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BJSW Advance Access published online on January 27, 2008
British Journal of Social Work, doi:10.1093/bjsw/bcm143
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© The Author 2008. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of The British Association of Social Workers. All rights reserved

Article

The Order of Chaos: Exploring Agency Care Managers’ Construction of Social Order within Fragmented Worlds of State Social Work

Malcolm Carey 1 *

1 Liverpool John Moores University, Henry Cotton Campus, 15–21 Webster Street, Liverpool L3 2ET, UK

* To whom correspondence should be addressed.
Malcolm Carey, E-mail: M.Carey{at}livjmu.ac.uk


  Abstract

The paper explores the experiences of a small group of agency care managers, based in local authority Social Service Departments (SSDs). Utilizing a method influenced by ethnomethodology, it considers attempts by agency staff to construct order in their disparate worlds of work. It was discovered that organizational and legal procedures are especially significant in personal attempts to acquire order. In addition, conformity to established norms, including the ability to gain peer acceptance and support (both inside and outside the SSD), were also of importance. Despite some improvements, however, forms of personal order were rarely achieved (or achievable), due to an array of chaotic influences. They included the abundance of convoluted and ever changing organizational and legal procedures; limited discretion and access to training; and brief, and superficial, relations with colleagues and clients. It is argued that agency social work provides more intense exposure to the uncertainty and change that epitomize care management. Such temporary employment may also help to further fragment state social work, and increase the superficial relations and hazards that encompass market-driven public sector employment. It is concluded that agency work needs to be contextualized within broader trends—most notably globalization and marketization.

Keywords: contingency labour, deskilling, flexibility, globalization.
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