Samenvatting

The objective of this study is to contribute towards understanding
how welfare and justice discourses become
apparent in institutional conversations where social workers
involved in child protection have dual professional identities:
that of helper and of gatekeeper. In this article we
analyse a specific conversational practice in a particular child
protection context: social workers asking questions about
hypothetical situations in interviews with prospective
adoptive parents. We show the nature of these questions in
face-to-face interactions between social workers and
prospective adoptive parents. In addition, we also analyse
how the social workers manage to integrate aspects of
testing the capabilities of the prospective adoptive parents
while, at the same time, also helping them to become even
better prepared parents. Using the method of conversation
analysis makes it possible to analyse how the social workers
are doing being a gatekeeper and/or helper without
spelling that out.