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Centre for Policy on Ageing | |
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Direct payments and social work practice
— the significance of 'street-level bureaucracy' in determining eligibility | | Author(s) | Kathryn Ellis |
| Journal title | British Journal of Social Work, vol 37, no 3, April 2007 |
| Pages | pp 405-422 |
| Source | http://bjsw.oxfordjournals.org |
| Keywords | Community care ; Social security benefits ; Usage [services] ; Attitude ; Social workers ; Management [care] ; Social Services Departments ; Evaluation. |
| Annotation | Sponsored both by government intent on fiscal restraint and user movements keen to extend choice and control, "cash for care" schemes are replacing direct services across mature welfare states. Recent legislation on direct payments, which has enacted the UK version of cash-for-care, has attracted considerable research interest in the UK. Previous studies point to a number of tensions for social workers in the implementation process which give rise, in turn, to considerable uncertainty, even hostility, on the part of front-line staff. This article discusses findings of a study of assessment and care management practice in one English council. It seeks to make sense of social workers' approach to the allocation of direct payments by reference to Lipsky's (1980) theory of "street-level bureaucracy". The author concludes that despite ten years of managerialism - in the course of which professional practice has been routinised and regulated - Lipsky's work is still useful in analysing front=line behaviour around direct payments. (RH). |
| Accession Number | CPA-070614203 A |
| Classmark | PA: JH: QLD: DP: QR: QA: PF: 4C |
Data © Centre for Policy on Ageing |
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| ...from the Ageinfo database published by Centre for Policy on Ageing. |
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