Home school at the edge of chaos during the lockdown: Social workers’ perspectives

•Various social, human and physical capitals are needed for home schooling.•Pre-existing capitals cannot predict the emergence of successful home schooling.•Homeschooling requires continuous internal and external interaction.•Social workers support families in interaction and promote necessary capitals. As a response to prevent the spread of COVID-19, during the spring of 2020, home schooling replaced classroom education. From the social worker’s perspective, this paper explores how home school was organised among the social work client families and what types of resources were needed and launched to control the complexity of home schooling during the first wave of COVID-19 pandemic. The conceptual frameworks applied to theorise the self-organisation of home school and how resources were mobilised are complexity theory and social capital theory. The empirical analysis is based on digital diaries written by 33 Finnish social workers and analysed using a thematic qualitative content analysis. The findings demonstrate the intertwined combination ofsocial (social environment and communication), human (cultural, psychological andpedagogical) and physical (technological, spatial and biological) capital needed for the successful self-organising of home schooling. These capitals cannot predict the emergence of successful home schooling, nor can they function as a resource alone because self-organisation requiresinteractions between all essential dimensions. The results provide a deeper understanding for social work professionals regarding schooling and organising multidimensional support for children and their families.