Managing multiple accountability perspectives and expectations in practice. A scoping review of the use of accountability mechanisms by social workers

Abstract

ABSTRACT Social workers are accountable to many different actors (e.g. service users, peers, employer, government) who all have their own perspective on practice and how it should be accounted for. Little is known about how social workers account their work to these multiple actors. Therefore, we conducted a scoping review of recent studies to review which type of accountability mechanisms come to the fore and how social workers use these mechanisms in practice to account their work to these multiple actors. Inspired by the work of Bovens, Schillemans, and Goodin [2014. Public accountability. In M. Bovens, R. Goodin, & T. Schillemans, T. (Eds.), The Oxford handbook of public accountability (pp. 1–20). Oxford: Oxford University Press], we analysed the literature making use of the distinction between three types of accountability: professional, political-administrative and participative-democratic accountability. As broadly discussed in social work literature, the government and the management of social work organisations are influential actors and social workers struggle to implement managerial mechanisms because they are not always congruent with social work values and with the relational and contextual nature of the work. To uphold the professional accountability perspective in practice, social workers use street-level strategies which run the risk to decrease social workers legitimacy and to avoid an open dialogue about how accountability should be organised in social work practice. Our review also shows that although user involvement is an essential value in social work, relatively few studies report on mechanisms that can be used to empower citizens and service users in practice. We conclude that more research is needed to understand how social workers deal with the divergent perspectives on practice and still uphold professional standards of practice. Moreover, we conclude that more research is needed to gain a better understanding of how social workers manage the interaction between the use of accountability mechanisms in practice and the broader socio-political context in which they operate.