When Welfare Professionals Encounter Restructuring and Privatization: The Inside Story of the Probation Service of England and Wales

Gill Kirton and Cécile Guillaume
Additional contact information
Gill Kirton: Queen Mary University of London, UK
Cécile Guillaume: University of Roehampton, UK

Work, Employment & Society, 2019, vol. 33, issue 6, 929-947

Abstract: This article utilizes a multi-method case study of the probation service of England and Wales to explore the perspectives of practitioners and their union on how restructuring/privatization affected the probation profession. Professionals perceived restructuring/privatization as ideologically and politically motivated, rather than evidence-based in relation to service goals. Against this context, the article outlines the probation union’s organized resistance, but ultimately its inability to halt the reform. The findings highlight practitioners’ concept of ‘the death of probation’ created by philosophical opposition to privatization, but also by the splitting of their profession and the resultant assault on professionalism. The study underlines the unique aspects of restructuring/privatization in the specific service domain, in particular those linked to working with a socially stigmatized client group, but it also has resonance for other public service professions facing the actuality or prospect of restructuring/privatization.

Keywords: outsourcing; privatization; probation; professionalism; professionals; public services; restructuring (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0950017019855229 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:woemps:v:33:y:2019:i:6:p:929-947

DOI: 10.1177/0950017019855229

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Work, Employment & Society from British Sociological Association
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().