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These Requirements, Especially Those Relating To The Use Of Business And ...


These requirements, especially those relating to the use of business and managerial practices, and the necessity for market forces to operate at the ground level, have been causal in bringing about radical change in the role of both social workers and local authorities. Organisationally, the strategic direction of social work now comprises of children's and adult's services, the activity for children being under the control of the department for children, schools and families, and the same for adults falling under the remit of the department for health. This decision comprehensively altered the basic structure of generic social help erected by Seebohm, and replaced it with two distinct areas for social work delivery. Within local authorities, this division came to be reflected in the organisation of social services departments.
Social service departments are now enjoined to use market principles and employ the services of private agencies, which specialise in areas of children, adults or health, after assessing both the needs of individual clients and the costs involved in providing the required service. Local agencies, as such, have been made to switch roles and become funders of services vis-à-vis their earlier ones of being actual service providers. Professional social workers in local authorities now act more as assessors, coordinators and inspectors of provided services rather than as direct service providers, (their primary function in the earlier dispensation). The Children's Act 1989, for example, requires social services departments to identify and support children in need in their area and to protect children who may be at risk from harm. This work is undertaken by qualified social workers who may be employed by local authorities directly or obtained from specialist agencies such as the NSPCC (National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children) and other organisations authorised by local authorities to provide this kind of services. Frontline social workers are thus required to act as mini managers and are made accountable for budgets, targets, appointing agencies, monitoring their work and ensuring delivery.
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