Hjörne E, Juhila K, van Nijnatten C. Negotiating dilemmas in the practices of street‐level welfare work Int J Soc Welfare 2010: 19: 303–309 © 2010 The Author(s), Journal compilation © 2010 Blackwell Publishing Ltd and International Journal of Social Welfare. The theme of this mini‐symposium is based on the core ideas of two influential books published about 30 years ago, namely Michael Lipsky'sStreet‐Level Bureaucracy – Dilemmas of the Individual in Public Services (1980) and Jeffrey Prottas'sPeople‐Processing – The Street‐Level Bureaucrat in Public Service Bureaucracies (1979). In these books, three dilemmas were identified that have great importance for welfare workers' position as mediators between institutions and citizens: autonomy versus control, responsiveness versus standardisation, and demand versus supply. In this editorial, we discuss these dilemmas with regard to the present context of street‐level welfare work, which is strongly influenced by managerialist policies (also called new public management). It is emphasised that in the era of managerialism, the dilemmas should be approached as empirical matters: how they are present, talked into being and negotiated in naturally occurring practices of street‐level welfare work, and with what consequences.
Participation of children and parents is a central notion in child and family social work. This paper reports on a research dealing with how the participative paradigm comes to the fore in the practice of report writing in the work with looked‐after children. As social work is essentially a language‐centred activity, report writing is a core skill in social work. A participative practice of report writing would imply that the perspective of the children and parents is present in the reports. The results of our research show that a participatory approach to writing reports is not self‐evident. On the one hand, the practice of report writing shows a big diversity in the way the client's perspectives are given attention. On the other hand, the incorporation of the client's voice does not necessarily stand for a participatory approach because it may be used to strengthen professional views rather than clarify clients' perspectives. The case is made in such a way that a participatory approach of child and family social work demands more attention to the practice of writing reports.
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