Negotiating dilemmas in the practices of street‐level welfare work

Abstract

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.

Interaction styles of street-level workers and motivation of clients: a new instrument to assess discretion-as-used in the case of activation of jobseekers

“…These findings shed a more in-depth street-level light on how the VDAB-caseworkers deal with two traditional dilemmas faced by street-level workers in welfare state institutions, that is, between autonomy and control and between equality and responsiveness (Lipsky [1980(Lipsky [ ] 2010Hjörne, Juhila, and Van Nijnatten 2010;Struyven and Van Parys 2014). Although the double task in activation to give more autonomy by providing for choice on the one hand and to control clients' efforts on the other is often thought as irreconcilable, the findings show that the caseworkers balance the offering of choice, the justification of limitations of choice, and the exertion of behavioural control and psychological control in different ways.…”

How can we study the integration of networks among human service organizations? Some lessons from organizational sociology

“…An interesting way to analyze the 'ideology' of human service organizations can be to assess the extent that organizations develop a client-centered approach. Here, Hjorne et al (2010) make a distinction between responsiveness and standardization. The first, responsiveness, refers to the extent to which the wants, merits, and claims of the individual clients are taken into account (Hjorne et al, 2010).…”

Withdrawal from the public employment service by young unemployed: a matter of non-take-up or of non-compliance? How non-profit social work initiatives may inspire public services

“…No doubt, this tension intensifies the three core dilemmas in welfare work (Hjörne et al, 2010): supply-demand, standardisation-responsiveness, and autonomy-control. As the number of clients increases, service demand (needs) starts to exceed supply (resources).…”