Annual of social work, Vol. 24 No. 3, 2017.
Review article
https://doi.org/10.3935/ljsr.v24i3.184.
NEW FORMS OF SURVEILLANCE IN SOCIAL WORK AND SOCIAL POLICY: EXAMPLE OF SLOVENIA
Vesna Leskošek
orcid.org/0000-0002-2319-1431
; Faculty of social work, University of Ljubljana, Ljubljana, Slovenia
Abstract
Social work in Slovenia and elsewhere is traditionally connected to surveillance, whether directly linked to the work of the courts (juvenile courts, divorces, etc.) or authorised to disturbing people’s privacy without their consent (e.g. removing children from families, their placement in foster families, etc.). As early as in the 1970s and 1980s awareness of the power that stems from these authorisations led to specific conceptual shifts that enabled people to maintain control over their lives despite these interventions. That period saw discussions about the conflict between care and surveillance, a double or even triple mandate of social work, while later on the concepts of empowerment, advocacy, and participatory approaches have developed. The essence of these approaches was to raise awareness of the power used to establish authoritative relationships between experts and beneficiaries that did not allow for problems to be resolved because that would make beneficiaries lose control over their lives. At the moment we are facing a new type of supervision that is no longer linked to the judicial system and legal powers, but is part of social policies, which are becoming more and more repressive. These policies aim at strengthening individual responsibility and an individual’s culpability for the situation he or she is faced with. These policies especially affect the unemployed and the beneficiaries of financial allowances or some other social financial benefits. Consequently, social work is faced with new expectations regarding participation in supervision and in punishing the behaviour and identity of the beneficiary, which leads to significant gaps between theory and practice of social work.
Keywords
surveillance in social work; punishment; active participation; behavioural economics
Hrčak ID:
196182
URI
Publication date:
5.3.2018.
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