Policy alienation in frontline social work – a study of social workers’ responses to a major anticipated social and health care reform in Finland
Publiceringsår
2022
Upphovspersoner
Tammelin, Mia; Mänttäri-van der Kuip, Maija
Abstrakt
Change in the policy and ideology governing social and health care has been much debated in the Western welfare states, including in Finland, where the public sector has witnessed a shift towards a market and managerial ideology in a climate of austerity. These changes affect organisations as well as individual workers. Social workers implement social policies in their daily work, and are thus positioned in between policies and clients. This may expose them to feelings of unease in the implementation of certain policies. In this study, we apply the policy alienation framework of Tummers and colleagues (2009. “Policy Alienation of Public Professionals: Application in a new Public Management Context.” Public Management Review 11 (5): 685–706) in analysing the responses of social workers to a major social and health care reform prepared in Finland in 2015–2019. By applying problem-driven content analysis to interview data, we study how social workers responded to the proposals for reform, and how the two dimensions of policy alienation, i.e. experiences of meaninglessness and powerlessness, were manifested. The findings suggest that policy alienation is widespread among social workers and that experiences of powerlessness and meaninglessness are common. The social workers experienced powerlessness in relation to specific policies and practices. They also viewed the reform as meaningless, as it lacked socially relevant goals.
Visa merOrganisationer och upphovspersoner
Tammerfors universitet
Tammelin Mia
Publikationstyp
Publikationsform
Artikel
Moderpublikationens typ
Tidning
Artikelstyp
En originalartikel
Målgrupp
VetenskapligKollegialt utvärderad
Kollegialt utvärderadUKM:s publikationstyp
A1 Originalartikel i en vetenskaplig tidskriftPublikationskanalens uppgifter
Journal
Volym
16
Nummer
1
Sidor
19-35
ISSN
Publikationsforum
Publikationsforumsnivå
1
Öppen tillgång
Öppen tillgänglighet i förläggarens tjänst
Nej
Parallellsparad
Ja
Övriga uppgifter
Vetenskapsområden
Psykologi; Social- och samhällspolitik
Nyckelord
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Publiceringsland
Förenade kungariket
Förlagets internationalitet
Internationell
Språk
engelska
Internationell sampublikation
Nej
Sampublikation med ett företag
Nej
DOI
10.1080/17496535.2021.1977836
Publikationen ingår i undervisnings- och kulturministeriets datainsamling
Ja