A multi-layered repertoire: professional perspectives in times of workfare

ABSTRACT

All over the western world, welfare states are eroded and reshaped. Little empirical evidence have shown how these shifts in the welfare state conjunct with or are an issue for professional practices. To shed light to this matter, we will discuss a study conducted in a public welfare centre in Ghent. Particular attention has been given to the professional perspectives of the social workers. Professional perspectives serve as frameworks of reference. They grasp the ideas about welfare goals as well as the strategies to attain these goals. They enable us to analyse whether and how workfare becomes visible in the ideas about practice of social workers. The findings point out that the ways in which social workers make sense of professional practice is complex and multi-layered. Challenged by the societal and political climate, our empirically based contentions in this particular public institution hand out evidence that social workers do not shift en masse to the side of workfare logics. Instead, social workers interlace and intermingle professional perspectives from different methodological and political origins.

ABSTRACT

Er is weinig onderzoek dat nagaat wat de evolutie van welvaartstaat naar workfare doet met de professionele perspectieven van sociaal werkers. Dit onderzoek brengt zes professionele perspectieven van sociaal werkers van OCMW Gent in kaart. Ze vormen de kaders die sociaal werkers inspireren in hun dagelijkse interventies. Het onderzoek brengt aan het licht dat het repertoire van sociaal werkers bestaat uit een gelaagdheid van diverse en soms tegengestelde perspectieven. Hierin zijn ideologische perspectieven minder prominent aanwezig dan methodische perspectieven. De studie levert geen afdoende bewijs dat sociaal werkers massaal opschuiven naar een workfare perspectief.

KEYWORDS:

• Depoliticisation
• methods
• professional perspectives
• professionalism
• welfare state

KEYWORDS:

• depolitisering
• methoden sociaal werk
• professionele perspectieven
• professionaliteit
• welvaartstaat

Acknowledgements

Many thanks to Jo Boonen for the help on figure 2.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Fund for Applied Research of the University College Ghent.

Notes on contributors

Steven Brandt

Steven Brandt (MSW) is a lecturer at the department of Social Work at the University College Ghent (Belgium).

Rudi Roose

Rudi Roose is Associate Professor at the Department of Social Work and Social Pedagogy at Ghent University (Belgium).

Griet Verschelden

Griet Verschelden has a PhD in social pedagogy. She is head of the department of Social Work at the University College Ghent (Belgium).