CHALLENGES TO SOCIAL POLICIES
Pedro Hespanha
Introduction
Social policies are intervention instruments developed by the state to provide for the
wellbeing and social protection of citizens and include actions to prevent social risk
or to resolve existing social problems. In the case of the poor, social policies cover a
wide range of problems and aim to respond in ways which ensure minimum
standards of wellbeing. Although the range and effectiveness of these policies varies
greatly from one society to another, in general the aim of meeting minimum social
needs has failed to come up to expectations. In the case of Portugal – possibly with
the exception of basic education and the social insertion income scheme - it cannot
be said, in all honesty, that minimum social entitlements exist. They do not exist in
many areas such as housing, welfare, employment, transport. Health is a very
problematic area in this respect since, despite the existence of a universal National
Health Service, in most cases the poorest members of society do not benefit from
prompt, quality care.
Social policies targeted at the poorest members of society are implemented by the
social services, characterised by benefits that are difficult to enforce and a low
budget. Most of these services are run by voluntary non-profit organizations in
exchange for agreed financial transfers. Some of these organizations, such as the
Misericórdias, have a long history of helping the poorest members of society and are
therefore able to exert considerable pressure on the state to delegate powers to
combat poverty to them.
Finally, measures designed to fight poverty are increasingly being developed through
projects financed by European programmes or other external sources of funding.
Unlike the current work of the bureaucratic social services, project-based actions are
characterised by their experimental nature and the fact that they operate within a
limited time and space and are normally managed by partnerships between public
and private institutions.
Within this organisational framework, it is important to analyse the relationship
between professionals and the policies they implement, as well as the relationship
between professionals and institutions with regard to the implementation of these
policies.
One initial observation that should be made prior to our analysis concerns the
ambiguous status of social policies regarding their mission to reduce inequality. It is
known that one of the main problems of social policies nowadays, and a source of
great disillusionment, lies precisely in the fact that there is a huge gap between their
stated principles (the rhetoric of solidarity and emancipation) and the practical
implementation of measures (the placebo effect, regulation of the poor, workfare).
Moreover, there is a feeling that reducing inequality and fighting poverty are minor
concerns for the state and that society itself, through its elites and leaders, is not
sufficiently committed to reinforcing these objectives and bringing pressure to bear
on ending the causes of poverty.
Nevertheless, changes have been introduced that are aimed at improving policies.
Charges of inefficiency and the generation of dependency have led to the emergence
of new forms of policies, either in combination with old policies or as a replacement
for them. Essentially, the new generation of social policies favours social integration
rather than subsidising risks and includes: i. the active involvement of beneficiaries
in planning and choosing programmes rather than their passive submission to actions
decided by professionals; ii. personalised rather than standard forms of assistance;
iii. joint responsibility on the part of the provider and the beneficiary for the
implementation of programmes; iv. decentralised planning of social programmes; v.
partnerships with local institutions for the management of decentralised
programmes; vi. an approach based on proximity rather than distant solicitude; and
vii. flexible rather than stereotyped actions.
Finally, it is important to be aware of innovation within social policies and of trends
towards activating certain target groups. All recent legislation and programmes
incorporate the principle of activation and include very specific obligations to make
beneficiaries responsible for compensating for the aid/benefits they have received.
Social workers are the most important agents in this process of establishing
responsibilities and contracting obligations and they play a central role in designing
and adapting measures to respond to specific situations. This is sensitive work that
often involves a combination of separate and contradictory roles – the advisory vs
the supervisory – and a wide margin for manoeuvre and discretion that is not always
linked to clear, straightforward procedural criteria. In presenting the outlines of the
current approach to policies, we intend to reflect on a series of implications that are
relevant to an understanding of the attitudes of professionals and institutions.
