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This chapter by Dr Mark Baldwin is advance reading material for the following seminar
(at which he is speaking):
‘Practitioner Research: Realising its potential for improving social care services and
practice’ taking place at King’s College London, 30 April 2013.
See also: ‘What do social work and research have in common?’ by Dr Joan Rapaport,
also speaking at the seminar, on the Social Care Workforce Blog.
Follow the event on Twitter: #practres
Reason, P and Bradbury, H (2001) Handbook of Action Research - Chapter in
"Exemplars" Section
By Mark Baldwin (Dr), Lecturer in Social Work at the University of Bath, United
Kingdom
Working together, learning together; the role of co-operative inquiry in the
development of complex practice by teams of social workers.
This chapter provides an example of practice in one form of action research - cooperative inquiry (Heron 1995; Heron and Reason 2000). It describes the process of
and lessons that were learned from co-operative inquiries by two groups of social
workers exploring the tensions between professional discretion and bureaucratic
procedures in the implementation of a complex social policy in the United Kingdom. The
chapter explores the reasons why this methodology was chosen, following misgivings
about prior use of traditional qualitative research methodology. It is argued that cooperative inquiry facilitated ownership of learning by groups of social workers who were
experiencing marginalisation within their organisation. This relieved their anxieties and
provided lessons for policy implementation that could, if replicated, reduce the deficit
effect of the unreflective use of discretion which has proved so undermining in other
areas of policy (Lipsky 1980).
Background
Social workers are front-line implementers of important social policies in the UK. These
policies do not form a unified body of knowledge which instructs social workers how to
act (Baldwin 1997). Much of the guidance and managerial procedure is ambiguous or
conflicting, and is also prescriptive (Lewis and Glennerster 1996). Social workers,
however, deal with complex interpersonal processes, assessing marginalised people's
needs and negotiating "packages" of care to meet those needs (Smale et al 1993). To
do this, they need to draw upon forms of knowledge in a reflective way (Smale et al
1993). Evidence points to social workers using scope for discretion not to implement
policy but to resist it (Lipsky 1980; Satyamurti 1981; Ellis 1993). Such resistance comes
in a context in which social workers have few opportunities to reflect upon the
knowledge they engage when implementing systems such as assessment and care
management. There is a tension between prescription and discretion, as well as a
muddle around meaning and forms of knowledge for policy implementation. These
tensions and the management of them within organisations provide the environment for
this study.
Discretion in public policy implementation
Discussion in the literature on policy implementation (Pressman and Wildavsky 1973;
Hogwood and Gunn 1984; Hugman 1991; Clarke et al 1994; Hill 1997a; Hill 1997b)
about the role of discretion confirms that it exists, although most writers have a negative
view of its effects. Rationalists, such as Hogwood and Gunn, insist their formula for topdown implementation would reduce policy deficit. Most other authors accept its
inevitability within complex bureaucratic organisations.
There are two important versions of discretion. Firstly, there is discretion as
interpretation of rules within complex organisational procedures. Secondly, there is
discretion as rule-breaking. In the latter version, workers use their scope for autonomy
to act in a way that is outside of the statutory authority that defines the limits of their
activities (illegal practice) or the rules - policy and procedures - of their employing
organisation. This tension between rules and discretion leads to an argument around
legitimacy, democracy and accountability (Hill 1997b). When front-line workers use their
discretion they exercise power. It is important that organisations should have
safeguards that track the use of discretion and ensure that workers are acting
legitimately and with accountability. Workers also have a responsibility to reflect upon
this. When social workers assess vulnerable adults, they are exercising a power which
can affect the life chances of people already marginalised through disability, age and
gender discrimination and racism. Unreflective use of discretion could, therefore, be
discriminatory. Because "combating" discrimination is a core value of social work
practice, the use of discretion can raise the anxieties of ethical practitioners.
There is no straight line from policy to front-line implementation and complexity of
practice requires social workers to use their discretion to interpret the rules. The greater
the degree of complexity, the more likely discretion will exist as both rule-breaking and
interpretation. This means that the policy framework can be bent into different forms as
the consequence of workers' discretion.
