Professional, Institutional and Ethical Practices

Abstract

In Chapter 1 we highlighted the criticisms that have been made by disability studies and others, of the dominance of professional authority over the lives of disabled people. Changes in both society and government regulation, over several decades, have sought to undermine such authority and replace it with different models of how welfare organisations should operate and work with service users. In this chapter we explore professional responses to such changes. A number of key areas are looked at in the chapter: societal mistrust of professional authority, the introduction of practices associated with ‘new public management’ (NPM), the implementation of standardisation via evidence-based practices and, finally, changes derived from the introduction of consumer choice into welfare rhetoric. Overall, what we seek to do is to understand how professionals discursively frame their role and the changes they see, and how they are part of the institutional governance of disabled families. In places, we contrast this to parents’ views. In addition, we consider what kind of professional ethics may be a suitable way to work with parents in a context of seeking to enable parents and children to be partners in decision making, which are yet to be fully incorporated into the policy directives currently emerging from government. Our argument is that there are ways professionals can work with parents that can create a space for partnership and such practices need to be incorporated into both articulations of professional identity and also acknowledged within the institutional contexts of professional activity.