1. The new generation of social policies
Over the years the Welfare State has acted as a “compensation machine”, in the apt
phrase coined by Pierre Rosanvallon (1995: 107) and this has clearly proved
inadequate for the kind of social risk prevailing nowadays, such as long-term
unemployment or unemployment amongst unskilled workers. For certain categories
of the population, jobs quite simply do not exist unless they are able to improve their
prospects on the jobs market, which they are rarely capable of doing without some
form of help. These improvements are only possible if the state offers other policies
that are genuinely able to help people (re)integrate into labour market or society.
Integration has become a key word. In general, the aim is to create an intermediate
area between salaried employment and socially useful activities in cases where
compensatory policies have failed. As such, they embody a series of innovative
features that distinguish them from traditional social policies.
Firstly, integration is more than a mere right to subsistence, since it acknowledges
that the beneficiary has a positive role to play in society, namely by engaging in
socially useful work. As Castel (1995) states, it does not only involve the right to
survive but also the right to live in society. By considering individuals active citizens
rather than just the recipients of aid, it introduces a philosophy of citizenship that is
far removed from the traditional paternalistic relationship between state and
beneficiary which generates dependency.
Secondly, this obligation is not one-sided but has implications for society too, in
forcing it to take the rights of the marginalised population into account. The mutual
implications for the individual and for society are quite different from both
traditional social legislation and paternalistic welfare. The obligations are therefore
reciprocal: there is a responsibility on the part of the beneficiary, who is considered
an actor in his/her own future, and an obligation on the part of society to provide
resources. The process of social integration is, as a rule, subject to a contract
between the beneficiary and the state and implies a positive obligation on the part of
the beneficiary but, at the same time, represents an acknowledgement of her/her
dignity as a citizen and actor (rather than a mere beneficiary).
Thirdly, integration is a concept open to experimentation. The employment status
which emerges during the integration process may take a variety of forms, broadly
ranging from salaried employment to socially useful activities and including new
forms of public work, as well as compensation combined with remuneration.
One recent trend in social protection policies, particularly those concerned with
welfare, involves the creation of specific programmes for particular social areas. The
concentration of poverty in certain areas within large cities, even in wealthier
societies such as the United Kingdom, has made the problem of poverty more visible
and has led to the emergence of new forms of intervention aimed at eliminating
“pockets of poverty”. Scarcity of resources has also favoured directing these policies
towards poor communities in which the cultural problems of inherited poverty
feature heavily and, equally, where the work of professionals can help a larger
number of poorer individuals at a lower cost. To social selectivity – the opposite of
the universalism of traditional social policy – geographical selectivity is now added,
representing a major trend in state intervention.
This is only one example of the change in philosophy affecting welfare policies
today. Whilst the state upheld a relatively passive, desk-bound approach which was
highly centralised and based on a bureaucratic departmental structure governed by
strict rules, it maintained an authoritarian relationship with citizens, refusing to
recognise that they had any authentic rights. The state assumed sole responsibility
for intervention, operating in isolation. The citizen was merely a passive agent, since
it was felt that any greater autonomy would only be used for personal gain. In
general, the notion that individuals are influenced more by private than public
interests is the norm in public-private relations.
This new approach implies a more active attitude on the part of both state and
citizens. The social services show greater initiative in seeking out citizens who are at
risk and manage their operations on a more decentralised and flexible basis.
Intervention is based on projects, following the principle of objectives-oriented
management and sharing responsibility for achieving these objectives with other
partners. The citizen, in turn, becomes an active, competent agent with whom the
state negotiates the format of the policies to be applied and defines rights and
obligations.
The changes are evident both in the state and in society. Within the state there is now
a confidence in the ability of civil society to develop autonomous initiatives and to
play a stronger role in organising solidarity actions. Society has become more aware
of rights, there is a deeper understanding of solidarity and new ways of organising
actions and fighting passivity and fatalism have emerged.
2. An institution-based approach to social policies
Everyone accepts that good policies in themselves are not enough. They need to be
put into practice without distortions that may alter their aims and, in this context, the
influence of institutional structures on policies is all too well known. The old saying
“law in books, law in action” reminds us that there may be a huge gap between the
underlying philosophy and planning of policies and their practical application.
