1 From a collaborative and integrated welfare policy to frontline practices
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Kirsi Juhila
Abstract
During recent decades, Western welfare states have gone through a number of substantial transformations. One such transformation was the turn to active welfare states, based on the neoliberalist ideas of limiting the role of the state in welfare provision and emphasising citizens’ responsibilities instead of rights. Along with this, there has been a transition to a managerialist mode of governance, calling for more effective and efficient welfare services, and an increasing demand to understand service-using citizens as active participants in service provision. Common to these kinds of transformations is that they travel across countries and are often defined as indispensable steps to maintaining welfare states and to securing effective, fair and flexible responses to citizens’ wishes and needs. In other words, these are globally promoted and shared policies of welfare states, which are then realised in national legislation and guidelines.
New managerialist modes of governing have, among a range of other features, facilitated an increasingly specialised organisation of work in health and social care services. The idea is that specialised units of professionals will be able to develop more effective and productive service delivery due to both a specialisation of professional skills and an optimisation of procedures guiding work. However, this specialisation has produced fragmented services, which lack coherence and coordination in individual cases and between services more broadly. This has led to a call for collaborative and integrated welfare services across service sectors and national contexts. The resulting collaborative and integrated welfare policy and its accomplishments and implications in frontline social welfare service practices are at the core of this book.
Abstract
During recent decades, Western welfare states have gone through a number of substantial transformations. One such transformation was the turn to active welfare states, based on the neoliberalist ideas of limiting the role of the state in welfare provision and emphasising citizens’ responsibilities instead of rights. Along with this, there has been a transition to a managerialist mode of governance, calling for more effective and efficient welfare services, and an increasing demand to understand service-using citizens as active participants in service provision. Common to these kinds of transformations is that they travel across countries and are often defined as indispensable steps to maintaining welfare states and to securing effective, fair and flexible responses to citizens’ wishes and needs. In other words, these are globally promoted and shared policies of welfare states, which are then realised in national legislation and guidelines.
New managerialist modes of governing have, among a range of other features, facilitated an increasingly specialised organisation of work in health and social care services. The idea is that specialised units of professionals will be able to develop more effective and productive service delivery due to both a specialisation of professional skills and an optimisation of procedures guiding work. However, this specialisation has produced fragmented services, which lack coherence and coordination in individual cases and between services more broadly. This has led to a call for collaborative and integrated welfare services across service sectors and national contexts. The resulting collaborative and integrated welfare policy and its accomplishments and implications in frontline social welfare service practices are at the core of this book.
Kapitel in diesem Buch
- Front Matter i
- Contents vii
- List of figures and tables viii
- Notes on contributors ix
- Acknowledgements xi
- Introduction 1
- From a collaborative and integrated welfare policy to frontline practices 9
- Examining talk and interaction in meetings of professionals and service users 33
- How chairs use the pronoun ‘we’ to guide participation in rehabilitation team meetings 63
- Working within frames and across boundaries in core group meetings in child protection 83
- Alignment and service user participation in low-threshold meetings with people using drugs 115
- Sympathy and micropolitics in return-to-work meetings 141
- Negotiating epistemic rights to knowledge concerning service users’ recent histories in mental health meetings 171
- Relational agency and epistemic justice in initial child protection conferences 197
- Conclusion 225
- Postscript 241
- Index 247
Kapitel in diesem Buch
- Front Matter i
- Contents vii
- List of figures and tables viii
- Notes on contributors ix
- Acknowledgements xi
- Introduction 1
- From a collaborative and integrated welfare policy to frontline practices 9
- Examining talk and interaction in meetings of professionals and service users 33
- How chairs use the pronoun ‘we’ to guide participation in rehabilitation team meetings 63
- Working within frames and across boundaries in core group meetings in child protection 83
- Alignment and service user participation in low-threshold meetings with people using drugs 115
- Sympathy and micropolitics in return-to-work meetings 141
- Negotiating epistemic rights to knowledge concerning service users’ recent histories in mental health meetings 171
- Relational agency and epistemic justice in initial child protection conferences 197
- Conclusion 225
- Postscript 241
- Index 247
