Gabrielle Meagher
Biographic Data
| ID | 256983 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Gabrielle Meagher |
| GIVEN NAMES | Gabrielle |
| FAMILY NAME | Meagher |
| SIGNATURE | MEAGHER G |
| AFFILIATIONS | The University of Sydney |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-2513-5828 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 23 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 292 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 21 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 2 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1997 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2021 |
| H-INDEX | 9 |
Impression management in the market for residential care for children and youth in Sweden
In what has become quite a turbulent quasi‐market for residential care for children and youth, providers now compete for public contracts. To create visibility and attract customers, many providers use marketing activities to project the desired impression of themselves to maintain or strengthen their market position. In this article, we analyse how companies that provide residential care for children manage the impressions they project on their …
The politics of profit in Swedish welfare services
The Social Democratic architects of the Swedish welfare state considered public provision as well as public funding of welfare services essential to realising their egalitarian ambitions. However, since the early 1990s, a highly concentrated, for-profit sector has emerged in welfare service provision. We analyse how the Swedish Social Democrats have discussed privatisation and the profit motive in welfare services from the 1980s to the present. W…
Nordic eldercare – Weak universalism becoming weaker
This article builds on recent research on the fortunes of universalism in European social policy by tracing the development of eldercare policy in four Nordic countries: Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden. Six dimensions of universalism are used to assess whether and how eldercare has been universalized or de-universalized in each country in recent decades and the consequences of the trends thereby identified. We find that de-universalization ha…
Big Business in a Thin Market
This article analyzes the transformation of Swedish residential care for children from a regionally coordinated, public social service system into a thin, but highly profitable, national spot market in which large corporations have a growing presence. Marketization and privatization are theorized as complex processes, through which the institutional structure and logics of this small, but significant, social policy field changed profoundly. Using…
How institutions matter for job characteristics, quality and experiences
This article seeks to understand a puzzling finding: that workers in publicly funded home care for older people in Australia, compared to those in Sweden, feel that they are better able to meet their clients' needs, that their workplaces are less pressed, and that their work is less burdensome and more compatible with their family and social commitments. This finding seems to challenge expectations fostered by comparative sociological research th…
Markets, Rights and Power in Australian Social Policy
Social Work Education as Preparation for Practice
Social work faces increasing competition from other postschool qualifications, which offer pathways into social and community services in Australia. This has prompted debate about what kinds of qualifications should be required in the sector, and about the relationship between social work and other educational programs. This article presents new empirical evidence about social work compared with other human service qualifications as preparation f…
The social division of welfare knowledge
During its period in office (1996–2007), the Liberal–National coalition government increased stratification in the Australian welfare system by differentiating the norms and instruments applied to claimants groups. This article explores whether Australians accurately registered these developments by comparing voter assessments of policy generosity to different groups with an objective assessment of the direction of policy change. We find that vot…
Equality in the social service state
This chapter examines what effects different childcare models — and changes therein — have for gender and class equality, as well as between different ethnic groups. The analysis focuses on childcare services and financial benefits, especially care allowances offered in lieu of a publicly funded childcare place. The chapter finds that home care allowances may reinforce traditional gendered divisions of labour, under-use of childcare services and …
Working in Human Services
Child welfare agencies in many rich countries are having difficulty recruiting and retaining social workers. However, these problems are not unique to child welfare: retention problems have also been widely reported in both mental and general health facilities. In this paper, we compare the perceptions of work and working conditions held by child welfare social workers with the perceptions held by other professional human service workers in the p…
Neoliberalism, New Public Management and the human service professions
Paid Care in Australia
Social Workers’ Preparation for Child Protection
