Researching the Consequences of Social Services

Social services derive their legitimacy from their objectives, such as inclusion, participation, rehabilitation, child welfare, education, well-being, or mental health. This applies to all areas of study within GRK 2493—whether in the context of disability support, assistance to refugees, criminal justice interventions, child and youth services, community work, school-based programs, or psychotherapy.

Consequences of social services differ from these intended goals. They can be intended or unintended, desirable, undesirable, or ambivalent. This is partly due to the fact that service users  participate in the production of consequences. Additionally, the social contexts in which these services operate also play a role. Some consequences arise directly from interactions between professionals and service users, while others only become visible later, through biographical reflection. Studying such effects requires an open research approach and research designs taking this openness into account.

Research Projects of Doctoral Students & Postdocs

  • Consequences of resocialization: Juvenile prisoners between the right of reintegration and the protective interests of the society

  • Consequences of the probation service for its addressees and their social network

  • Embodied consequences of social services work – Socio-pedagogical fan projects and the construction/transformation of social orders

  • Consequences of social services work in the context of social urban development

  • Consequences of social situation-based health promotion

  • (Re-)Constructions of Being A Parent as a Consequence of Residential Child Care

  • The dispositive of the addressee of youth welfare services (co-)initiated by schools

  • Subjectivation processes of young users in educational landscapes in campus form

  • Organization and participation – the participation imperative in residential childcare services

  • Processes of Social Differentiation in the Participatory Design of Services in Open Child and Youth Work

  • The Consequences of Self-Guided Digital Treatment for Patients with Panic Disorder and Agoraphobia

  • Effects of computer-assisted psychotherapy for therapists as addressees

  • Self-empowerment in the restrictive refugee migration regime – consequences of empowerment-orientated social services work

  • Gendered consequences for legal guardians as addressees of socio-pedagogical family assistance

  • ‘Self’ as consequence of self-help

  • Consequences of social services work in the context of (forced) migration

  • Consequences of outpatient social services for its addresses in rural areas

  • Flexible Assistance and its Consequences for Addressees in the Context of Youth Services Work

  • Consequences of digitalisation processes on media practices of youth work addressees

  • Consequences of individual teaching assistance for accompanied students

  • Conversation-analytical impact research in victim-offender-mediation

  • Consequences of low-threshold settings in homeless services

  • ‘Neutrality’ as a non-professional interpellation to youth work and its consequences for the professional and self-image of professionals and young addressees

5 Central Questions