The ‘child in need’ and ‘the rich child’: discourses, constructions and practice

Abstract

Drawing on two principal theoretical perspectives—social constructionism and Foucault's ideas about power—and data from a study of sponsored day care for children in need, the article problematizes the concept of ‘the child in need’—which plays a major part in current discourse, policy and practice in British social work—and explores how the concept is both produced from dominant discourses about childhood, and is in turn productive of a particular construction of the child and particular practices. A different experience, from Reggio Emilia in Italy, is described to make visible some of the assumptions that underlie the concept of ‘the child in need’.