Social Work Profession and the State: The Re-Institutionalisation of Public Social Field in Italy

Over time, sociological debate has often highlighted relationships between professions and State as a key-element in the development of modern organisational setups.

The institutional approach considers professionalization as a subset of the broader institutionalization, insofar it is one of the ways to give order, structure, and meaning to the organizational context. Professions are themselves institutions and view organizations as the primary vehicle for conducting institutional work (Suddaby and Viale 2011), which regards the mediation between reforms (which are manifestations of institutional change) and the role identities of professionals (which, in turn, represent institutional stability). Thus professionals are institutional carriers, while organizations are sites and vehicles for professional action (Breit et al. 2022).

Institutional theory also allows to observe the hybrid professional work in public domains. Hybridization arises when professional and managerial principles come together (Noordegraaf, 2015) and it concerns different ways of merging contradictory/competing institutional logics (Breit et al. 2022) through hybrid professionals capacity to bridge them.

Within this framework, this work analyses the current re-institutionalisation of public social field in Italy, paying attention on mutual relationships between the State and Social worker profession, in a institutional perspective. Statal regulation is currently defining Essential Social Services Levels (ESSL), that are specific social services to guarantee throughout the country, due to their particular relevance. Within this reform, professional social work has formally recognized as the gateway to social measures and Social worker has taken on a new, relevant responsability in organisational decision-making. Albeit within aims and organisational constraints, it can influence decisions and negotiate with the organizations, making an important contribution towards the development ways of public social services.

The paper shows the way in which the statal regulation is influencing the social workers professional project and, in turn, how the latter is contributing to social field re-institutionalisation.