Gabrielle Meagher

THE CHANGING BOUNDARY BETWEEN HOME AND MARKET: AUSTRALIAN TRENDS IN OUTSOURCING DOMESTIC LABOUR

It is widely believed that domestic outsourcing is booming. Many believe the growth of market services is a response to increasing time pressures arising from new responsibilities in the paid workforce, and to an inflexible sexual division of labour at home. The interpretation of the consequences of the purported growth of domestic outsourcing has been both divided and extreme. Paid domestic services have been declared: (1) a thing of the pre-industrial past (Coser 1973); (2) a victim of self-servicing (Gershuny 1983); and (3) the last frontier in the continuing advance of the market in post-industrial society (Ruthven 1994). Consequently, the alleged boom in outsourcing has been viewed either as the resurgence of a pre-modern form of the exploitation of labour (possibly based on race or ethnicity), heralding a deeper and more intractable form of social stratification (Arat-Koç 1989; Glenn 1992; Gorz 1994; Gregson and Lowe 1994; Probert 1997; Romero 1992), or as the future engine of opportunity (Ruthven 1997). Unfortunately all this discussion has run ahead of the facts. Two areas of research are vital - one is a study of the demand for outsourced domestic goods and services, and the other is wide-ranging comparative study of the labour relations in the domestic outsourcing industry. This paper addresses the first of these areas. It describes a study of trends in expenditure on domestic outsourcing drawing on an analysis of Australian Household Expenditure Surveys 1984-1993/4. This information is then interpreted in the light of our knowledge of trends in time use over the same period.

What Can We Expect from Paid Carers

People in rich countries increasingly rely on paid workers to care for many of their health and personal care needs. We expect that, in most families, love or filial piety underpin caring relationships, and that these moral bonds ensure good quality care. If paid caring relationships are not underpinned by love, what moral bonds can they rely on? Exploring contract, professional duty, and compassionate gift as normative “resources” for good paid care, I conclude that we cannot expect paid carers to reproduce an idealized private sphere. Instead we can expect “good enough” care, supported by a range of normative resources.

Social Workers’ Preparation for Child Protection: Revisiting the Question of Specialisation

Abstract Child welfare work is a key field of practice for social work graduates and for graduates of a growing range of disciplines. In the present paper, the authors drew on a survey of 208 child welfare workers and interviews with 28 senior personnel in child and family welfare agencies to analyse perceptions of the educational preparation of social workers and other human science graduates for this field of practice. The findings indicated that child welfare workers and employers are ambivalent about the value of social work and other generic social science and human services programmes as preparation for tertiary or statutory child protection practice, which involves investigation, assessment, and intervention in child abuse and neglect. The authors argue that the social work profession must better balance generic and specialist aspects to prepare graduates for practice in specialist fields of high social work involvement, particularly in tertiary child protection work.

Social policy for social change

and that practitioners are obligated to continually evaluate their practice to critically respond to age-related social policy agendas in a meaningful way that respects and acknowledges the diversity, contestability, and ever-changing nature of the social work with older people. Each chapter is previewed by a summary of the issues canvassed. In addition, each includes case profiles, a chapter summary, ‘‘key lessons’’, and to engage the reader further, an activity section and suggestions for additional reading. Overall, this is a clearly written, easy-to-read, well-structured text, which provides an important perspective that challenges current practice with older people. This text offers an approach consistent with the principles of a profession committed to human rights and social justice focusing on practice driven by theory. I recommend this text to social work students and to practitioners in the field who are continuously seeking to make a positive and noticeable difference in the lives of older clients and are committed to challenging the obstacles to achieving this agenda.

Recognition at Last: Care Work and the Equal Remuneration Case:

Despite decades of intervention to promote equal pay, the gender wage gap in Australia persists. A key explanation is that equal pay strategies have had limited capacity to address the subtle, historical undervaluation that keep wages low in highly feminized areas of employment, especially where care work is performed. In this article, we examine a recent attempt to address the undervaluation of care work through a test case of the expanded equal remuneration clause in the Fair Work Act 2009. A highly feminized area of employment, the social and community services industry proved a strategic context for the case. We discuss three significant aspects of the case: the recognition given to the undervaluation of care work; the divergent interests of non-government sector employers and business associations; and strong contestation over who should pay, arising from the government’s third-party role as purchaser of social and community services.

