ABSTRACT
The big questions have an impact at the coalface of human service delivery. The challenge that we have to address as so-called professionals in welfare services is: How can we ever hope to help people if we ration out empathy according to time limits of an interview or the mission statement of a service organisation geared to cost-cutting? These are some of the issues that have concerned service providers. Working in transcultural contexts with people accustomed to being “given plenty of time,” because time is not equated with money in less-developed contexts, merely serves to highlight the problem. We need to explore connections between private troubles and public issues, but we need theoretical literacy, skills and strategies to achieve this end in the context of the eroded welfare state. In this environment, caregivers can become driven to meet the demands of the marketplace and to learn marketable skills; welfare service agencies are driven to adopt competency procedures, that provide blueprints which undermine creative thinking
and practice. The normative competency approach put forward by Wolfensburger (1980, 1983, 1989, 1991) in numerous publications and seminars on “social role valorisation” thrives in this environment and teaches students and practitioners to adopt technocratic, simplistic approaches to intervention and evaluation. This approach and ones like it are more insidious than they appear at first; they encourage practitioners to become passive service providers who do not make policy or practice contributions and instead remain passive consumers of what the market dictates.
