Vytauto Didžiojo universitetas Resource management or ignorance of clients: a sketch of gerontological social work practice in Lithuania Faculty of Social

Vytauto Didžiojo universitetas

Resource management or ignorance of clients: a sketch of gerontological social work practice in Lithuania

Faculty of Social SciencesSocial work department

Rasa Naujanienė

Ouline

• Effect of economic discourse on social work practice

• Findings of qualitative study done in Lithuania

“Resource management or ignorance of clients: a sketch of gerontological social work practice in Lithuania”

Rasa Naujanienė, [email protected]

mailto:[email protected]


Economic discourse in social work

• Terminology of social work becomes more and more saturated by words coming from economical discourse.

• Looking for ‘greater economic scale’, ‘efficient allocation of recourses’, “saving money”, “privatization of social services”, ‘saving public expenditures” are just few examples among others.






• Neo-classical economic discourse necessarily does effect on social work practice and even theory and research.

• While market of social services in many senses is referred to ‘quasi-markets’ (Healy 2005: 28).






• The first assumption which confirms the nature of social services market as ‘quasi-markets’ relates with practice that buyer of services usually is not receiver of services.

• The second important aspect is that consumers or clients of services usually have limited capacities to pay for services.






• With limited capacities to pay for the services relates constrains of freedom to choose.

• People who have no capacities or have little capacities to pay for services will be dropped out from this ‘quasi market’ or will choose not effective but the cheapest service or good.





• Based on these ideas I invite to discuss how through research process we can to explore how economic discourse influences social work practice.

• Particularly I will look how manifestation of contradiction between control of resources vs. clients’ needs leads to ignorance of clients needs, particularly those who have poor financial resources.

• Case of home help services for older people in Lithuania.





Location of Lithuania




Short review

• Lithuania is a country which reestablished its independence in 1990.

• Since 2004 Lithuania is a member of EU.• National currency – Litas • National language – Lithuanian

(Baltic language)





Lithuania statistic

• Population in the end of 2010 – 3,24 million • Life expectancy in 2009: 73.1 year

– For man - 67.5 years; For woman – 78,6 • At the beginning of 2010, the percent of

persons over 60 constituted 20.9 per cent of population.

• The prognosis for 2060 is 37 percent of the population.





Political context

• In Lithuania, the older people’s access to social services is far from universal and based on strict definition of needs for care regarding to official documents.

• Usually, real practice is not simply application of rules and laws but is much more complicated.





The aim of study

• Based on contextual social constructionism I conducted study that aim was to reveal the nature of gerontological social work discourse in Lithuania based on accounts by gerontological social workers about the process of entering clienthood.





Methodology

• Social workers were invited to talk about their everyday practice in long-term care for older people.

• Excerpts of interviews’ transcripts in which explicitly or implicitly entering clienthood have been presented were selected for the analysis.

• Six stages of Foucauldian Discourse analysis developed by Carla Willig were applied for text analysis.





Home care for older people agency

• Through analysis I constructed three categories of entering clienthood:‘good’ clienthood,

‘bad’ clienthood and ‘grey mass’ clienthood.






• Control of resources vs. client’s needs was revealed as a dominant contradiction in home help services.

• “Good’ clienthood was related with client’s possibility to pay for services and social workers try to attempt possible clients to become a client of an agency.






• Client’s incapability to pay for services was related with ‘bad’ clienthood or ‘grey’ mass clienthood.

• Client’s needs to get services (as difficulties to live everyday life without assistance) were not considered as main criteria to become a client.





• Implicit elimination of clients who are unable to pay for services and efforts by social workers to justify this emerges in the municipality funded public agency.

• That is a consequence when the public service providers are required to provide more services (implicitly for solvent people) while number of staff remain the same.



For conclusions

• Diminishing client’s needs and accentuation of effective allocation of resources is not the practice only in Lithuania gerontological field.

• Lithuania is the country where social services are far from universal. The agency of home help service presented in the case is the only municipal agency which offers home help services in the municipality with about more than 300 thousand inhabitants.



For conclusions

• Not getting services at this agency means, that aged person who needs home care should rely only on their own, or their relatives, neighbours or try to find some fragmented charity.



For conclusions

• In the context of poorly develped services than access to services is far from universal the market of social services provision operates in way that those who have a stronger financial situation have better access to services while those who have a poor financial situation experience isolation and insecurity.



Thank you for attention!



Documents

Vytauto Didžiojo universitetas Resource management or ignorance of clients: a sketch of gerontological social work practice in Lithuania Faculty of Social