Structures that are rigid (precisely because of the economic and social interests that
reside in them) filter new ideas and ways of developing them through their networks,
fostering incremental change (Hudson & Lowe, 2004).
It is necessary to adopt an institution-based approach in order to observe how state
policies depend on institutions when being formulated and implemented.
“Institutions incorporate culturally shaped social norms including, indeed especially,
including those shaped by social class and economic elites” (Hudson & Lowe, 2004:
247). Policy trends in individual countries are both the result of forces operating at a
global level (such as the economic power of the world market) and the previous
institutional and historical/cultural legacy (Hudson & Lowe, 2004).
Institutional factors vary according to the scope of the policies. Marsh and Rhodes
(1992) distinguish between factors determining policies operating on a macro level
(such as globalisation, and demographic change), meso level (such as policy
networks) and micro level (such as particular groups or individuals who negotiate or
apply policies). We are particularly interested in what takes place at meso and micro
level.
At meso level, the concept of policy networks – networks of collective actors which
influence the implementation of policies – has proved very important in
understanding resistance to change and the ways in which institutions and policy
practices are adapted. Policy networks have different configurations and incorporate
different agents – local social forces, networks of professionals close to power,
lobbies of economic agents such as property developers, social development NGOs,
employers’ associations and even certain informal networks and policy users – and
have an enormous capacity to filter or mediate change.
At micro level, institutional analysis covers the period when policies are under
implementation and provides an understanding of the way in which users and the
promoting institutions influence implementation. Moreover, it reveals how powerful
personalities and elites influence the practical configuration of policies. In fact,
“individuals and personalities matters a great deal to the outcomes of the policy
process and in shaping the development of political cultures” (Hudson & Lowe,
2004: 250), an idea which owes much to Giddens’ classic distinction between
structure and agency, or between the solid class, institutional and cultural structures
and the ever fluid dynamics of actions and actors in the field.
The microanalysis of policy implementation is based on an understanding of its
complexity, characterised by its hybrid nature, unpredictability and multiple
dimensions. It is therefore a very different form of analysis to the policy cycle
approaches that are restricted to assessing the public’s opinion of its elected
representatives and the suitability of policies on the basis of this opinion (Hudson &
Lowe, 2004).
One starting point for institutional theory is through the street-level bureaucrats, in
this case the staff working in the welfare system, who play an important role in
implementing social programmes. In a classic work on this subject, Street-Level
Bureaucracy, published in 1980, Michael Lipsky analyses the way in which streetlevel bureaucrats (SLBs), who are in direct contact with the public, reflect and
perpetuate the traditional values of society. For example, the author recognises that
in the United States case officers are influenced by mainstream opinions on the poor,
such as the notion that they are responsible for their way of life, that it is humiliating
to receive benefits and that programmes to help the poor are costly for society.
Consequently, they show a reluctance to relate to atypical groups (the poor or ethnic
minorities) and subtly tend to justify the inadequate aid they allocate in practice with
other reasons that amount to nothing more than their own preconceptions.
However, an institution-based analysis extends further than simply citing the
influence of stereotyping and shared values as revealed in the attitudes and practices
of agents. Their own personal histories may also prove a decisive factor. For
example, the more compassionate or colder attitudes often displayed by case officers
towards users may be influenced by their professional background. “There is a clear
link between the agent’s trajectory and their feelings in relation to low income
groups” (Moulière et al. 1999:62). When the front-line agents are qualified
professionals, as is the case with social workers, this personal history becomes more
complex, since it includes professional ideologies acquired at school or during
socialisation as professionals (the relative autonomy of the profession, the ideal of
service, social neutrality i.e. the ethics of being non-judgemental and respecting
individuals) which can be distinguished from and, at times conflict with, the
bureaucratic approaches of the departments where they work.
Finally, the importance of the ideology implicit in the services must be considered.
