Social work is characterized as a helping profession. Consequently, the nature and purposes of social work revolve around concepts of help and helping. In this article, I explore what happens when the extended family network and friends are brought together by child welfare services to make decisions to help a child. Based on analyses of a single videotaped family group conference, this article offers insights into the challenges and complexities families face when dealing with the mandated task to devise a plan that meets the child's needs. By examining sequences of interaction where friends and family members discuss future scenarios with some cast as beneficiaries and others as benefactors, I show how some of these complexities can be captured in terms of the relationship between benefactive stance and benefactive status. The complexities include ambiguities regarding the relationship between nominated future scenarios and the problem(s) they were designed to solve. Furthermore, participants dealt with uncertainties regarding who was more inclined towards specific future scenarios and thus understood to be the actual beneficiary. Additionally, the analysis shows that social identities ascribed to recipients when resolutions to problems were linked to family members' past shortcomings complicated the acknowledgement and acceptance of assistance.

中文翻译：

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谁的恩人？谁的受益人？——在家庭和国家之间协商帮助

社会工作被认为是一种帮助性的职业。因此，社会工作的性质和目的围绕着帮助和帮助的概念。在本文中，我探讨了当儿童福利服务将大家庭网络和朋友聚集在一起做出帮助儿童的决定时会发生什么。本文基于对单个家庭小组会议录像的分析，深入了解了家庭在处理制定满足孩子需求的计划的法定任务时所面临的挑战和复杂性。通过研究朋友和家人与一些作为受益人、另一些作为捐助者讨论未来情景的互动序列，我展示了如何从慈善立场和慈善地位之间的关系来捕捉其中的一些复杂性。复杂性包括指定的未来情景与其旨在解决的问题之间关系的模糊性。此外，参与者还应对了谁更倾向于特定的未来情景并因此被理解为实际受益者的不确定性。此外，分析表明，当问题的解决方案与家庭成员过去的缺点联系起来时，受助者的社会身份会使承认和接受援助变得复杂。