ABSTRACT
So what are the implications for future practice in policy implementation, management, social work practice, and prospective research? We need to acknowledge the limitations of the co-operative inquiry groups as an experiment in the construction of useable knowledge, but I do make a claim that there is evidence from this research that scientific rationalism as a form of knowledge to direct policy implementation, managerial and social work practice is far less helpful than more participative forms of development, based on a social constructivist epistemology for both understanding the complexities of implementing social welfare policy and in the action of implementation. This addresses our primary questions posed at the outset of this book. Practitioners, as street level bureaucrats, can and do use their discretion or agency as actors within the community care arena to practice in ways which has the effect of constructing policy which is not congruent with original policy intentions. That policy is socially constructed in this way requires the policy analyst to adopt an evaluative approach to policy implementation that assumes the importance of all actors in constructing policy. Whilst accepting that the responsibility for policy initiation lies at the top of organisations, an authoritarian imposition of policy is unlikely to be successful. This undermines the scientific rationalist approach to policy analysis and policy implementation that was looked at in chapter two.
