The Social Work Business

By John Harris.
Routledge
£16.99
ISBN 0415224888

Social work in the pre-business era, according to this book, was
free to set its own agenda.

Then came the neo-liberal policies of the Conservative governments
in the 1980s and 1990s – through community care policies,
marketisation, managerialism, performance indicators and the
like.

Although the story has been told before, no other book has pursued
this makeover – the complete inversion of social work’s aims – so
rigorously and in such detail.

Along the way the author includes a wickedly accurate picture of
the Central Council for Education and Training’s flailing efforts
to hitch a ride on this particular wave; a sceptical, and probably
justified assessment of the voluntary sector’s role in the process;
and an account of the Labour’s government’s modification – but not
undoing – of the business ethos.

John Harris might have acknowledged the relatively larger space for
public, non-market objectives within New Labour’s social policy.
For example is Best Value only to be understood as a
“quasi-business regime”? Yet, when he presses his argument a little
too far on occasion we have a clearer, more detailed understanding
of the essential direction that the social work profession is
taking.

John Pierson is senior lecturer, institute of social work
and applied social studies, Staffordshire University.

More from Community Care

Comments are closed.