This includes, for example, the ideology that the well-being of users is a priority for
agents (benign intervention), according to which services are determined by the best
interests of users and must not be compromised by the biased actions of agents. The
corollary to this principle is that clients must be grateful for the benefits they receive
and deferential to agents, who have a higher level of education, training and
qualifications than they do (Lipsky, 1980).
Another area that has a great influence on the attitudes and practices of agents is that
of bureaucratic responsibility, given that this is an administrative demand in
democratic regimes. Staff are therefore subjected to control (to a greater or lesser
extent) over the legitimacy of their decisions and this becomes increasingly
important as the margin of discretion they are allowed increases. With the advent of
the new generation of social policies this discretion has been significantly extended
in peripheral social services, as previously stated.
One feature of these new policies is the individualised approach or, in other words,
the method of planning a programme so that it can be adjusted to the specific profile
of the recipient in terms of their needs, capabilities and expectations. This intuitu
personae approach requires the case officer to be in close contact with the
beneficiary, to have a detailed knowledge of their profile and a reasonable margin
for manoeuvre in terms of designing a programme that is best suited to the particular
circumstances of the case. This latter aspect is fundamental and justifies why officers
in general, should be allowed a reasonably broad margin of discretion. However, the
discretionary element also contains risks, one of which is indubitably its
vulnerability to subjective or merely ideological decisions and criteria. Contrary to
the frequent assertions of case officers, the discretionary element is strongly
influenced by norms and values which, consciously or otherwise, result in
bureaucratic, political or ethical bias. This occurs above all when the services fail to
provide precise guidelines or administrative criteria to allow programmes to be
adjusted to new situations and when there are no procedures for assessing
performance. In these circumstances the values, beliefs and personal preconceptions
of the professionals themselves emerge and are imposed. A previous study on the
Guaranteed Minimum Income revealed that beneficiaries frequently complained of
decisions made by case officers on the basis of their moral judgements of
beneficiaries (Hespanha & Gomes, 2001; Hespanha, 2007a).
The personalisation of policies and the obligation to draw up programme contracts
with recipients means that social workers are subjected to a dual responsibility: a
bureaucratic responsibility towards their departments and a substantive responsibility
towards citizens who are seeking assistance. At times these responsibilities conflict,
in particular when bureaucratic arguments underlying the management of resources
(savings, cutbacks) prevent professionals from engaging as they should in their
clients’ cases. In these situations, the services manage to ensure that agents comply
with their objectives by reducing their discretion through procedures manuals, verbal
orders, inspections or threats. Bureaucratic responsibility, on the contrary, would
demand that the objectives of the departments, which are frequently ambiguous and
multi-faceted, are clarified.
Professionals may also subvert these efforts to control them, for example by
falsifying and distorting the information they supply to their superiors, knowing how
difficult it is to contest the reports they prepare due to their autonomy. Often this is
done in the name of the ideological principles associated with citizenship which
mould their profession. However, as there are various conflicting professional
ideologies, caution needs to be exercised when identifying the principles justifying
the use of discretion by agents in each specific case.
3. Objectives of the study and methodology
The data used to examine the issues that have emerged is the result of the previously
mentioned study on multi-problem families. The study primarily aimed to assess
how social integration programmes are implemented. More specifically, it aimed to
understand how families obtained access to the programmes, what the social
integration plan consisted of, the extent to which plans were negotiated with families
and whether direct interventions with families were combined with intervention
within the social environment.
A second objective of the study was an assessment of the bureaucratic management
of the programmes in order to determine how the organisational structures of the
institutions managing these programmes influenced the intervention outcomes.
Finally, it aimed to understand how the discretion granted to professionals was
exercised during the process of implementing social programmes. It sought to
identify any discrepancies between the philosophy underlying the programmes and
their real meaning for clients after implementation due to incorrect use of this
discretion. Incorrect use of discretion was associated with bias in the application of
programmes due, amongst other factors, to a lack of departmental criteria, the
imposition of the personal beliefs and values of professionals or department heads,
the overriding importance of bureaucratic criteria or an economy-based approach
affecting the implementation of programmes.