Child welfare work is a key field of practice for social work graduates and for graduates of a growing range of disciplines. In the present paper, the authors drew on a survey of 208 child welfare workers and interviews with 28 senior personnel in child and family welfare agencies to analyse perceptions of the educational preparation of social workers and other human science graduates for this field of practice. The findings indicated that child …
The Challenge of the Care Workforce
This paper examines the paid care workforce in community services in Australia. Focusing on people employed in direct service delivery roles, I use unpublished data from the Censuses of 1996 and 2001 to document some important characteristics of the care workforce in community services, in which a large minority of care workers are employed in this country. International research has established that paid care workers suffer considerable labour m…
Retaining Novices to Become Expert Child Protection Practitioners
In many post-industrial countries, concerns have been raised about high turnover of professional staff and the high proportion of novice practitioners on the frontline in child protection agencies. High turnover imposes costs on individual practitioners, employing organizations, service users (particularly vulnerable children) and society more broadly. We analyze the views of employers, policy makers and researchers in Australia, England and Swed…
What Can We Expect from Paid Carers
People in rich countries increasingly rely on paid workers to care for many of their health and personal care needs. We expect that, in most families, love or filial piety underpin caring relationships, and that these moral bonds ensure good quality care. If paid caring relationships are not underpinned by love, what moral bonds can they rely on? Exploring contract, professional duty, and compassionate gift as normative 'resources' for good paid …
Survey Article
Caring, Controlling, Contracting and Counting
Performance measurement and contracting out are central elements of new public management systems. At first sight these elements seem necessarily connected for reasons of accountability. However, for some kinds of services, implementation of conventional performance measurement systems may exacerbate tensions in contracting out. Using a case study of child and family welfare services in NSW, this paper shows that differences in the missions and o…
Is It Wrong To Pay For Housework?
This paper assesses arguments that paying for housework compromises the moral integrity of either the buyer or seller or both. I find that none provides adequate justification for avoiding paying for housework. Instead, I argue that the vigorous pursuit of justice for women workers will best remedy injustice in service sector occupations, including paid housework.
Is It Wrong To Pay For Housework
This paper assesses arguments that paying for housework compromises the moral integrity of either the buyer or seller or both. I find that none provides adequate justification for avoiding paying for housework. Instead, I argue that the vigorous pursuit of justice for women workers will best remedy injustice in service sector occupations, including paid housework
Complexity and practical knowledge in the social sciences
This paper takes issue with Stehr and Grundmann's argument in this journal that sociology's poor record of contribution to practical knowledge results from sociologists' misguided attachment to the idea that social phenomena are peculiarly complex, and so peculiarly resistant to efforts at practical knowledge formation. Stehr and Grundmann develop their thesis by contrasting sociology to economics, claiming the latter's superior methods and disci…
The Changing Boundary Between Home and Market
It is widely believed that domestic outsourcing is booming. Many believe the growth of market services is a response to increasing time pressures arising from new responsibilities in the paid workforce, and to an inflexible sexual division of labour at home. The interpretation of the consequences of the purported growth of domestic outsourcing has been both divided and extreme. Paid domestic services have been declared: (1) a thing of the pre-ind…
Recreating ''Domestic Service
This paper contributes an Australian perspective to writing on paid household work in feminist social science. It explores how some Australian domestic service providers are recreating ''domestic service'' with institutional and cultural strategies to overcome the stigma associated with this occupation. These developments are analyzed through three case studies of new models of domestic service provision. It concludes that several factors, includ…
The Changing Boundary Between Home and Market
It is widely believed that domestic outsourcing is booming. Many believe the growth of market services is a response to increasing time pressures arising from new responsibilities in the paid workforce, and to an inflexible sexual division of labour at home. The interpretation of the consequences of the purported growth of domestic outsourcing has been both divided and extreme. Paid domestic services have been declared: (1) a thing of the pre-ind…
Nordic eldercare – Weak universalism becoming weaker
This article builds on recent research on the fortunes of universalism in European social policy by tracing the development of eldercare policy in four Nordic countries: Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden. Six dimensions of universalism are used to assess whether and how eldercare has been universalized or de-universalized in each country in recent decades and the consequences of the trends thereby identified. We find that de-universalization ha…
