Introduction

The professions represent independent sources of power in our society as they are located within the welfare state, according to the Durkheimian framework described in Chapter 4. This is one reason why they are under such swingeing attack from the neo-liberals, with their dogmatic assertion of the power of the ‘market’ over all else. If you can prevail with employing cheaper, untrained, lesser or differently trained staff, then an employer will go there. As for the professions, the problem is not so much with restrictive practices as with restricted access, as recent governments increasingly seek to shift power away from the professions and to monetise all relationships.

De-professionalisation as displacement

There is a mysterious gap between the welcome and widely shared concern that disabled and older people should receive good quality care and the lack of action to ensure this becomes a reality (Williams, 2012; Elliott, 2015b). The decision in 2016 to postpone the funding gap in the 2014 Care Act underlines the low priority policy-makers attach to work with older and vulnerable younger people. This lack of funding for a professionalised version of social care is symbolic of the core problem, namely commodification, the fragmentation of the care relationship into standardised tasks that objectify the client. There is perhaps an underlying assumption by central government that, since social care will not contribute to export-led growth, it deserves to remain a low-status, low-paid activity. Professor Ruth Lister has drawn on feminist theorising around an ethic of care to uncover ‘gendered moral rationalities’, in which economic rationality itself can take second place to different forms of rationality that prioritise caring over economic success (Lister, 1997). For instance, social policies that recognised the dignity of people living in poverty and the value of care-giving could represent small steps towards accepting a role for the state in acknowledging the psychological need for respect of one's dignity as a human being.

The vulnerability – or displacement – of social care professionals can be seen in the Coalition and Conservative governments’ approach to troubled families, which ‘use[d] family support workers, family intervention workers or key workers from a range of backgrounds. Some are from social work and youth work, some are nursery staff and some are teachers, some are police officers and housing officers. Their background is not as important as their skills and their tenacity’ (Casey, 2014: 60; DCLG, 2012, 2013).