The study covered social work and intervention practises in a Social Protection Unit
for Citizenship (Unidade de Protecção Social de Cidadania - UPSC) in a mediumsized District Social Security Centre. The report on these practices was provided by
agents of the administration at varying levels of seniority: the Centre management (1
interview), the Unit management (1 interview), the working groups management (3
interviews), professionals involved in fieldwork for the local social services (15
interviews) other professionals involved in fieldwork who were not part of the social
services (8 interviews) and social services clients (15 interviews).
A wealth of information was obtained from the interviews, enabling the views of the
respondents to be cross-referenced according to their responsibilities and seniority.
The following section analyses the interview data for the second and third topics,
whilst a more contextualised analysis of the first topic is reserved for the concluding
section.
4. Results
The results include individual issues such as guidance and coordination of work, the
margin of autonomy granted to professionals involved in fieldwork, transparency of
procedures, management of professional time, the trend towards externalisation of
tasks, subjectivity and preconceptions, professional training, models for the
assessment of outcomes and informality. All of these issues affect the efficiency of
the intervention and may provide evidence of problems in internal organization.
Coordination problems
The Unit Director is responsible for coordinating the professionals involved in
fieldwork and for providing guidance and clarification. However, departmental
relations with professionals are highly individualised and there seemed to be little
investment in joint information or training exercises. In particular, there was no
established practice of holding regular meetings with professionals working in the
field for the purposes of sharing problems, evaluating work or establishing criteria or
supervision.
Moreover, it was evident that when the few departmental meetings involving case
officers did take place they were dedicated to resolving administrative problems
rather than analysing problems that had emerged during the course of interventions.
Requests for guidance seem to have been ignored or lost in the twists and turns of
departmental bureaucracy. As a result, coordinators were only consulted in highly
complicated situations that required a response at senior level.
The main complaint made by professionals regarding the way in which senior
managers dealt with their queries was they were never heard. Isolated in their task of
applying a programme to widely varying situations, professionals could only rely on
their own common sense. This problem is even more serious for professionals
working outside the area who have even less access to their immediate superiors.
The most common strategy in these situations was to consult peers i.e. other
professionals working in the same area.
Autonomy and transparency
With regard to the functional autonomy of professionals working in the field, the
manager responsible for coordinating their work stated that it was the practice of the
services to allow case officers a great deal of initiative in making the proposals they
considered most appropriate and great transparency was ensured in the analysis of
these proposals. However, in the opinion of the case officers, their margin for
manoeuvre was a good deal less than this, although they acknowledged that there
were situations in which the seriousness of the case made them abandon the more
cautious approach their seniors preferred. For example, in relation to decisions on
whether to cancel RSI (social insertion income) payments, the existence of children
in a family could lead the professional not to cancel the payment even if this meant
that they had to manage their information strategically.
According to one professional, the more rigid attitudes of managers were due to the
fact that they did not always have experience of fieldwork and, additionally, their
preoccupation with “making lots of agreements and cancelling lots of payments.”
This “productivity-based” attitude towards the management of services is
undoubtedly generated by the government’s general attitude of contesting public
spending, fuelled by cutbacks and savings. From the point of view of the
professionals working in the field, it is the cause of much bad feeling since it makes
it difficult to negotiate agreements with families and becomes particularly serious
when the professional is “committed” to providing aid that is not subsequently
authorised by coordinators or is substantially reduced. Often this discomfort is
directed towards the legislation itself which, as it takes a strict line on financial
support, appears to contradict the stated aim of reintegration.
Time management and outsourcing
The most frequent complaint voiced by professionals was that they did not have
enough time to carry out all their duties. This was not only a matter of being
allocated an unreasonable caseload but also the fact that their routine involved a
wide range of bureaucratic tasks that consumed large amounts of time and energy.
Lack of time can have very negative effects and social work involves a lot of
bureaucratic work to back up intervention, which requires a lot of time to complete.
Lack of time often leads to partial, delayed or omitted records, since priority is given
to direct intervention.