Neoliberalism, New Public Management and the human service professions
Working in Human Services
Child welfare agencies in many rich countries are having difficulty recruiting and retaining social workers. However, these problems are not unique to child welfare: retention problems have also been widely reported in both mental and general health facilities. In this paper, we compare the perceptions of work and working conditions held by child welfare social workers with the perceptions held by other professional human service workers in the p…
What Can We Expect from Paid Carers
People in rich countries increasingly rely on paid workers to care for many of their health and personal care needs. We expect that, in most families, love or filial piety underpin caring relationships, and that these moral bonds ensure good quality care. If paid caring relationships are not underpinned by love, what moral bonds can they rely on? Exploring contract, professional duty, and compassionate gift as normative 'resources' for good paid …
Retaining Novices to Become Expert Child Protection Practitioners
In many post-industrial countries, concerns have been raised about high turnover of professional staff and the high proportion of novice practitioners on the frontline in child protection agencies. High turnover imposes costs on individual practitioners, employing organizations, service users (particularly vulnerable children) and society more broadly. We analyze the views of employers, policy makers and researchers in Australia, England and Swed…
How institutions matter for job characteristics, quality and experiences
This article seeks to understand a puzzling finding: that workers in publicly funded home care for older people in Australia, compared to those in Sweden, feel that they are better able to meet their clients' needs, that their workplaces are less pressed, and that their work is less burdensome and more compatible with their family and social commitments. This finding seems to challenge expectations fostered by comparative sociological research th…
Social Workers’ Preparation for Child Protection
Child welfare work is a key field of practice for social work graduates and for graduates of a growing range of disciplines. In the present paper, the authors drew on a survey of 208 child welfare workers and interviews with 28 senior personnel in child and family welfare agencies to analyse perceptions of the educational preparation of social workers and other human science graduates for this field of practice. The findings indicated that child …
Caring, Controlling, Contracting and Counting
Performance measurement and contracting out are central elements of new public management systems. At first sight these elements seem necessarily connected for reasons of accountability. However, for some kinds of services, implementation of conventional performance measurement systems may exacerbate tensions in contracting out. Using a case study of child and family welfare services in NSW, this paper shows that differences in the missions and o…
The politics of profit in Swedish welfare services
The Social Democratic architects of the Swedish welfare state considered public provision as well as public funding of welfare services essential to realising their egalitarian ambitions. However, since the early 1990s, a highly concentrated, for-profit sector has emerged in welfare service provision. We analyse how the Swedish Social Democrats have discussed privatisation and the profit motive in welfare services from the 1980s to the present. W…
Recreating ''Domestic Service
This paper contributes an Australian perspective to writing on paid household work in feminist social science. It explores how some Australian domestic service providers are recreating ''domestic service'' with institutional and cultural strategies to overcome the stigma associated with this occupation. These developments are analyzed through three case studies of new models of domestic service provision. It concludes that several factors, includ…
Survey Article
The social division of welfare knowledge
During its period in office (1996–2007), the Liberal–National coalition government increased stratification in the Australian welfare system by differentiating the norms and instruments applied to claimants groups. This article explores whether Australians accurately registered these developments by comparing voter assessments of policy generosity to different groups with an objective assessment of the direction of policy change. We find that vot…
Big Business in a Thin Market
This article analyzes the transformation of Swedish residential care for children from a regionally coordinated, public social service system into a thin, but highly profitable, national spot market in which large corporations have a growing presence. Marketization and privatization are theorized as complex processes, through which the institutional structure and logics of this small, but significant, social policy field changed profoundly. Using…
The Challenge of the Care Workforce
This paper examines the paid care workforce in community services in Australia. Focusing on people employed in direct service delivery roles, I use unpublished data from the Censuses of 1996 and 2001 to document some important characteristics of the care workforce in community services, in which a large minority of care workers are employed in this country. International research has established that paid care workers suffer considerable labour m…
Impression management in the market for residential care for children and youth in Sweden
