ABSTRACT
The Australian community services, as in other countries, have undergone rapid and profound change since the 1980s, with transformation of the sector at the organizational, practice and labour force levels. As a result of the increasing domination of neo-liberal ideologies and the impacts of globalization, the role and nature of government altered, as did the broad mandate of social welfare, often through the increased use of market-based policies (McDonald 2006). In what has become known as the human services, significant modifications occurred to the ways in which programmes and services were configured, structured and delivered. New Public Management (NPM – usually termed managerialism) arrived with its associated programme management approaches and an attendant impact on professional practice, often via case management (Lonne et al. 2009). As a traditional professional group charged with delivering community and social services, social work has also altered, with faith in professional wisdom and discretion increasingly supplanted by reliance on highly bureaucratic and interventionist NPM approaches to management (Yeatman et al. 2009).