Recent alterations to the distribution of work in the services has led to better working
conditions for case officers and has therefore reduced the stress of managing and
monitoring the most difficult cases. Formal and informal agreements have been
established with some of the NGOs, under which a certain number of families are
supervised by professionals from these institutions, which also relieves municipal
case officers of a great deal of casework. Even so, it is evident that many
professionals are still overloaded with family casework.
Certain problems were cited in relation to this trend of delegating the powers
formerly exercised by the CDSS (District Social Security Centre) to external bodies
through the so-called atypical agreements or formal agreements. One of these
concerned the lack of criteria for monitoring and assessing atypical agreements.
Plans of action and reports submitted by these institutions have widely differing
formats which makes them difficult to analyse, and the structure of the documents
therefore needs to be standardised. In addition, the lack of any assessment by the RSI
Group of the performance of case officers dealing with atypical agreements was also
mentioned. A further problem cited by professionals concerned the unequal
distribution of work between social security officers and officers appointed through
formal agreements. The latter were provided with teams consisting of a social
worker, psychologist, social coordinator and educator to do the same work as the
former and generally dealt with far fewer cases. Perhaps because of this, all the
respondents recognised the advantages of formal agreements given that they made
provision for a more complete and integrated type of work with families.
Informal practices and the discretionary element
As in any organisation, the internal workings of a department are not only governed
by the legal rules which regulate its operations, nor do these cover all the areas in
which it is engaged. To a large extent, a department is also governed by norms
resulting from internal decisions that have become part of current practice:
procedures that bridge the gaps in legal regulations, expedients used to achieve
objectives more easily, subversion of the power structure, short-cutting the
managerial hierarchy, etc. All these ways round the formal-legal system tend to
become institutionalised and to constitute the unwritten rules created by the
organisation itself. Moreover, these unwritten rules may come to represent a
“negotiated order” (Strauss et al., 1963) in the sense that it reflects the different de
facto powers and competences distributed throughout the service and is able to
impose
rules
or
limitations
on
formal
powers
and
competences.
The
institutionalization of these rules allows the informal system to acquire autonomy
over concrete matters and their authors (Selznick, 1996:129).
The existence of an informal order within the services may have detrimental effects
on its functioning and ability to meet objectives. Conversely, it may facilitate work
in the midst of overbearing and inadequate decision-making structures by preventing
paralysis of the services in the face of the inefficiency of the formal order, extending
the resources available to meet certain objectives or resolving or mitigating conflicts
between agents of the service. Non-bureaucratic relations between staff – based on
friendship, loyalty, client interests or external commitments – may ease or
complicate the work of the service but certainly constitute an extremely important
factor in any assessment of its work.
The case study on which this work is based revealed many traces of an informal
system of practices designed, above all, to overcome inadequacies in the formal
system, whether or not it constituted an informal institutionalized order.
We will now examine some aspects of these practices.
Firstly, they included practical responses to the lack of any departmental guidelines
clarifying procedures for specific situations. The absence of a clear framework for
procedures was cited as a serious deficiency which led professionals to depend, to a
great extent, on their own judgements in resolving situations, meaning that these
forms of resolution were very uncoordinated. Uncertainty regarding the most
suitable procedures for particular situations becomes more widespread as policies
become increasingly personalized or individualised. Where there is a lack of
departmental guidance, professionals opt for solutions based solely on close
knowledge, which is difficult to contest. In some of these cases, informal procedures
may result in the case being resolved in ways which diverge from established norms.
A second source of informality can be found in the extremely discretionary system
associated with certain social programmes. Thus in active social integration policies,
of which the RSI is a good example, professionals are allowed a broad margin for
manoeuvre in order to adjust programme objectives to concrete situations. However,
for this adjustment to be correct (and not subjectively biased) it is necessary to have
a set of criteria and guidelines based on experience and transmitted through the
hierarchies responsible for coordinating the work of the professionals (Sousa et. al.
