Negotiating the System: Social Workers in Home Support in New Brunswick
Keywords:
Home SupportAbstract
As part of a larger study we conducted focus groups with social workers involved in the assessment and case management of home support services for seniors in New Brunswick. Among our findings are feelings of being “second-class” social workers reported by participants and the strategies used by them as “street-level bureaucrats” in negotiating regulations to better serve the needs of their clients. The use of such strategies requires that these social workers engage in “positive deviant social work.” We argue that benefits could be achieved if the system was less bureaucratically rigid and more centered on the needs of the clients rather than essentially rule-based. For social workers, this would mean that decisions now taken covertly in favour of the clients would be brought above board and would become part of the professional discretion that is afforded to other professionals working in other accountable systems of care.Published
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