ABSTRACT
As was seen in Chapter 3, the attack by Conservative governments on the social democratic welfare state was two-pronged: first, the state’s social spending was presented as a drain on the generation of profits by capitalist companies; and, second, the state was castigated as an inefficient producer of services because of its protection from market exchange relations. The establishing of the social work business took place in this context. It involved the deployment of managerialism to focus attention on economy, efficiency and effectiveness; and this, in turn, meant making managerial inroads into professional autonomy and power, with wide-ranging ramifications for the day-to-day running of the business. As a consequence, Thatcherism broke through the fledgling claims of social work to define itself according to the internal criteria of practice (Keat 1991) developed within its parochial professional culture (see Ch. 2), insulated from the market and from political interference, and with concerns distinguished from those of the manager or the politician:
The Seebohm departments relied above all on professionalism which provided an intuitive feel for the kind of services that were needed. Many of the new processes, for example assessment, were carried out but were not formalised in the same way. Rather, departments relied on professional discretion and much was carried round in social workers’ heads rather than being made explicit. The new structures [i.e. the reforms considered in Ch. 3 this volume], based on purchasing and providing, and the new processes associated with them…have required new systems to be put in place which in turn require managerial skills. Departments have thus been pushed into achieving a new balance between professionalism and managerialism.
