Time,Temporality and Child Welfare

Abstract

This article presents data from a recently completed ethnographic study conducted in a British metropolitan social services department between 1993 and 1995. It argues that issues of time and temporality have central, but hitherto relatively neglected, analytic importance in understanding contemporary child welfare. It contends that rational `time(s)' may be classified both as `ordering' phenomena and as artefacts of social workers' situated ordering practices. So, while organizational rhythms form temporal patterns, social workers also make considerable use of rational time(s) in the construction of various types of accounts, particularly those of an `exonerative' nature. These references serve not only to preserve institutional realities, but also function as moral accounts, which maintain the consistency of the social workers' `altruistic' professional discourse during the course of morally tainted rationing activities.