Long-Term Care in Sweden: Trends, Actors, and Consequences

Sweden constitutes a traditionally well-developed system of long-term care, based on tax-funded, mainly publicly provided services. This system has changed significantly in recent decades. There has been some retrenchment in eldercare evident in falling coverage and stronger targeting of people with higher levels of need. This development has led to the informalization of care for some groups of older people. In disability care, there has been a considerable expansion of services, perhaps most notably in the introduction of a personal assistance scheme for people with severe disabilities. These divergent trends in services for older people and people with disabilities have coincided with a convergent development across both care fields: the marketization of services and the emergence of large, corporate, for-profit providers. This chapter explains how and why these changes have happened, and their consequences for service users and for the possible future of social care in Sweden. In addition to the dynamic interaction of state-steering and municipal response that are typically important in explaining change in patterns of social service in countries with multilevel government, “invasive displacement” and “layering” are identified as processes transforming the institutions that directly and indirectly organize care service provision.

Social Work Education as Preparation for Practice: Evidence from a Survey of the New South Wales Community Sector

Abstract Social work faces increasing competition from other postschool qualifications, which offer pathways into social and community services in Australia. This has prompted debate about what kinds of qualifications should be required in the sector, and about the relationship between social work and other educational programs. This article presents new empirical evidence about social work compared with other human service qualifications as preparation for practice. Based on data from a large survey of nongovernment sector workers in New South Wales (n = 661), multivariate analysis indicated that any level of qualification in a human service field improved employee self-ratings of preparedness. However, having a Bachelor level degree or higher in social work had the greatest effect, improving preparedness more than any other individual, job, or organisational characteristic. The findings renew support for social work as the key foundation for practice roles in the nongovernment sector.

Practitioner perspectives on performance assessment in family support services

This paper reports some results of a study of practitioners’ perspectives on performance assessment in the field of family support services. Existing empirical work on performance assessment emphasises the perspectives offunders and/or service users. However, practitioners are a key stakeholder in both service delivery and assessment, and consideration of how this group approaches and appropriates performance assessment can maximize its effectiveness, and ensure the incorporation of their practice-based knowledge about service delivery and outcomes. We find that family support workers are committed to understanding the effectiveness of their work, and use a variety of means to attempt to evaluate their own effectiveness. However, these means are rarely systematic, andare unlikely to provide data useful for measures of service economy and efficiency. This may be because their practice consists of processes to which conventional evaluation techniques are ill-suited. The challenge for providers of social services is to find ways to assess the caring work at the heart of their practice in ways which are ‘legible’ to all stakeholders, including government flinders.

How institutions matter for job characteristics, quality and experiences: a comparison of home care work for older people in Australia and Sweden

This article seeks to understand a puzzling finding: that workers in publicly funded home care for older people in Australia, compared to those in Sweden, feel that they are better able to meet their clients’ needs, that their workplaces are less pressed, and that their work is less burdensome and more compatible with their family and social commitments. This finding seems to challenge expectations fostered by comparative sociological research that job quality and care services are inferior in Australia compared to Sweden. Informed by comparative institutionalist theory and care research, the structures and dynamics of the care systems in the two countries are analysed, along with findings from the NORDCARE survey of home care workers conducted in Sweden in 2005 (n=166) and Australia in 2010 (n=318). Differences in the work and working conditions in the two countries are explained by the dynamic interaction of national institutional and highly gendered sector-level effects.

Australian Social Attitudes 2: Citizenship, Work and Aspirations

Across 13 chapters, the book develops an in-depth and accessible understanding of how Australia is responding to new realities in work, globalisation, industrial relations reform, retirement, citizenship, political trust and family and community life. ASA2 draws on the latest research and analysis of some of Australia’s leading social scientists to challenge conventional wisdoms about Australia, and assesses the impact of John Howard’s decade in office. It also shows how contemporary Australian social behaviour and attitudes vary from those held in previous years and decades and how they compare with other citizens from other countries with respect to citizenship, trust and political involvement. Based on data from the the second Australian Survey of Social Attitudes (AuSSA) fielded in August 2005. Sequel to: Australian social attitudes : the first report.