale løsninger. Og i flere år har barnevernet bedt om støtte og svar fra nasjonale myndigheter på hvordan de skal løse ulike digitale utfordringer de har møtt på. I mellomtiden må de finne egne løsninger som gjør dem i stand til å ivareta arbeidsoppgavene sine på en mest mulig forsvarlig og effektiv måte. Mange av utfordringene kunne vært unngått med bedre koordinering av staten og dens ambisjoner om en digital offentlig sektor, og de offentlige tjenestene.

• Kvakic, Minela (2022). Vi må snakke om barnevernets bruk av digitale og sosiale medier. Fontene. ISSN 0805-5432. 22(9), p. 60–61.
• Løberg, Ida Bring & Kvakic, Minela (2022). Moving “towards” or “too close” to the client? Comparing frontline workers’ use of digital technologies in the Norwegian Labor and Welfare Administration and the Norwegian Child Welfare Services. Show summary

  Digital service provision has been argued to “compress” time and space (Buffat, 2015), which can enable new forms of closeness between street-level bureaucrats and citizens. But when new technologies, such as digital chats, enable actors who previously met in public offices to reach each other in their living rooms – when does closeness become problematic? Drawing on qualitative data from two different ph. d projects, we explore frontline workers’ experiences with digital technologies from both the Norwegian Labor and Welfare Administration and the Norwegian Child Welfare Services. We use Tummers, Bekkers, Vink, and Musheno’s (2015) concepts of “moving towards,” “away from” and “against” clients to show how digital technologies create new dilemmas and coping responses in digital frontline work. First, our findings indicate that frontline workers use digital technologies to move both towards and away from clients. For example, while digital communication enables frontline workers to check up on and support their clients, workers also hide behind the screen to protect them from the same clients. Second, the latter example illustrates how digital technologies themselves become devices in the coping response. Third, digital devices seem to blur the distance between public and private domains. For example, street-level bureaucrats in both lines of service use informal channels, such as social media, to extract information about clients. In this paper presentation, we will discuss these emerging dilemmas and subsequent coping strategies, including the line between moving “close” and “too close” to the client.

• Kvakic, Minela; Hansen, Heidi Aarum & Fineide, Mona Jerndahl (2022). Digitalisation in the Child Welfare Services: Meeting frontline workers need for autonomy and the State`s need for control. Show summary

  Digitization of the public sector in Norway has been on the agenda for many years, but few state-initiated solutions have been introduced in child welfare services compared to other parts of public sector (Breit, 2019; Hansen, Lundberg & Syltevik, 2018). Simultaneously, the expectations of both service users and frontline professionals increase in line with increased use of digital media in society (López Peláez, Pérez García & Aguilar-Tablada Massó, 2018). A recent study demonstrated that frontline professionals in child welfare services were not quietly waiting for state policies to be realized. Instead, they developed private practices (Kvakic, Fineide & Hansen, 2021), see also Cooner, Beddoe, Ferguson and Joy (2020), Byrne, Kirwan and Mc Guckin (2019) and Breyette and Hill (2015). These findings brought us to the question of Which challenges in the child welfare services is digitalisation the answer to? A Digital Government Review of Norway named “Boosting the Digital Transformation of the Public Sector” reported a need for a dedicated and integrated digital government strategy and a clearer and more structured governance framework for digital government, strengthening leadership and defining clearer roles (OECD, 2017). Digitalisation is on the Norwegian state`s agenda, and the child welfare service is no exception. Digitalising child welfare services is said to both improve efficiency, the quality of services and safeguard more equal service provision across child welfare services and municipalities (KS, 2018). But if digitalising the child welfare service is the answer, what is the problem? To answer this question, we study public policy document, and use a political sociological approach and public policy instrumentation as theoretical framework. Public policy instrumentation implies a set of problems posed by the choice and use of instruments that allow government policy to be made material and operational; “bearers of values, fuelled by one interpretation of the social and by precise notions of the mode of the regulation envisaged” (Lascoumes & Le Gales, 2007, p. 4).

• Kvakic, Minela (2021). Ny studie: Barnevernet bruker falske profiler for å søke opp folk på sosiale medier. [Internet]. NRK.
• Kvakic, Minela; Fineide, Mona Jerndahl & Hansen, Heidi Aarum (2021). Navigating with unstedy course: -Norwegian Child Welfare Workers Use of Digital and Social Media.
• Kvakic, Minela (2021). Barnevernet "ser" deg på sosiale medier. [Internet]. Høgskolen i Østfold.
• Kvakic, Minela (2021). Bruk av digitale og sosiale medier i barnevernet: muligheter og utfordringer.
• Kvakic, Minela (2019). Digitalisering i barnevernet: forskningsstatus.

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