The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the client base for social services

The COVID-19 pandemic has rampaged through the daily life of individuals, increasing existing vulnerabilities and bringing about new ones. Social service workers act in close proximity and connection with these vulnerable groups, and measures taken to decrease the COVID-19 contamination rate — such as working from home, reducing social contacts and most of all lockdowns — negatively affect the core tasks of social service workers. Consequently, these professionals have had to find other ways to reach out to clients. This may potentially change the type of clients who have been reached and prioritized during the pandemic. Moreover, the profile of clients may have changed due to the pandemic. With this study, we address three research questions: (1) Which clients were prioritized by social service workers?, (2) Which clients were not able to be reached by social service workers?;and (3) Do social service workers expect a new vulnerable client base to emerge as a consequence of the COVID-19 pandemic? To help answer these questions, we used data from the Social Work COVID-19 Survey, obtained from 2,815 social service workers and collected in April and May 2020 during the first Belgian lockdown. The results indicate that urgent cases in need of essential, vital care were prioritized, with social service workers relying more on their gut instincts than on the customary procedures. Second, clients who could not be reached were those with limited access to modern communications, or with lower levels of digital skills. This often coincides with more vulnerable groups (such as people with mental health issues, financial issues, a small social network, the homeless and the elderly). Third, with regard to possible new clients, social service workers anticipate a ‘less standard’ and ‘more temporary’ client base, with more ‘middle-class families’ who have become vulnerable due to the economic consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic. Moreover, social service workers expect the pressure in the private life of individuals to increase, and have observed several mental health consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic. © This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

Impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on young adults experiencing dual family life after high-conflict divorce

Objective: This paper describes the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the family lives of young adults whose parents had been through a high-conflict divorce and the extent to which these 18-to-30-year-olds believed the COVID-19 measures accommodated for their family situation. Background: Impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on family lives has been described in recent literature but no attention has been paid to young adults experiencing parental conflict due to a divorce transition impasse. Method: Data from 24 in-depth interviews were collected in the Belgian province of Limburg using a semi-structured interview guide with open questions and analysed via Nvivo. Results: Frequency of contact with parents decreased, contact with parents living abroad became nearly impossible. Different interpretations of and approaches to the rules led to frustration and quarrelling in families. The quality of the relationship with parents changed, often in a negative way. Respondents indicated that to their opinion due consideration had not been given to the situation of young adults with divorced parents. Conclusion: In order to adequately develop COVID-19 rules that are tailored to a wide range of families, with attention to the most vulnerable ones, we recommend that policy makers define a family by using a "feeling family paradigm" rather than defining a family in terms of a household and that they include a multi-actor and multi-disciplinary perspective in the decision-making processes.

Downward spirals to vulnerability: Social workers' concerns about their clients during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic

One of the most frequently voiced concerns in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic is ‘not to forget the vulnerable groups in society'. Social workers occupy a privileged position with a view to mapping such vulnerabilities, their complex interrelations, and the processes that increase the risk of falling victim to them. Therefore, in order for policy interventions aimed at mitigating negative impact on vulnerable groups to be effective, it is important to gain an in-depth insight into the first hand experiences and concomitant concerns of social workers. The main aim of this article is to describe and categorize the main concerns social workers had about their clients a few weeks into Belgium's first wave of the pandemic. The data used derive from a large scale online survey taken among social workers in Flanders and the Brussels region in April/May 2020, closely following the lockdown on 18 March. Thematic coding analysis was used to analyse textual answers with regard to concerns about current clients. Concerns fall into six main categories, the most important one being direct concerns about the safety and wellbeing of clients in the context of various life domains (physical and mental health, family, work, education, social networks, housing, financial and material wealth), apart from concerns about communication issues more in general, about changes in the interactional dynamics between social worker and client, the effects of lockdown related changes to forms of social help, about very specific vulnerable groups, and, lastly, about the resilience of the social work sector. Analysis of the connections between concerns also enables us to reconstruct several chains of events that may result in specific (reinforced) vulnerabilities. If policy interventions aim to be attentive to such vulnerabilities, taking stock of these chains of events is of paramount importance. © 2021. All Rights Reserved.