On the Logic of ‘New’ Welfare Practice: An Ethnographic Case Study of the ‘New Welfare Intermediaries’

Abstract

The joined-up working research literature consistently emphasizes inter-professional barriers to co- operation, and presents joined-up work as a worthwhile though largely unproductive activity. This reflects the extent to which it uses the sociology of professions literature, which construes ‘social closure’ goals and ‘boundary maintenance’ activities as key elements of welfare professional work, as its epistemological reference point. It also reflects the extent to which this literature has hitherto been based on analyses of joined-up working between welfare professionals with professional territory to defend. This paper presents an ethnographic account of how one ‘floating support worker’ worked as a ‘welfare intermediary’ at the interstices between (rather than within) the welfare professions. The paper represents welfare intermediaries as noteworthy for two reasons. First, they are shown to employ working practices that constitute the antithesis of ‘boundary maintaining’ welfare professional work. Second, understanding the nature of these working practices is important because the government is now promoting the logic of their ‘new’ welfare practice as a way to tackle the ‘joined-up causes of social exclusion’.