There is a distinction to be made between discretion as the unacknowledged habits of
routine practice (Lipsky 1980), and the deliberate and considered use of discretion in
the process of decision-making. This distinction, of which I became aware in the
process of inquiry described below, reveals a form of discretion that has not been
acknowledged hitherto. This more positive form of discretion holds a creative potential
for policy implementation. Considered use of discretion can be a positive part of frontline practitioners' work as they engage collaboratively with other stakeholders in the
process of policy implementation. This analysis takes us beyond the tried and failed
approaches to discretion which involve attempts to control it through autocratic
management or technocratic procedures. It is in this context of exploring the positive
use of discretion by front-line workers such as social workers, that I engaged with two
groups to both explore and practice the development of this positive form of discretion
through co-operative inquiry.
Justification for Co-operative Inquiry as method
It is important that I acknowledge the reflexive journey during which traditional
qualitative research interviews led to the use of co-operative inquiry. Prior to engaging
with the co-operative inquiry groups, I carried out a series of semi-structured interviews
with care managers in two local authorities. The use of this qualitative research
methodology was a personal response to the environment in which I was engaged as a
researcher - my ‘socio-historical location’ (Hammersley and Atkinson 1995). This
explains but does not justify the use of a methodology that, upon reflection, was not
helpful in addressing my research questions. I wanted to elicit authentic responses not
determined by interviewees’ position as employees (organisational response) or as
interviewees (researcher effect). I believe that my practice, using a semi-structured
interview approach (Foddy 1993; Silverman 1993; Lindlof 1995), was authentic within
the limitations of the methodology, and the sense that I made of what I heard was of
interest in a traditional academic sense. These interviews have helped me to
understand that social workers acting as care managers do act with discretion in the
way that is described by theorists such as Lipsky (1980). However, I now also know,
with hindsight, what made the interviews problematic.
Reflecting upon these interviews revealed fundamental issues in research methodology.
It does not matter how authentic and empowering I was if the issues of ownership and
meaning of knowledge acquired through the interviews were not dealt with. I was
shocked that only three interviewees replied to a request for a response to my report. It
seems that the meaning that I gleaned from the interview transcripts either held little
resonance for interviewees, or, alternatively, so much that it was too painful to own. I
have no way of knowing whether either of these conclusions is true, but I am left unable
to claim that the interviews made any difference to the people whom they concerned,
even if they helped me in my acquisition of knowledge. If the knowledge was not within
the realms of their experience, what is termed ‘experiential knowledge’ (Heron and
Reason 2000), then it was not grounded in their actions and its validity is dubious. The
knowledge expressed in the research report constructs a version of the real world which
may have had little meaning for interviewees.
So, if scientific rationalism is a poor epistemological basis for implementation practice, is
co-operative inquiry an alternative research methodology that could take into account
the problems of ownership and meaning ?
Co-operative Inquiry as preferred method
Harre refers to the ‘myth of certainty’ (Harre 1981; p.8) in traditional positivist
approaches such as mine described above. As a detached researcher, I was attempting
to glean the truth from my research subjects. Positivist approaches are also based on
the concept of dualism in which the researcher is separated from the researched
(Reason 1994a). But, what happens to ways of knowing which are not purely
rationalist? Why ignore affective and behavioural knowing (Reason 1994a; Boud and
Walker 1993)?
In a research process wherein the knower is separated from the known, both ontological
and epistemological doubts are raised about the knowledge created. Claims to truth
from a positivist framework have been weakened from a number of different angles. The
dialectical process of reality creation (Freire 1972) argues that we should consider both
the concrete, and the perception of the concrete. ‘We choose our reality and our
knowing of it’ (Reason 1994b; p332). Post-structuralist analysis suggests that language
constructs reality (Rojek et al 1988; Potter 1996) and that the "discourse" that
persuades people of its truth (Soyland 1994) is what matters. ‘What counts as true
knowledge is ostensibly defined by the individual, but what is permitted to count is
defined by discourse. What is spoken, and who may speak, are issues of power’
(Parker 1989).
The participative world view argues that human beings are engaged in ‘co-creating their
reality through participation’ (Reason 1994b; p. 324). Relationship is fundamental to the
creation of reality, and a methodology that separates the researcher from the
researched denies that relationship. Ontologically, such a process would invalidate
knowledge created, because it would not construct a reality that has meaning for the
subjects of the research. The divisive epistemology of the positivist world view
separates and objectifies the subjects of research activity in much the same way that
scientific managerialism and traditional social work objectify "clients", and treat them as
if they were the only reality to be dealt with, rather than constructs of persons created
from particular forms of knowledge. Explanation is not reality itself, as scientific
rationality would have us believe. Unless people participate in the construction of
knowledge, the knowledge has no meaning for them. This is a question of power and
politics in the research context (Reason and Heron 1995), as it is in other areas of
interest for this chapter - the management of discretion in social work practice and
policy implementation. By engaging in a co-operative inquiry with social workers, the
power to establish meaning was a democratic, shared process and not one imposed by
an "expert" researcher. Because of the dubious degree of validity in the previous
interviews, I learnt that it was essential to use a participative approach for the next
phase of empirical research. I chose co-operative inquiry (Heron 1996) as most
congruent with my research requirements.
