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Summary: This article details how social work with older people is disappearing whilst also being supplanted by seemingly more cost-effective forms of intervention in the UK. This has included the use of higher numbers of unqualified staff in roles once completed by qualified social workers, alongside highly rationed interventions that utilise fewer staff or associate welfare professionals, including those drawn from health care. Findings: Such reforms represent important changes embedded within neo-liberal inspired professional discursive practices. These include the biomedicalization of ageing and associate narrow gaze interpretations of social care needs that privilege pathology and risk. For social work there has also occurred an ongoing retreat from older adults within communities: from care managed and personalised support to the extension of ‘risk averse’ safeguarding and promotion of personal autonomy and informal care. Rather than represent a break with the past such socially constructed and politically motivated reforms remain part of longer held societal and ideological trends. Importantly these include assumptions that older users remain a peripheral concern in contrast to other social groups or needs Applications: The article concludes that the social work profession needs to articulate its distinct role with regard its capability to provide substantive support to an ageing population alongside it’s capacity to look beyond a narrow and unsustainable focus on rationing or the endorsement of self-support, treating illness and controlling risk

The potential impact of extensive privatisation in the UK upon the ‘life chances’ of young people in care

This is a peer reviewed online journalThe article considers the potential impact of extensive privatisation in the UK upon the ‘life chances’ of young people in car

The neoliberal university, social work and personalised care for older adults

This article has been accepted for publication and will appear in a revised form, subsequent to peer review and/or editorial input by Cambridge University Press, in Ageing and Society published by Cambridge University Press. Copyright © The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press.This article critically examines the impact of the neoliberal university upon social work education and practice relating to older people. It appraises market-led pedagogical reforms, including of the training of social workers who go on to work with older adults, such in support of policies including personalisation. Influence is drawn from the work of Nancy Fraser (2019): specifically, her understanding of ‘progressive neoliberalism’, or the improbable fusion of free market ideals with the politics of recognition to create a rejuvenated hegemonic bloc. This theoretical framework is utilized to analyse the prevalence of emancipatory constructs such as empowerment, participation, anti-oppression, equality, choice and independence within acutely underfunded, bureaucratic, and risk-averse fields of social care and social work. While benefiting some older ‘service users’, it is argued that personalisation policy regularly disadvantages or excludes older people within fragmented adult social care sectors. Progressive neoliberalism has helped to promote policies which envisage participative self-care whilst more often excluding or objectifying older adults, especially those with higher level needs

Universal credit, Lone mothers and poverty: Some context and challenges for social work with children and families

This is a post-peer-review, pre-copy edited version of an article published in Critical and Radical Social Work. The definitive publisher-authenticated version Carey, M., & Bell, S. (2020). Universal credit, Lone mothers and poverty: Some context and challenges for social work with children and families. Critical and Radical Social Work, 8(2), 189-203 is available online at: https://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/tpp/crsw/2020/00000008/00000002/art00005?crawler=true&mimetype=application/pdf&casa_token=xSpOQcBuSOIAAAAA:pOJOLpaBDKZXEhkNpuuE38_A8THT4ZmXuL5txUmIewtsX5sT6XUPWhIuOxUFamFw_8nlViq-iEJKiAUniversal Credit is a streamlined benefits delivery system initially introduced in the United Kingdom (UK) in 2008. Conditionality-based welfare policies are increasingly international in scale, and are now widely adopted by neoliberal governments on the basis that paid employment offers the most efficacious route out of poverty for citizen-subjects. Numerous studies suggest otherwise, and highlight their negative impact upon the social rights, lived experiences, and attempts to alleviate poverty for service users. This article analyses the reformed benefit system and wider workfare policies effect upon lone mothers, including as a consequence of engagement with an ever more stigmatizing benefit system, and associated risks posed by sanctions or precarious low-paid employment. It highlights some of the consequences for social work with children and families of Universal Credit: including ongoing tensions and challenges created for the profession by the punitive policies of the workfare-orientated centaur state

Issues of Ageing, Social Class, and Poverty

This is an Accepted Manuscript of a book chapter published by Routledge in The Routledge Handbook of Critical Social Work on 18th January 2019, available online: https://www.routledge.com/The-Routledge-Handbook-of-Critical-Social-Work-1st-Edition/Webb/p/book/9781138578432This chapter examines some ethical and political challenges generated by the increasingly complex needs of an ageing society upon social work. It concentrates on the UK as a case study and critically evaluates related age-graded policies and practices relating to social work and care. The chapter includes a discussion of the on-going ethical tensions between social diversity within an ageing society and the shrinking of formal care provision

