Modernising Social Work and the Ethics of Care

Recent attempts to 'modernise' social work have emphasised the importance of collaboration, partnership, and participation with individual users of services and the wider community. However, technical-rational aspects of managerialism have proved dominant. Managerialist approaches to social service administration and delivery threaten important dimensions of social work; specifically its caring and democratic-transformative dimensions. However, social work theorists have only recently begun to re-engage with ideas of care. We argue that closer attention to feminist debates about the ethics of care can make a significant contribution to not only rehabilitating the ideal of care for social work but also to moving forward the modernisation agenda itself. We develop a feminist critique of managerialism, and argue that the discourse of the ethics of care offers useful ways of framing arguments to counter some damaging impacts of managerial reforms.

Orphan Care in China

Orphan care in China was once provided by the central government as a means of social control. The centralized welfare delivery guaranteed some of the poorest orphans to be protected by the government. Since the economic reform, the central government started to relinquish its control over social welfare delivery, new forms of orphan care were introduced into China, sharing the responsibilities and burdens for caring the orphans. Yet, many issues and problems exist in social delivery due to a lack of finances, professionals, and policy support. In this chapter, we will discuss the background of social welfare changes in China, as pertains to orphan care, focusing on the different types of orphans as a result of social issues, service delivery, barriers and solutions. It is claimed that during the reform, the burden of orphan care in China may not be reduced in the coming future, and we offer suggestions to cope with that.