BJSW Advance Access originally published online on December 11, 2006
British Journal of Social Work 2008 38(3):580-599; doi:10.1093/bjsw/bcl371
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Calling Social Work
Nigel Coleman is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Education, Professional Development and Social Studies, New College Durham. He is a qualified social worker who has worked in the learning disability and mental health fields, as both a practitioner and a manager. Prior to training as a social worker, he qualified and worked as a nurse with people with learning disabilities.John Harris is a Professor in the School of Health and Social Studies, University of Warwick. He worked previously as a social worker, training officer and manager in a Social Services Department. His publications include The Social Work Business (Routledge, 2003).
Correspondence to John Harris, School of Health and Social Studies, University of Warwick, Coventry, CV4 7AL. E-mail: j.harris{at}warwick.ac.uk
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Abstract |
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New Labour has promoted the use of information and communication technology. Call centres are a key development in this strategy and are now in use for accessing social services. In official policy, the use of call centres is presented as an aspect of attempts to change the relationship between service users and the purchasers and providers of services. In contrast, we suggest that the use of call centres in social care does little to shift the balance of power. Call centres bring together four dimensions of New Labour discourse: learning from the private sector, cutting costs, technology and consumerism. Three issues emerge from their development: the undermining of social work’s sense of place; the circumscribing of service user participation; the rationalization of social workers. The call centre serves as a signifier of what, it is claimed, the combination of New Labour’s consumerism and technology can achieve. This signification disguises call centres’ properties of efficiency, calculability, predictability and control. Contrary to the rhetoric that accompanies them, call centres may be curtailing service user participation, as well as delimiting the social work role. Accordingly, their use has important, but as yet largely unresearched, implications for service users and social workers.
Keywords: call centres, consumerism, private sector, information and communication technology, cost-cutting