Setting up the Co-operative Inquiry
In engaging with social workers in co-operative inquiry, I attempted a number of things.
The first was to explore the current state of practice in the continuing implementation of
community care policy. I was also interested in exploring co-operative inquiry as a
methodology involving learning and practice development in a context of tension
between prescription and discretion. Finally, as this was a participative venture, I
wanted to respond to group interests.
The process started with a proposal to a social welfare organisation, to feed back the
findings from the original interviews, and to ask social workers to consider whether the
findings were "true for us?". Workshop participants were concerned that bureaucratic
process and resource constraint were still stifling professional discretion, effectively
"managing out" social work as a service. Practitioners felt that this undermined their role
by marginalising the knowledge, skills and values that underpin their practice which they
claim could prevent the imposition of more restrictive alternatives such as residential
care. The bureaucracy was experienced as an inefficient and ineffective process.
The two workshops ended with a description of co-operative inquiry as a way of
investigating and working upon problems identified. After deliberation, two co-operative
inquiry groups were formed. One was an established team of five hospital based social
workers (Hospital Group), and the other (Community Group) formed from a disparate
collection of social workers. The two groups met separately and I was offered the role of
convenor. Both groups met eight times over a six month period.
To what extent were these two groups co-operative inquiry groups in the way described
by Heron and Reason (2000)? Both groups agreed that the process should involve a
co-operative approach. Members were involved in decisions about areas for
investigation and methods that would be used in action and reflection stages. We
progressed through cycles of action and reflection using a variety of methods for
investigation and recording. I was asked to record reflective meetings, on the
understanding that the notes would be drafts requiring unanimous approval. In
hindsight, audio-recording of group discussions would have yielded more individuality
and intimacy from the discussions, and its loss is regrettable. However, at the time, it
was not felt to be an appropriate form of recording as there was suspicion about
participants being "allowed" to engage in these co-operative inquiry groups. Audio
recording was viewed as a more permanent record of their discussions which might
have placed the participants in jeopardy. The role of facilitation meant that I could be
convenor of the groups, facilitate discussion and play a role as "devil’s advocate". I was
not the only person to do this and my role as facilitator did not mean that I was in an
exclusive leadership role. Rather, the groups were participative and democratic. With
the exception of the recording issue (and I made every effort to ensure that recording
was accepted by all involved), my view is that they were co-operative inquiry groups in
the sense defined by Heron and Reason (2000) and Heron (Heron 1996). We agreed
that both groups should be closed to future involvement by others but inclusive,
ensuring all members were present before proceeding. The level of commitment was
very high, and, except for one occasion, every session was fully attended. At the first
meeting there was an "idea-storming" session in which areas for exploration were
discussed and selected for investigation. Prior to reconvening for the first reflective
meeting, we decided what action would be taken and how it could be recorded.
It is interesting that the two groups chose similar areas for investigation, and that they
were both largely driven by anxiety about the participants’ performance as social
workers within the Authority. There was, at the time, a question mark over
organisational structure and staffing, so the future employment of some co-researchers
was in doubt. We recognised the need to acknowledge and address anxiety as a
powerful block to learning and practice development (Boud and Walker 1993). It was
argued that if anxiety was not tackled at the early stage it could sit silently in the room
undermining commitment to mutual learning. It was also felt that a focus on practice
issues over which the group had some control was more practical than looking at areas
such as resource deficits, another area identified. Not only would research in the
chosen area be more feasible, there was also a chance for successful outcome. We did
not want to travel down any gloomy dead-ends.
The aim of meeting was to set up cycles of action and reflection to investigate the
possibilities for practice development over time, within their restricted role as care
managers, whilst at the same time exploring the use of discretionary social work
practice. There was scepticism about this as professional discretion was believed to be
in serious jeopardy within the new role of care manager imposed by a management
agenda ruled by resource constraint rather than service provision. How achievable was
practice development, using co-operative inquiry as the motivating force?
