Managing State Social Work by John Harris

Author:John Harris [Harris, John]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Social Science, Social Work
ISBN: 9780429833212
Google: 7viADwAAQBAJ
Barnesnoble:
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2018-09-18T00:00:00+00:00

Documentary sources

I had unrestricted access to a huge amount of documentary data (memoranda, policy statements, procedures and the like). I was also given access to Welfareville Social Services Committee's minutes and all of Welfareville's archive material. This documentary material was used to examine the structure of the social work labour process in Welfareville; to give an historical perspective on how Welfareville's social work labour process had developed; to reveal how the structure of the labour process shaped front-line management; to outline the sort of jobs front-line managers had; and to highlight the significance of their supervision of social workers, because the material showed that Welfareville had not developed specific managerial control mechanisms. In the event, it has only been possible to bring together 'milestones' from the continuous flow of documentary data to which I was exposed. These milestones in the development of the structure of Welfareville's social work labour process, as represented by the major changes in organisation and their impact on front-line management, are presented later in the chapter.

Having access to documentary sources meant that I could collect data on matters which predated the study. The data from documents was thus capable of covering much longer time spans than would have been feasible using other approaches to data collection and key organisational changes to the labour process could be revealed. This was a considerable advantage since, despite their notorious reputation as changeable entities, Social Services Departments are very often subjected to time-restricted, snapshot methods of research.

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