An adventurous journey: Social workers guiding customer service workers on the welfare frontline
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.11157/anzswj-vol28iss3id244Keywords:
relational social work, income support, customer service, professional identityAbstract
INTRODUCTION: This paper explores a reform to worker relationships at the frontline of the Australian income support and government service provider (Centrelink). Reform involved social workers providing guidance to customer service workers and working closely with them in order to improve interactions with people seeking assistance.
METHODS: A case study traced reform in two Centrelink offices over one year, and included semi-structured interviews and observations with social workers and customer service workers. A thematic analysis highlighted the nature of changes to worker relationships over time, and how new relationships supported new organizational practices.
FINDINGS: Customer service workers initially reported both anxiety and excitement, expressing admiration of social workers’ skills and knowledge. Over time, they emphasised the inspiration and interpersonal support social workers provided them, how this helped them deal with difficult situations and was missed when not available. Social workers’ initial scepticism around demands on their time and challenges to their professionalism gave way (in part) to a sense of influencing and guiding workers towards more humanising interactions, although some concerns and organizational tensions remained.
CONCLUSION: Guidance to other workers is a form of leadership which fits well with social work’s relational, supportive potential. Tensions in the welfare context mean that providing guidance is both rewarding and challenging, taking social workers on an adventurous journey involving adversity and (self) discovery.
References
Adams, R., Dominelli, L., & Payne, M. (Eds.). (1998). Social work: Themes, issues and critical debates. Basingstoke: Macmillan.
Australian Department of Human Services. (2013). Using strengths and building relationships. Canberra: Australian Department of Human Services.
Dearman, P. (2005). Computerized social casework recording: Autonomy and control in Australia’s income support agency. Labor Studies Journal, 30(1), 47-65. http://dx.doi.org/10.1353/lab.2005.0026
Diaz, L. (2008). Social work in Centrelink: Inside out of outside in? In J. R. Owen & F. Khavarpour (Eds.), Voices from the coalface: Practitioner perspectives about the nature and challenges of community-based work. Champaign, Illinois: Common Ground.
Dybicz, P. (2012). The hero(ine) on a journey: A postmodern conceptual framework for social work practice. Journal of Social Work Education, 48(2), 267-283.
Eardley, T., Brown, J., Rawsthorne, M., Norris, K., & Emrys, L. (2005). The impact of breaching on income support customers: Final report. Sydney: Social Policy Research Centre.
Flyvbjerg, B. (2006). Five misunderstandings about case-study research. Qualitative Inquiry, 12(2), 219-45. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1077800405284363
Folgheraiter, F. (2004). Relational social work: Toward networking and societal practices. London: Jessica Kingsley.
Global Agenda for Social Work and Social Development. (2014). Asia-Pacific region. International Social Work, 57, 25-30. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0020872814531882
Hall, G., Boddy, J., & Chenoweth, L. (2014). In the shadow of Rashomon: Pursuing polyphony in practice case studies within the Australian social security environment.Nordic Social Work Research, 4,(S1), 102–119. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/2156857X.2014.928646
Hall, G., Hadson, D., Boddy, J., & Chenoweth, L. (2014). Talking with teen parents, hearing young families: (In)forming welfare reform through local relations. Child & Youth Services, 35(3), 255–272. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0145935X.2014.938737
Hall, G., Boddy, J., Chenoweth, L., & Davie, K. (2012). Mutual benefits: Developing relational service approaches within Centrelink. Australian Social Work, 65(1), 87–103. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0312407X.2011.594956
Howard, C. (2012). The contradictions of individualized activation policy: Explaining the rise and demise of One to One Service in Australia. Critical Social Policy, 32(4), 655-676. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0261018311430456
Hughes, M., & Wearing, M. (2013). Organisations and management in social work (2nd ed.). London:Sage.
Hyslop, I. (2011). Social work as a practice of freedom. Journal of Social Work, 12(4), 404-422. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1468017310388362
Kafka, F. (1997). The castle. London: Penguin.
Kennedy, M., & Corliss, M. (2008). Tension at the interface: Exploring employee deviation. Journal of Management and Organization, 14(4), 424-437. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S1833367200003187
Maidment, J. (2006). The quiet remedy: A dialogue on reshaping professional relationships. Families in Society, 87(1), 115-122. http://dx.doi.org/10.1606/1044-3894.3491
Marston, G., & McDonald, C. (2012). Getting beyond ‘heroic agency’ in conceptualizing social workers as policy actors in the Twenty-First Century. British Journal of Social Work, 42, 1022–1038. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/bjsw/bcs062
McCashen, W. (2005). The strengths approach: A strengths-based resource for sharing power and creating change. Bendigo: St Lukes Innovative Resources.
