Dilemmas of Identity, New Public Management and Governance, 11th International Research Conference, Luleå Tekniska Universitet.

Eva Johnsson, Ph.Dr in Social Work, senior lecturer.

The School of Helath Sciences and Social Work

Växjö University, Sweden

Is Social Work a changing profession?

We have during the last decades seen an expansion of different kind of new management control devices in the social services such as quality assurance systems and different kind of “standards” or measurements like for example ASI (addiction severity index). This can on a societal level sees as an attempt to increase the transparency of professions in order to allow for public influence over and knowledge of professionals’ working process. This different kind of control-systems can also be seen as a threat to professions autonomy, their power and ability to make own evaluations and judgements in their every-day work (Abbot 1988). During the last years there has been an increased discussion in Social work about Evidence based knowledge and practice. The Swedish National Board for Health and Welfare provided financial support in several municipalities during 2002-2004 to increase knowledge and evidence based methods in the social services (Socialstyrelsen 2003, 2004. These phenomena, “Quality assurance programmes” and “Evidence based knowledge” are examples of increased governance over occupational professions (Hanlon 1999) and of processes connected to how these can claim their expertise and their legitimate area of discretionary judgement in a changing society.

The concept of professionalism has come to be an appealing concept for different kind of occupational groups. Evetts, Mieg & Felt (2006:111) claim that “professionalism is used as a discourse to promote and facilitate particular occupational changes in service organisations”. By doing so, new standards is utilised in order to bring occupational change and rationalisation, and to self-discipline worker in the conduct of their work (a.a). This dilemma for occupational professions; autonomy and vocational discretion on one hand and transparency on the other hand probably implies a changing professional identity and knowledge base.

In this paper I would like to discuss how professional identity in social work changes when new standards are implemented in the organisations. Do these processes of professionalism imply a re - or a de-professionalisation? The discussion will be based from experiences in Sociorama -a large-scale experimental program in developing knowledge in social work (Harnegård m. Fl 2005, Johnsson m. Fl 2005, Salonen 2005, Svensson & Johnsson 2006).