The fragmentation of social work and social care: some ramifications and a critique

This is a pre-copyedited, author-produced PDF of an article accepted for publication in British Journal of Social Work following peer review. The version of record Carey, M. (2015). The Fragmentation of Social Work and Social Care: Some Ramifications and a Critique. British Journal of Social Work, 45(8), 2406-2422. DOI: 10.1093/bjsw/bcu088 is available online at: http://bjsw.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2014/09/28/bjsw.bcu088This paper critically appraises the impact of the fragmentation of social care and social work. In particular it examines the impact of splintered services and roles upon employees, service users and carers. The article concentrates upon three inter-related areas as part of a more general critique: first, reliability of services; second, relations with stakeholders; and finally, the identity of employees. Despite differences across sectors and some largely collateral benefits it is proposed that fragmentation has promoted inconsistent and unreliable services, the development of superficial relations with users and carers and the loss of belonging and fractured identities of social care employees. Fragmentation regularly spoils professional identities and generates uncertainty amidst attempts to provide effective or reliable services. Indeed fragmented, disorganised or reductive provisions often generate new risks for the recipients of services

The tyranny of ethics? Political challenges and tensions when applying ethical governance to qualitative social work research

This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in Ethics and Social Welfare on 29th November 2018, available online: https://doi.org/10.1080/17496535.2018.1548630This paper examines problems which current ethical governance processes generate for qualitative researchers within social work. It draws upon case studies and critical theory to detail the unpredictable and diverse nature of much social work qualitative research. It argues that too often this research is pitted against a narrow institutional focus placed on positivist-orientated empirical research and income generation. Overtly instrumental interpretations of ethics - often determined by realist and bioethical paradigms - can quickly inhibit the methodological dynamism required to meaningfully capture the complex and non-binary issues which social workers accommodate in their work and subsequent research. Arguments that policy-led, institutional and professional cultures have generated a conservative culture of risk-aversion within the neo-liberal university are also considered

Mind the Gaps: The rise and implications of cynicism within social work

This is a pre-copy edited, author-produced PDF of an article accepted for publication in British Journal of Social Work following peer review. The version of record Carey, M. (2014). Mind the Gaps: The rise and implications of cynicism within social work. British Journal of Social Work, 44 (1), pp. 127-144 is available online at: http://bjsw.oxfordjournals.org/content/44/1/127This paper explores the notable rise of cynicism among state social workers in Britain. Theoretically, cynicism has been viewed as ‘deviant emotion’ and pathology or as offering a type of employee resistance that may protect or support a person’s identity. Drawing upon case study research with practising social workers, the article looks at three different case examples of employee cynicism. These include the cynic as organisational survivor, disenfranchised sceptic or altruist. It was found that, although cynicism within social work predominately emerges as an emotional response to structural change, other factors such as those embodied within professional discourses and government or academic rhetoric can also impact. Other factors such as risk-averse assumptions that distance the practitioner from the ‘service user’ or colleagues can also have influence. Although often viewed negatively, cynicism can greatly benefit an organisation or motivate a practitioner to challenge normative principles and promote the needs of service users and carers

Some limits and political implications of participation within health and social care for older adults

This article has been accepted for publication and will appear in a revised form, subsequent to peer review and/or editorial input by Cambridge University Press, in Ageing and Society published by Cambridge University Press. Copyright Cambridge University Press.This paper critically examines service user participation and involvement for older adults. It concentrates upon research and community-led engagement for older people, and maintains that despite extensive support and expansion, participation offers a complex form of governance and ideological control, as well as a means by which local governments and some welfare professions seek to legitimise or extend their activities. Some of the paradoxes of participation are discussed, including tensions that persist between rhetorical claims of empowerment, active citizenship and democratic engagement on one hand, despite tendencies towards risk-aversion, welfare retrenchment and participant ambivalence on the other. The paper also highlights practical problems in relation to participative research and community involvement, and questions arguments that participation may challenge the authority of welfare professionals. Critical theory is drawn upon to contextualise the role of participative narratives within wider welfare, including its role in moving debate away from ownership or redistribution while masking and validating policy related goals which can counter many older people’s needs. Tension is also noted between participation projects represented as resource to support ageing identities as opposed to those representing technologies for social regulation and conformity