Beyond Served and Secured: Client Work and Reconceptualisation of Professionalism
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.7577/pp.6230Sammendrag
Within theories of professions, clients of welfare-state professionals are typically portrayed as passive beneficiaries who are served and secured by professional expertise and ethics. This framing implicitly omits that in a client position, even the clients perform work.
Drawing on a research project on rehabilitation following traumatic injuries, the article shows both the explicitly expected and recognised work that clients undertake while seeking to recover from impairments, and the largely invisible work shaped by implicit presuppositions embedded in professional services. The empirical findings form the basis for a discussion of the mechanisms by which this work is rendered invisible to professionals and within theories of professions, and of the implications for reconceptualising professionalism. Theories of professions must incorporate that clients are not merely subject to professional work, but that clients’ work is conducive to the outcomes commonly attributed to professionals’ work.
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