Sections
Home → Volume 5 (2007) → Festschrift Walter Lorenz → European Social Work → Between Equity and Empathy: Social Professions and the New Accountability
 
Document Actions

Metadaten

BibTeX

@Article{Banks:2007,
  author  = "Sarah Banks", 
  title   = "Between Equity and Empathy: Social Professions and the New Accountability",
  journal = "Social Work & Society",
  number  = "Festschrift Walter Lorenz",
  year    = "2007"
}

Full Metadata

Bibliographic Citation Social Work & Society, Volume 5, Number Festschrift Walter Lorenz (2007-05-15)
Title Between Equity and Empathy: Social Professions and the New Accountability (eng)
Author Sarah Banks
Language eng
Abstract This article explores the practical and ethical implications of the ‘new accountability’ (working to procedures, targets and standards) based on interviews with British social professionals. Although similar tendencies are present in other European countries, in Britain the rule-bound nature of social work is more intense. Practitioners who regard the ‘new accountability’ positively justify their views with reference to utilitarian and rights-based arguments relating to the promotion of good outcomes, the achievement of equity, respecting the consumer rights of service users and the rights of other stakeholders to information and value for money. Those practitioners who view the new accountability requirements negatively seem to speak in a different ‘moral voice’, which can be linked to more personal and situated approaches to ethics, stressing the importance of particular relationships in context, trust, sensitivity and a sense of ‘vocation’. Both ‘voices’ are part of professional practice, but the new accountability stresses the former at the expense of the latter. For social work to play the critical role identified by Walter Lorenz, maintaining a creative balance between equity and empathy will be important.
Subject accountability, ethics, social professions, equity, empathy
Classified Subjects ddc: Social Science (300)
DDC 300
Rights DPPL
URN urn:nbn:de:0009-11-10349
DOI