McDonald, C., & Chenoweth, L. (2009). (Re) shaping social work: An Australian case study. British Journal of Social Work, 39 (1): 144-160. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/bjsw/bcm094
McDonald, C., & Marston, G. (2006). Room to move? Professional discretion at the frontline of welfare-to-work. Australian journal of social issues, 41(2), 171-182.
Miles, M. B., & Huberman A. M. (1994). Qualitative data analysis: An expanded sourcebook. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE.
Murphy, J., Murray, S., Chalmers, J., Martin, S., & Marston, G. (2011). Half a citizen – Life on welfare in Australia. Sydney: Allen and Unwin.
Osborne, S. P., & Brown, L. (Eds.). (2013). Handbook of innovation in public services. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar Publishing.
Robertson, A.S., & Haight, W. (2012). Engaging child welfare-involved families impacted by substance misuse: Scottish policies and practices. Children and Youth Services Review, 34, 1992-2001. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.childyouth.2012.06.006
Rogowski, S. (2010). Social work: The rise and fall of a profession. Bristol: Policy Press.
Ruch, G., Turney, D., & Ward, A. (2010). Relationship-based practice: Getting to the heart of practice. London: Jessica Kingsley Publishers.
Scourfield, P. (2013). Even further beyond street-level bureaucracy: The dispersal of discretion exercised in decisions made in older people's care home reviews. British Journal of Social Work, 45(3), 914-931. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/bjsw/bct175
Seikkula, J. & Arnkil, T (2006). Dialogical Meetings in Social Networks. London: H. Karnac.
Spratt, T., Nett, J., Bromfield, L., Hietamäki, J., Kindler, H., & Ponnert, L. (2014). Child protection in Europe: Development of an international cross-comparison model to inform national policies and practices. British Journal of Social Work, 45(5), 1508-1525. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/bjsw/bcu109
Tonkens, E., & Verplanke, L. (2013). When social security fails to provide emotional security: Single parent households and the contractual welfare state. Social Policy and Society, 12(3), 451-460. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S1474746413000110
Trevillion, S. (1999). Networking and community partnership. Aldershot: Ashgate.
Trevithick, P. (2014). Humanising managerialism: Reclaiming emotional reasoning, intuition, the relationship, and knowledge and skills in social work. Journal of Social Work Practice, 28(3), 287-311. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02650533.2014.926868
Downloads
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
Authors who publish with this journal agree to the following terms:
By completing the online submission process, you confirm you accept this agreement. The following is the entire agreement between you and the Aotearoa New Zealand Association of Social Workers (ANZASW) and it may be modified only in writing.
You and any co-authors
If you are completing this agreement on behalf of co-authors, you confirm that you are acting on their behalf with their knowledge.
First publication
By submitting the work you are:
- granting the ANZASW the right of first publication of this work;
- confirming that the work is original; and
- confirming that the work has not been published in any other form.
Once published, you are free to use the final, accepted version in any way, as outlined below under Copyright.
Copyright
You assign copyright in the final, accepted version of your article to the ANZASW. You and any co-authors of the article retain the right to be identified as authors of the work.
The ANZASW will publish the final, accepted manuscript under a Creative Commons Attribution licence (CC BY 4.0). This licence allows anyone – including you – to share, copy, distribute, transmit, adapt and make commercial use of the work without needing additional permission, provided appropriate attribution is made to the original author or source.
A human-readable summary of the licence is available from http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0, which includes a link to the full licence text.
Under this licence you can use the final, published version of the article freely – such as depositing a copy in your institutional research repository, uploading a copy to your profile on an academic networking site or including it in a different publication, such as a collection of articles on a topic or in conference proceedings – provided that original publication in Aotearoa New Zealand Social Work is acknowledged.
This agreement has no effect on any pre-publication versions or elements, which remain entirely yours, and to which we claim no right.
Reviewers hold copyright in their own comments and should not be further copied in any way without their permission.
The copyright of others
If your article includes the copyright material of others (e.g. graphs, diagrams etc.), you confirm that your use either:
- falls within the limits of fair dealing for the purposes of criticism and review or fair use; OR
- that you have gained permission from the rights holder for publication in an open access journal.
