Through Two Pairs of Eyes: A Comparative Study of Danish Social Policy and Child Welfare

This text seeks to provide a comparative analysis of child welfare in Denmark using a new research method. First, it is based on semi-structured interviews with a wide range of "actors" in the field of Danish child welfare, including parents of children who have been in the Danish "care system", social workers in the statutory sector, social welfare managers, local politicians, policy "players" at the central governmental level, prominent social policy researchers, workers in voluntary agencies of various sorts, managers of innovative welfare projects. It therefore compares each of the "stories" told by interviewees about Danish child welfare to see points of conjunction and disjunction between them. The second innovative feature of the study's method is to subject this same raw material to two separate interpretations by each of the authors, one Danish, the other English. These two interpretations are then compared, similarly, for conjunctions and disjunctions and various possible explanations for the patterns emerging are discussed.