Neoliberal Managerialism and the Human Services

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mimi Abramovitz ◽  
Jennifer Zelnick
Keyword(s):  
Human Service ◽  
Human Services ◽  
Well Being ◽  
The United States ◽  
Budget Cuts ◽  
Service Workers ◽  
Human Service Agencies ◽  
The Social ◽  
Economic Collapse ◽  
The New Deal

Neoliberalism emerged in the United States in the mid-1970s in response to the second economic crisis of the 20th century. Seeking to undo the New Deal enacted in response to the 1930s economic collapse, neoliberalism redistributes income upward and downsizes the state using tax cuts, budget cuts, privatization, devolution, and reducing the power of social movements. Privatization, a key neoliberal strategy, is typically understood as shifting responsibility for entitlement programs such as Social Security or Medicare from public to the private sector. Managerialism (i.e., the adoption of business principle and practices) refers to operationalization privatization within human service agencies. The growing dominance of managerialist productivity, accountability efficiency, and standardization has redefined the landscape of the human services The troubling impact on service provision, working conditions, and the well-being of human service workers leads us to ask if the social work mission will become a casualty of managerialism.

Client Empowerment in the Human Services: Personal and Professional Agenda

1989 ◽  
Vol 25 (4) ◽  
pp. 499-521 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yeheskel Hasenfeld ◽  
Mark A. Chesler
Keyword(s):  
Human Service ◽  
Human Services ◽  
Service Providers ◽  
Professional Lives ◽  
Life Chances ◽  
Human Service Providers ◽  
Human Service Agencies ◽  
The Social ◽  
Action Researcher ◽  
Autobiographical Accounts

The authors juxtapose autobiographical accounts of their personal and professional lives to examine the interplay of their personas and work in the social sciences. Chesler is an action researcher and change agent who focuses primarily on young people and their parents and on those providing them human services. Hasenfeld is an academic who focuses primarily on relations between clients and human service providers and on the systemic changes needed to improve these relations. They share domain assumptions, particularly a belief in the “good” society based on justice, social equality, and respect for diversity, are committed to improving the life chances of the oppressed and disadvantaged, and believe that empowering the clients of human service agencies is crucial to improving the effectiveness and responsiveness of such organizations.

Social Relations of Production and Consumption in the Human Service Occupations

1978 ◽  
Vol 8 (3) ◽  
pp. 453-463 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gelvin Stevenson
Keyword(s):  
Social Relations ◽  
Human Service ◽  
Human Services ◽  
Social Institutions ◽  
Service Industries ◽  
Service Workers ◽  
Production And Consumption ◽  
The Social ◽  
Marxist Analysis ◽  
And Control

This paper presents a Marxist analysis of human service occupations. As the forces of monopoly capitalism increased the need for human services and destroyed the social institutions which previously satisfied those needs, employment in the human service industries grew rapidly, and may now exceed that in manufacturing. The nature of human services is discussed: production and consumption occur simultaneously; the social relations of consumption and production are closely related; and service workers play a direct social control role. These characteristics generate contradictions between service and control in service work, and between service workers' roles as both oppressed workers and oppressors. Discussions of the ideologies impacting on the relationships between workers and “clients,” the dynamics of these relationships, and the struggles to which they give rise conclude the paper.

Social policy: models, directions, and features of the implementation

2020 ◽  
pp. 34-39
Author(s):  
Svetlana Nikolaevna Ispulova
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Social Support ◽  
Social Policy ◽  
Economically Disadvantaged ◽  
Well Being ◽  
The United States ◽  
Social State ◽  
The Social ◽  
Policy Models

The article is devoted to the main models and ways of forming social well-being as an indicator of the social state. The author draws attention to the ongoing measures of social support for economically disadvantaged citizens in Russia and the United States.

Family Planning

2021 ◽  
pp. 40-65
Author(s):  
Emily Klancher Merchant
Keyword(s):  
Family Planning ◽  
Birth Control ◽  
Human Population ◽  
The United States ◽  
Demographic Research ◽  
The Public ◽  
Interdisciplinary Field ◽  
Carnegie Corporation ◽  
The Social ◽  
The New Deal

Chapter 2 documents the establishment of demography, the social science of human population dynamics, in the United States during the 1930s. It contends that this interdisciplinary field was able to build an institutional structure because of support from eugenicist Frederick Osborn, who saw in demography an ally for the creation of a postracial democratic version of eugenics. Osborn’s new brand of eugenics emphasized birth control rather than sterilization and worked through the private sector rather than the public sector. He fused birth control advocacy with eugenics in a strategy he termed “family planning,” which signaled reproductive autonomy in the context of social control. Osborn secured patronage for demography from the Milbank Memorial Fund and the Carnegie Corporation, and an audience for demographic research in the New Deal welfare state. He leveraged his influence to focus demography’s research program on producing support for his family planning–based eugenic project.