2007:91). These criteria would have to be the result of a painstaking reflection on
procedures used previously in intervention practices, involving the professionals
themselves, rather than a deductive exercise carried out by central departments based
on the philosophy of the programmes.
A third source of informality arises out of difficulties in coordinating the work of the
various partners who collaborate in the implementation of a particular programme at
local level. In many situations involving professionals from other partner institutions
collaboration is only possible due to the high level of confidence and trust that exists
and the ethic of mutual help. The recurrent practice of informal cooperation tends to
generate informal networks of professionals that are recognised as an efficient means
of overcoming institutional paralysis.
5. Conclusions and implications
The success or otherwise of social policies depends to a great extent on how they are
implemented and put into practice in the field. In the social services department we
studied, the professionals most directly involved in implementing these measures
were the social workers. An analysis of the effective achievements of these types of
policies must therefore include an analysis of their professional practices.
Relationships with their immediate superiors and the role played by the latter must
also be considered. Amongst many other aspects observed during the course of this
study and the many approaches used by managers and professionals, those which
follow have been identified definitively.
Coordination with little involvement
Relations within the department between professionals and their immediate superiors
are, in general, very individualised and there seems to be little investment in
collective information and training sessions. In particular, there is no practice of
holding regular meetings with professionals working in the field in order to share
problems, assess measures and establish criteria or supervision.
The scarcity of departmental meetings and the lack of any clear framework for
procedures is a serious limitation which leads professionals to depend overly on their
own judgements in resolving situations or to resort frequently to guidance and
consultation, often with their own peers, since requests for guidance from managers
in certain areas seem to be ignored.
There is a clear awareness on the part of immediate superiors of the need to
restructure the services in order to make them more functional and less bureaucratic
but these reforms are either delayed or very sporadic and it was also evident that they
had no power to influence the form they took and were, to a certain extent, resigned
to the situation. However, part of the blame for the lack of efficiency in the services
can also be attributed to poor work organisation on the part of professionals. The
most frequent explanations they cited in their defence were a lack of time for all the
duties assigned to them and the shifting priorities to which their work is subjected.
Not only are they allocated more than the recommended number of cases, but in
addition their routine work includes a variety of bureaucratic tasks that consume a lot
of time and energy. Rather than a cause, poor organisation of work may be seen as a
reflection of inadequate coordination. As proof of this, recent alterations to the
distribution of work within the services, which improved working conditions for
case officers, have had good results and seem to have reduced the stress involving in
managing and monitoring the more difficult cases.
Outsourcing as a panacea
This began as a very limited experiment, but soon contracting out professional social
work assignments and the supervision of RSI agreements to voluntary organisations
became a strategic approach for the state. Formally the situations are distinct, since
they involve informal agreements, atypical agreements and protocols, but the result
is the same: the public social services are delegating a range of tasks which they had
previously undertaken using their own resources to non-government welfare
organisations.
It will be some time before the results of this strategy can be assessed, but the
coexistence of the two systems has led to certain problems which emerged during the
interviews.
Firstly there is the problem of the very unequal distribution of casework between
social services staff and the staff of these institutions. Whereas the latter have a
limited number of cases, as stated in the terms of the agreement with the local social
services department, the former are still obliged to supervise an indefinite and, in
general, much higher number of cases. Moreover, the contracted institutions are
provided with teams from a variety of backgrounds, unlike the municipal social
services structures which consist of only one (or possibly more) social worker. A
second problem emerging from the interviews concerns the lack of criteria for
monitoring and assessing atypical agreements and formal protocols. The rigorous
control exercised over social services professionals working in the field, founded on
a “productivity-based” logic, has not been evident in the contracted organisations,
given the institutional autonomy of the partners. A more important issue, however, is
control over legality and the defence of public interests regarding individual
entitlements, such as the minimum income scheme in question. Moreover, bearing in
mind the traditional difficulties involved in the supervision of non-government
welfare organisations (Hespanha et al, 2000), this is likely to become a serious
problem.