The Process of Co-operative Inquiry
The groups met separately, for up to two hours at a time. We ensured the time was
uninterrupted and that all members were present. The first meetings established
ground-rules around group processes, roles, and confidentiality. We discussed the
manner in which we were to relate to one another - avoiding personal comments but
agreeing that problems would be addressed in the group rather than discussed outside.
These deliberations are similar to those suggested in group-work literature (e.g. Brown
1992) as good practice when establishing effective groups.
As indicated above, anxiety was recognised as a prime area for investigation in the
initial "idea-storming" sessions. The principal anxiety for both groups was a lack of
consistency between individuals and between teams. How, inquirers wondered, would
they know what agency practice requirements were? This question was a surprise,
given that comprehensive guidance documentation existed. It was apparent that
interpretation of guidance was varied and that this variation created anxiety. The next
section focuses on the way one of the two groups tackled anxiety about consistency.
Both groups had similar experiences so what follows provides a useful illustration of
what can happen in such a co-operative inquiry.
Hospital Group discussions
The Hospital Group focused on a specific bureaucratic procedure to investigate
differences of practice. The document chosen was a form that had to be signed by a
potential service user, to give consent for the social worker to contact third parties to
seek information about the user. Consent was seen by the authority as good practice in
that it reflected partnership. Social workers in the Hospital Group were concerned that
requesting a signature was a threatening practice for some people. When they felt that
to be the case, they did not ask for a signature, even though they knew they ought to.
The mandated procedure is an example of the ethos of community care policy and the
actual practice an example of the use of discretion. The use of social work discretion in
the implementation of this procedure was thus the focus of inquiry. The group could
investigate the extent to which policy was being undermined by their discretion.
The group devised a technique of investigation and recording. Every time one of the
forms should have been completed, participants recorded the reason why they did or
did not ask service users to sign the form. In effect, they were required to justify their
actions, both to themselves and to their peers in the co-operative inquiry group. This
provided an opportunity to both reflect-in-action ("why am I practising like this right
now?") and to reflect-on-action ("why did I ask that person to sign the form but not this
person?"). This was an example of Schon’s reflective process of learning and practice
development (Schon 1987). This process was followed for three consecutive cycles of
action and reflection. At the third meeting, one member of the group, acting as "devil’s
advocate", questioned the purpose of continuing this exercise.
As a result of this challenge, and the discussion that followed, we opened an inquiry into
the nature of intuition and reflection. As facilitator, I asked group members how they
knew when it was the "right" moment to ask someone to sign the form. The first
response was "I know intuitively when it is right" . We then deconstructed the concept of
intuition, by continually asking where the knowing comes from. We identified the
sources of knowledge, the theoretical perspectives, the social work values, the skills, as
well as the assumptions and prejudices that often combine to make us act in a particular
way. Prior to the group’s engagement in co-operative inquiry, all this jumble of
knowledge had combined to inform practice unreflectively. Every time we got to the
bottom of intuition, defining it and describing it, we were left with something indefinable,
which was labelled intuition! "I just knew that I shouldn’t push her on signing the form." I
described what I saw as a "threshold technique" intuitively (at best) or unreflectively (at
worst) being employed by group members. At some point they recognised that a
particular individual met some undefined criteria that meant they could "cope" with being
asked to complete the required paperwork.
How did they know that they had crossed that threshold? What knowledge, what skills,
were being employed to assist that decision? An exercise was developed, with a system
of recording, to enable group members to utilise the threshold technique. This exercise
encouraged social workers to maximise opportunities for participative practice. As a
result, there was an increase in the numbers of forms signed without a consequent
increase in service user or worker anxiety.
Upon meeting again and sifting out the propositions from the practical and experiential
ways of knowing, we found that we had even more material to help in the definition of
intuitive knowledge. Intuitive knowing was seen as an important aspect of creative
understanding, although we agreed that it needed to be recognised and reflected upon
because of the dangers of non-reflection. This process of reflection in and upon action
enabled group members to differentiate the use of knowledge, that was informed by the
participatory and empowering values that they espoused in theory, from the more
unaware or stereotypical practice, that they recognised occurred if they were not
engaged in reflection. Discrimination is such a negative factor in contemporary social
work ethos that it was anxiety-provoking to recognise their own potential for acting in
discriminatory ways. It was also a salutary lesson to the group that they had so much
opportunity for discretion. Practising with discretion but without reflection was
recognised as ineffective or potentially oppressive.
