BJSW Advance Access originally published online on July 24, 2006
British Journal of Social Work 2007 37(7):1263-1277; doi:10.1093/bjsw/bcl079
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Regulation and Risk in Social Work: The General Social Care Council and the Social Care Register in Context
Kenneth McLaughlin has been a senior lecturer in social work at Manchester Metropolitan University since 2001. Prior to this he worked in a social services mental health team. His research interests are in the areas of mental health, regulation, risk and vulnerability, particularly as to what these discourses can tell us about perceptions of the human subject today, and how they manifest themselves in policy and practice.
Correspondence to Kenneth McLaughlin, Manchester Metropolitan University—Social Work, 799 Wilmslow Road, Didsbury, Manchester M20 5WB, UK. E-mail: K.McLaughlin{at}mmu.ac.uk
The 2000 Care Standards Act led to the setting up the General Social Care Council (GSCC) as the new governing professional body for social workers and other social care employees in England.1 The GSCC published national Codes of Practice for social care staff and their employers in 2002, whilst 1 April 2003 saw the introduction of the Social Care Register. The stated aim of these developments is to protect the public, improve the quality of care offered by social workers and increase public confidence in the profession. However, such intentions disguise the increase in regulatory control that the GSCC and social care employers have gained over the workforce—intrusions that have met relatively little criticism. By locating these developments within a broader social context, one in which risk and its management are at the forefront of contemporary social policy and practice, this paper argues that underlying the debate is a climate of fear and distrust in which there is a tendency to view people as either vulnerable, dangerous or both. Such a degraded view of the subjects of social work also pertains to social workers themselves, who are simultaneously seen as assessors of risk, at risk and as a risk.
Keywords: risk, regulation, vulnerability
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