In what has become quite a turbulent quasi‐market for residential care for children and youth, providers now compete for public contracts. To create visibility and attract customers, many providers use marketing activities to project the desired impression of themselves to maintain or strengthen their market position. In this article, we analyse how companies that provide residential care for children manage the impressions they project on their …
Social Work Education as Preparation for Practice
Social work faces increasing competition from other postschool qualifications, which offer pathways into social and community services in Australia. This has prompted debate about what kinds of qualifications should be required in the sector, and about the relationship between social work and other educational programs. This article presents new empirical evidence about social work compared with other human service qualifications as preparation f…
Complexity and practical knowledge in the social sciences
This paper takes issue with Stehr and Grundmann's argument in this journal that sociology's poor record of contribution to practical knowledge results from sociologists' misguided attachment to the idea that social phenomena are peculiarly complex, and so peculiarly resistant to efforts at practical knowledge formation. Stehr and Grundmann develop their thesis by contrasting sociology to economics, claiming the latter's superior methods and disci…
Recreating ''Domestic Service
This paper contributes an Australian perspective to writing on paid household work in feminist social science. It explores how some Australian domestic service providers are recreating ''domestic service'' with institutional and cultural strategies to overcome the stigma associated with this occupation. These developments are analyzed through three case studies of new models of domestic service provision. It concludes that several factors, includ…
The Changing Boundary Between Home and Market
It is widely believed that domestic outsourcing is booming. Many believe the growth of market services is a response to increasing time pressures arising from new responsibilities in the paid workforce, and to an inflexible sexual division of labour at home. The interpretation of the consequences of the purported growth of domestic outsourcing has been both divided and extreme. Paid domestic services have been declared: (1) a thing of the pre-ind…
Is It Wrong To Pay For Housework?
This paper assesses arguments that paying for housework compromises the moral integrity of either the buyer or seller or both. I find that none provides adequate justification for avoiding paying for housework. Instead, I argue that the vigorous pursuit of justice for women workers will best remedy injustice in service sector occupations, including paid housework.
Is It Wrong To Pay For Housework
This paper assesses arguments that paying for housework compromises the moral integrity of either the buyer or seller or both. I find that none provides adequate justification for avoiding paying for housework. Instead, I argue that the vigorous pursuit of justice for women workers will best remedy injustice in service sector occupations, including paid housework
Complexity and practical knowledge in the social sciences
This paper takes issue with Stehr and Grundmann's argument in this journal that sociology's poor record of contribution to practical knowledge results from sociologists' misguided attachment to the idea that social phenomena are peculiarly complex, and so peculiarly resistant to efforts at practical knowledge formation. Stehr and Grundmann develop their thesis by contrasting sociology to economics, claiming the latter's superior methods and disci…
Caring, Controlling, Contracting and Counting
Performance measurement and contracting out are central elements of new public management systems. At first sight these elements seem necessarily connected for reasons of accountability. However, for some kinds of services, implementation of conventional performance measurement systems may exacerbate tensions in contracting out. Using a case study of child and family welfare services in NSW, this paper shows that differences in the missions and o…
Survey Article
What Can We Expect from Paid Carers
People in rich countries increasingly rely on paid workers to care for many of their health and personal care needs. We expect that, in most families, love or filial piety underpin caring relationships, and that these moral bonds ensure good quality care. If paid caring relationships are not underpinned by love, what moral bonds can they rely on? Exploring contract, professional duty, and compassionate gift as normative 'resources' for good paid …
Social Workers’ Preparation for Child Protection
Child welfare work is a key field of practice for social work graduates and for graduates of a growing range of disciplines. In the present paper, the authors drew on a survey of 208 child welfare workers and interviews with 28 senior personnel in child and family welfare agencies to analyse perceptions of the educational preparation of social workers and other human science graduates for this field of practice. The findings indicated that child …
The Challenge of the Care Workforce
This paper examines the paid care workforce in community services in Australia. Focusing on people employed in direct service delivery roles, I use unpublished data from the Censuses of 1996 and 2001 to document some important characteristics of the care workforce in community services, in which a large minority of care workers are employed in this country. International research has established that paid care workers suffer considerable labour m…
