Organizational Resource Mobilization: a Hidden Face of Social Work Practice

Abstract

Social workers spend a significant part of their time interacting with persons who are not their clients, such as colleagues and managers in their own and other services, brokering on their clients' behalf. Using observational data, backed by a file-based longitudinal casestudy, these non-client social work contacts are closely scrutinized. The analysis suggests that social workers are far more dependent on other service providers than vice versa. Some of the implications of this situation for the nature of social work practice and social work education are identified.