The importance of reflection in and upon action had thus been established as a key to
the maintenance of and the continuing development of "good" practice in the light of
new circumstances - such as the introduction of new policy or procedure. When, the
group members asked themselves, did they have such opportunities to reflect upon
their actions? How could they instil the discipline of reflection whilst engaged in
relationship with service users? The co-operative inquiry group was providing such an
opportunity, but what would happen when it finished?
The answer to these questions was raised in conjunction with another issue confronting
the Hospital Group - the concerns that social work as a system of knowledge and
values was being marginalised by the introduction of care management as method for
assessing people's needs and planning their services. The Hospital Group recognised
that social work was often the only service that could prevent informal supports breaking
down and more restrictive services such as residential care becoming inevitable. How
was it possible to protect available space for good quality assessments, develop a
preventative service, and establish opportunities for reflection and practice
development? This led us into exploration of workload relief and supervision. Group
members recognised that supervision was an important arena for reflection and
decision-making around workload management. The social workers relied upon their
manager to give them space for good quality supervision, which was one forum, outside
of the co-operative inquiry, where they might establish some overview of consistency in
their practice. How to encourage their manager to provide such supervision became a
focus for one cycle of action and reflection. They also explored the possibilities for
mutual aid when they felt stressed, and space for shared reflection upon work. Through
these processes, team members gradually developed their own individual and collective
techniques for replicating the most useful aspects of the co-operative inquiry in
anticipation of its closure after six months.
Reflections and Conclusions
The purpose of co-operative inquiry is the mutual creation of owned and useable
knowledge. In reflecting on the co-operative inquiries above, it is apparent that this
purpose can be fulfilled by social workers investigating their practice in a participative
framework. Both co-operative inquiry groups established new areas of understanding,
some of them previously unrealised insights and others that were the result of revisiting
and adapting formerly held knowledge. Unlike the knowledge created from the prior
interviews, this knowledge held meaning for co-researchers which they were able to
own and adopt in practice. The creation of knowledge in these groups thus had an
effect on behaviour in the way that might be expected from an approach that is
congruent with models of cyclical learning (Kolb 1984) and reflective practice (Schon
1987; Boud and Walker 1993; Gould and Taylor 1996).
As a system of investigation, co-operative inquiry has proved more effective than
traditional qualitative approaches in facilitating the production of owned and useable
knowledge. As street level implementers, members of both groups recognised that they
could use discretion to influence policy. They will be unable to differentiate whether this
influence will be positive or negative unless they adopt a reflective approach. Cooperative inquiry can be successful in facilitating a process of learning in which
participants incorporate different forms of knowledge into practice. It also provided us
with propositional insights into the nature of discretion and reflection in organisational
processes.
It is important to question whether these conclusions are idealistic. It could be argued
that the co-operative inquiries were a one-off which will not change anything in
organisations still wedded to scientific managerialism. There are counter arguments.
Firstly, co-operative inquiry was an experiment in the possibilities for engaging in
reflection and learning for developmental practice and it proved successful in creating
such opportunities, especially in a collaborative context. Such opportunities also set up
an environment of dynamic and reflective use of discretion which is likely to force out
unreflective discretion argued as normative within street level bureaucrats' modus
operandi (Lipsky 1980). Such experiments require further investigation through
replication in different settings to test out their effectiveness.
A second point concerns the practical developments that emanated from the groups'
reflections. Workload management systems were explored as a method of freeing up
social workers' time to engage in more preventative work. Such space also creates
more opportunities for reflective evaluation like that provided in the co-operative
inquiries. In addition, work was done on exploring effective ways of persuading first line
managers to offer developmental supervision replicating opportunities for reflection
established through co-operative inquiry. Participants agreed to make better use of the
participatory opportunities already available within the organisation. These included the
recording of unmet need which was an agency requirement. Participants realised the
potential that the accumulation of their day-to-day practice could add to service
developments. Following debate within the co-operative inquiry groups and with senior
managers after their completion, prior scepticism about opportunities for participation in
the organisation gave way to a feeling that it was important to take such opportunities
rather than dismiss them as tokenistic. None of these developments require additional
agency resources.
Finally, looking beyond the advantages for group members individually and collectively,
co-operative inquiry also revealed the degree to which participative investigation and
learning can produce positive outcomes that are more consistent with policy intentions
than traditional and coercive approaches to policy implementation and practice
development based on the certainty principle of scientific rationality.
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