Spaces of care: Mediating practices, relationships and knowledge

Spatial arrangements and settings enable certain types of inquiries, relationships, subjects and practices while rendering others difficult or impossible. Social work uses and is conditioned by inherently political spaces. Employing the concept of mediation, this chapter explores how spaces are used and interpreted in social work with vulnerable families. The chapter shows how practices, relationships and knowledge are mediated in three common places in social work with children and families: The car, the home and the office. Cars sustain mobility and can provide potential careful action scripts allowing and sustaining inattentive attentiveness, which can incite disclosure and hence significant insight into the life of children. The home is appropriated as a safe space for conversations and as an assemblage of socio-material pieces mediating interpretations of needs. Potential bureaucratic and authoritative office spaces are rearranged, and proximities created aiming at creating confidential spaces that are sensitive towards people in need. In conclusion, we discuss how the spatial practices and interpretations distribute care responsibilities to parents and risk side-lining alternative and potentially caring responses and how this relates to the current political climate emphasising cost-efficiency.