• Summary: This paper considers the experience of a small cohort
of agency care managers 1 (N = 23) in the context of the ongoing
debate about the deskilling of social work. Evidence is presented and discussed in
relation to post-war studies of the labour process and asks whether Braverman's
proposition that deskilling is an inevitable outcome of capitalism's labour process
has any relevance in explaining whether agency social workers are `white-collar
proletarians' or not.
• Findings: The article identifies that there have been important
changes to the social work labour process, including the regimes of care/case
management and the subsequent intensification of employee workloads and deskilling
(particularly for agency workers). However, for agency workers there are important
processes that have stood to contain the full impact of proletarianization.
• Applications : The evidence provided suggests that 1) social
work is still experiencing significant forces of change which continue to extend the
process of proletarianization; 2) the expansion of the private sector in social care
and the continuing reliance upon agency care managers remain but two examples of
such detrimental change for both social work and service users/carers; and 3)
without resistance deskilling and marginalization are likely to continue.
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