Retaining Novices to Become Expert Child Protection Practitioners
In many post-industrial countries, concerns have been raised about high turnover of professional staff and the high proportion of novice practitioners on the frontline in child protection agencies. High turnover imposes costs on individual practitioners, employing organizations, service users (particularly vulnerable children) and society more broadly. We analyze the views of employers, policy makers and researchers in Australia, England and Swed…
Paid Care in Australia
Working in Human Services
Child welfare agencies in many rich countries are having difficulty recruiting and retaining social workers. However, these problems are not unique to child welfare: retention problems have also been widely reported in both mental and general health facilities. In this paper, we compare the perceptions of work and working conditions held by child welfare social workers with the perceptions held by other professional human service workers in the p…
Neoliberalism, New Public Management and the human service professions
Equality in the social service state
This chapter examines what effects different childcare models — and changes therein — have for gender and class equality, as well as between different ethnic groups. The analysis focuses on childcare services and financial benefits, especially care allowances offered in lieu of a publicly funded childcare place. The chapter finds that home care allowances may reinforce traditional gendered divisions of labour, under-use of childcare services and …
Social Work Education as Preparation for Practice
Social work faces increasing competition from other postschool qualifications, which offer pathways into social and community services in Australia. This has prompted debate about what kinds of qualifications should be required in the sector, and about the relationship between social work and other educational programs. This article presents new empirical evidence about social work compared with other human service qualifications as preparation f…
The social division of welfare knowledge
During its period in office (1996–2007), the Liberal–National coalition government increased stratification in the Australian welfare system by differentiating the norms and instruments applied to claimants groups. This article explores whether Australians accurately registered these developments by comparing voter assessments of policy generosity to different groups with an objective assessment of the direction of policy change. We find that vot…
Markets, Rights and Power in Australian Social Policy
Big Business in a Thin Market
This article analyzes the transformation of Swedish residential care for children from a regionally coordinated, public social service system into a thin, but highly profitable, national spot market in which large corporations have a growing presence. Marketization and privatization are theorized as complex processes, through which the institutional structure and logics of this small, but significant, social policy field changed profoundly. Using…
How institutions matter for job characteristics, quality and experiences
This article seeks to understand a puzzling finding: that workers in publicly funded home care for older people in Australia, compared to those in Sweden, feel that they are better able to meet their clients' needs, that their workplaces are less pressed, and that their work is less burdensome and more compatible with their family and social commitments. This finding seems to challenge expectations fostered by comparative sociological research th…
Nordic eldercare – Weak universalism becoming weaker
This article builds on recent research on the fortunes of universalism in European social policy by tracing the development of eldercare policy in four Nordic countries: Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden. Six dimensions of universalism are used to assess whether and how eldercare has been universalized or de-universalized in each country in recent decades and the consequences of the trends thereby identified. We find that de-universalization ha…
The politics of profit in Swedish welfare services
The Social Democratic architects of the Swedish welfare state considered public provision as well as public funding of welfare services essential to realising their egalitarian ambitions. However, since the early 1990s, a highly concentrated, for-profit sector has emerged in welfare service provision. We analyse how the Swedish Social Democrats have discussed privatisation and the profit motive in welfare services from the 1980s to the present. W…
Impression management in the market for residential care for children and youth in Sweden
In what has become quite a turbulent quasi‐market for residential care for children and youth, providers now compete for public contracts. To create visibility and attract customers, many providers use marketing activities to project the desired impression of themselves to maintain or strengthen their market position. In this article, we analyse how companies that provide residential care for children manage the impressions they project on their …
Political science (21 works) · Economics (15 works) · Business (14 works) · Law (11 works) · Public relations (11 works) · Sociology (10 works) · Social Policy and Reform Studies (9 works) · Labor Movements and Unions (8 works) · Law (8 works) · Economic growth (7 works)