Redistribution and Recognition in Social Work Practice: Lessons Learned From Providing Material Assistance in Child Protection Settings

Despite growing recognition of the links between poverty and child maltreatment, little is known about the specific practices and strategies utilized to directly respond to families' poverty. One such practice is the provision of material assistance, which is widespread in child protection settings but has received negligible scholarly attention. The article aims to describe and conceptualize this underresearched practice and to explore the challenges workers face when implementing it. The study described here included 20 in-depth interviews conducted with social workers working in an innovative Israeli child protection program called Families on the Path to Growth. The program is based on the Poverty-Aware paradigm and provides social workers and families with a substantial flexible budget designated for families' needs. Findings revealed that utilizing material assistance is an extremely complex and multidimensional task. Specifically, workers' engagement with this practice revolved around three continuums that range between (a) collaboration and countercollaboration; (b) splitting and integrating the emotional and the material; and (c) a hermeneutic of trust and a hermeneutic of suspicion. In the discussion, we explore the findings in relation to Nancy Fraser's conceptualization of social justice, redistribution, and recognition.