Binding professional practices to bureaucratic interests
Rather than a binding professional relationship with users of services, there seems to
be a tendency to identify the work of professionals with more regulatory, supervisory
and disciplinary norms, in short, with more “repressive” standards. The social
worker is thus frequently seen as a kind of inspector of incomes or even of lifestyles.
This may perhaps be explained by the fact that controlling expenditure and an
obsession with fraud has become the main concern of the service hierarchies. In this
context, the strategy of the most severely constrained professionals, particularly the
youngest and/or those with less stable terms of employment (e.g. those in precarious
positions or on fixed term contracts) tends to be that of defensively reproducing the
institutional norms outside the institution (i.e. to users) and uncritically adjusting to
hierarchical attitudes within the institution. We could find no suitable indicators to
measure these two trends with any degree of accuracy, but evidence or indications of
their importance do exist.
The strength of conservative common sense
Another aspect that is also related to this general tendency towards a restrictive and
tightly-controlled management is the cautious and conservative attitude consciously
or unconsciously fostered amongst professionals. In general, the work of these
professionals tends to be infused with conservative or even moralistic rather than
emancipatory perspectives on problems. A lack of understanding of the local
circumstances in which policies are applied is also a contributing factor. The most
recent discourses and practices have emphasised the need to use studies as the basis
for decision-making in order to assess the results of actions that have been
developed. Nevertheless, the fact (still) remains that not enough information has
been processed on areas in which this work is to be carried out. Above all, it seems
that neither managers nor case officers have genuinely interiorised the importance of
having local access to these tools. In their absence, they are replaced by a
mystification of reality – constructed on the basis of partial views and experiences
that are nevertheless accepted as authentic by all – as the grounds for decisionmaking.
Objectivity vs subjectivity in practice
Professional fieldwork requires a personalised assessment of client needs that is, by
necessity, subjective and always involves a value judgement concerning the priority
that should be assigned to each case. However, it is not easy for professionals to
accept the idea that their assessments are subjective. On the contrary, they stress that
their judgements are always objective, rigorous and absolutely neutral, since they are
based on strict compliance with the rules.
Success and failure of social work intervention
The success or failure of policies depends to a great extent on the professionals’
understanding of how each person receiving aid experiences their own particular
circumstances and their expectations, desires or motivations. Subsequently it
depends on these subjective and relational factors, which appear to receive little or
no consideration at all, being incorporated into the assessment procedures for each
case.
According to the statements we collected, the experience of prolonged intervention
with a difficult public that has limited success tends to generate a series of negative
effects, attitudes and behaviour in the professionals, namely:
-
Overload and demotivation: given the enormous number of difficult cases
and their persistence in the same area, a sense of impotence may undermine
motivation;
-
Mistrust: amongst difficult clients, the survival strategies of those receiving
assistance may lead them to omit any information that is unfavourable to
them. The effect is to create general mistrust on all sides, an attitude that
seriously undermines the normal relationship between the social services and
the user, above all when the user feels their dignity has been attacked.
-
Routine: the lack of reflection on experiences and the lack of time to reflect
does not allow for innovation or for more attention to the multiple
dimensions of the problems addressed. The same applies to the need for an
integrative approach involving professionals from various different services.
Intervention is not effective in resolving needs because it does not deal with
problems in the most effective manner i.e. does not explore them in detail or
supervise them appropriately. Moreover, the organisation of the services does
not sufficiently value the individual efforts and hard work of professionals.
It is not easy to overcome these attitudes and much depends on how the different
aspects of the intervention operate: i. how intervention programmes recognise and
adapt to the different types of poverty and social exclusion which they aim to
combat; ii. how the services are organised to manage intervention within a particular
area by jointly diagnosing problems and needs, carefully planning the intervention
and scrupulously monitoring the results; and iii. how professionals relate to clients
and value or cultivate trust and mutual respect towards them.
These are difficult but urgent requirements, which involve others in addition to the
professionals and departmental heads observed here, namely political decisionmakers and public opinion.
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