The Wages of Sin

2021 ◽  
pp. 227-246
Author(s):  
Kathleen Wellman
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
United Nations ◽  
The United States ◽  
League Of Nations ◽  
Human Condition ◽  
Modern World ◽  
Modern Culture ◽  
The Social ◽  
The New Deal ◽  
Unique Ability

For these Christian histories, humanity endured punishment for its sins in the first half of the twentieth century. Bad ideas, rooted in a failure to adhere to biblical Christianity, bore horrifying fruit. These textbooks condemn liberalism as the root of evil forms of government—socialism, fascism, and totalitarianism—with little distinction among them. They use this period to define fundamental dichotomies—evil socialists versus godly capitalists, deplorable liberals versus admirable conservatives. Efforts to negotiate peace or maintain it—the Peace of Versailles, the League of Nations, and the United Nations—were reprehensible, reflecting a misplaced desire to remediate the human condition. The United States even made such efforts in the New Deal, which these curricula repudiate. Humanism penetrated modern culture through education, particularly in the social sciences. Evangelicals’ understanding of biblical prophecies gave them a unique ability to weigh and condemn the evils of the modern world.

Social enterprise and the well-being of young people not in education, employment or training

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Steve Coles
Keyword(s):  
Risk Factors ◽  
Young People ◽  
Social Enterprise ◽  
Social Impact ◽  
Well Being ◽  
County Council ◽  
Social Enterprises ◽  
Budget Cuts ◽  
The Social

This chapter examines how social enterprises can improve the well-being of young people who are not in education, employment or training (NEET). NEET or NEETs refer to young people aged 16–24 who are not in education, employment or training. There are two subcategories of NEETs: unemployed young people (those who are actively seeking work) and economically inactive young people (those who have not actively sought work recently and/or are unable to start work imminently). The chapter first explains what we mean by ‘NEET’, ‘well-being’ and ‘social enterprise’ before providing an overview of the prevalence and make-up of the NEET population. It then considers the risk factors of becoming NEET and the consequences of NEET status, along with the social impact of social enterprises. It also uses the case of the Cambridgeshire County Council in Scotland to show how budget cuts adversely affect NEETs and concludes by emphasising the importance of entrepreneurship for NEETs.

Voluntarism

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dennis L. Poole
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Social Support ◽  
Nonprofit Organizations ◽  
Human Service ◽  
The United States ◽  
Support Networks ◽  
Western Society ◽  
Greco Roman ◽  
Human Service Agencies ◽  
Service Agencies

Voluntarism can be interpreted at the levels of values, structure, and ideology. In Western society, voluntarism rests heavily on secular and religious values originating in both Greco-Roman and Judeo-Christian traditions. Today the voluntary sector in the United States can be divided into five main types: social support networks, grassroots associations, nonprofit organizations, human service agencies, and private foundations. At the level of ideology, voluntarism can be interpreted as “civil society.”

scholarly journals The Changing and Challenging Environment of Nonprofit Human Services: Implications for Governance and Program Implementation

2016 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 63-76 ◽  
Author(s):  
Steven Rathgeb Smith ◽  
Susan D. Phillips
Keyword(s):  
Child Protection ◽  
Human Service ◽  
Human Services ◽  
Business Models ◽  
Community Care ◽  
Service Providers ◽  
Safety Net ◽  
Order Effects ◽  
Human Service Agencies ◽  
Service Agencies

AbstractNonprofit human service agencies are an essential part of the social safety net and their role in many policy fields such as community care, workforce development, and disability services is growing. The funding, delivery and entire configuration of human services systems is in transition in the US, as in many other countries, albeit with great variation depending upon local and regional circumstances. Consequently, nonprofit human service agencies need to develop sustainable program and business models that are also responsive to the heightened expectations on transparency and accountability. In addition, policymakers and government officials will need to work closely with nonprofit human service agencies in order to ensure effective and efficient service delivery. Drawing on evidence from the policy and nonprofit literatures, this brief offers a set of hypotheses about the implications, and possible paradoxes, for the nonprofit sector that are likely to emerge from the increasingly competitive environment among service providers and corresponding pressure by public and private funders for more collaboration among agencies. We explore both public policy for nonprofits in human services and strategic responses by this sector, considering the first order effects designed to enable nonprofits to adapt to a reconfigured model, and the second order effects in which governments and nonprofits address the consequences of the first round. These effects are likely to vary by organizational size and by service field, resulting in quite different outcomes and relationships with government for large multi-service agencies and those in highly regulated fields such as child protection versus small nonprofits, particularly in fields such as community care with closer connections to the informal sector.

The Corporatisation of the United States Welfare State

1991 ◽  
Vol 20 (2) ◽  
pp. 157-171 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Stoesz ◽  
Howard Karger
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Welfare State ◽  
Social Welfare ◽  
Human Service ◽  
Human Services ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Us ◽  
The Future ◽  
Philosophical Background

ABSTRACTThis article examines the increasing importance of human service corporations within the American welfare state. In particular, the article investigates the historical and philosophical background of the corporatisation of welfare, the expanding social welfare market, and the scope of human service corporations. The consequence of corporatisation, including standardisation, commodification, and the oligarchic nature of human services are also examined. Lastly, the authors explore the implications of corporatisation for the future of the US welfare state.

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