Kontingenzprobleme sozialer Interventionen

Welfare state moderated social interventions into private life are faced with high expectations, which are often unrealistic, as this article shows for the case of child endangerment. A multidimensional analysis of this field, in which the diagnosis of institutional malfunction was put forward recently, shows considerable problems of contingency for such interventions. This results from field specific institutional regulations and organizational arrangements as well as peculiarities of the private sphere, at which the interventions are aiming. Due to those problems of contingency, optimal intervention trajectories cannot be taken for granted. The article develops this hypothesis on the basis of a scattered (and only marginally sociologically reasoned) technical literature and preliminary findings of an empirical field research currently undertaken. It highlights the restrictions, tensions and contradictions which render the interventional dynamic as a process remarkably governed by chance.