Peer-reviewed article
Well-being like Winnie-the-Pooh? : About literary ability of child social workers
拓也 篠原 ·
Summary
Written by AI, not yet AICS's view · claude-haiku-4-5-20251001This paper argues that child social workers in Japan need literary ability—the skill to describe situations with imagination and sensitivity—to realize children's well-being. Using Winnie-the-Pooh as an example, the author illustrates how the same facts can be narrated in different ways, and how social workers' choice of language and description affects the nature and consequences of their cases. The paper positions literary ability as a response to critiques about the misuse of descriptive power in social work.
Key points
- Quality of social welfare depends on the imagination and values of the humans delivering it
- Social workers' descriptive choices can distort reality or, conversely, support better understanding
- The same situation can be narrated in multiple ways depending on perspective and literary skill
- How social workers communicate with children and parents, and what they document, affects case outcomes
- Literary ability is essential to the linguistic activity of child social work
Limitations
This is a theoretical essay that does not evaluate any intervention or provide empirical evidence about child well-being outcomes. It offers conceptual discussion rather than data on how social workers' literacy practices actually affect children's lives.
Abstract
Child social workers who work to realize well-being of the child need literary ability. There are two contexts. The first is the normative and ideal basis of social welfare in Japan. Quality of contents of social welfare is related to the value “good” as long as it is depended on real humans who have imagination to “well” or “the best”. The second is to respond to the critique against social workers who have used power of description and violence of description. As to power of description, we can paraphrase it as literary ability of description. To show the above, the author used series of “Winnie the Pooh” as examples. Using Pooh is effective for two reasons. The first is that Pooh has been thought to be living in a kind of ideal world for children, though the evaluation to series of “Winnie the Pooh” has been controversial. The second is that Pooh has had roles of study-guide for many theme. Depending on view point and way of description, Pooh can be written as if he were living in misery. We can have, however, imagination and question against it and rethink and react for the best interest of the Pooh. How to ask the questions to the children and parents, how to communicate with the children and parents, how to magine the situation, what to write on the documents and how to narrate the case will affect the nature and consequences of the case itself. Such activity of child social worker is kind of linguistic one, which heavily depends on their literary ability.