TY - JOUR

T1 - Declientification: Undoing ClientIdentities in Care Planning Conferenceson the Termination of Residential Care

AU - Messmer, Heinz

AU - Hitzler, Sarah

PY - 2011/6

Y1 - 2011/6

N2 - That social welfare clients ought to be looked at not as given, a priori entities, but rather as categories produced in accordance with the policies, resources and options of the institutions involved is established today as a common ground for reflexive and reconstructivist perspectives in social work research. The disestablishment of the client role, however, up to now seems to have met a blind spot. This article will present findings from a conversation analytical study based on fourteen fully transcribed care planning conferences in the context of German long-term residential childcare, concentrating on five meetings explicitly designed to terminate the service provision. We will show how long-term residential care is regularly terminated by a range of interactional strategies complementary to those of client production that can be flexibly exploited in response to institutional and political context requirements. Conversation analysis is introduced as a method that can unveil the interactive practices professionals use in order to balance the constraints of institutional social work against the needs of the individual cases.

AB - That social welfare clients ought to be looked at not as given, a priori entities, but rather as categories produced in accordance with the policies, resources and options of the institutions involved is established today as a common ground for reflexive and reconstructivist perspectives in social work research. The disestablishment of the client role, however, up to now seems to have met a blind spot. This article will present findings from a conversation analytical study based on fourteen fully transcribed care planning conferences in the context of German long-term residential childcare, concentrating on five meetings explicitly designed to terminate the service provision. We will show how long-term residential care is regularly terminated by a range of interactional strategies complementary to those of client production that can be flexibly exploited in response to institutional and political context requirements. Conversation analysis is introduced as a method that can unveil the interactive practices professionals use in order to balance the constraints of institutional social work against the needs of the individual cases.

KW - Social Work and Social Pedagogics

KW - Care planning conference

KW - child welfare

KW - client identity

KW - conversation analysis

KW - leaving care

KW - professional/client interaction

KW - Care planning conference

KW - child welfare

KW - client identity

KW - conversation analysis

KW - leaving care

KW - professional/client interaction

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=79959722154&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - 10.1093/bjsw/bcr054

DO - 10.1093/bjsw/bcr054

M3 - Journal articles

VL - 41

SP - 778

EP - 798

JO - British Journal of Social Work

JF - British Journal of Social Work

SN - 0045-3102

IS - 4

ER -