The public health implications of neoliberal policy and management on professions and vulnerable populations

Collaborators

Gary Spolander (Project Lead) - Coventry University, UK

Linda Martin - Coventry University, UK

Alessandro Sicora, Carmelo Buscema, Vincenzo Fortunato, Donatella Loprieno - Calabria University, Italy

Päivi Marjanen, Petri Tani, Maire Antikainen - Laurea University, Finland

Francis Adaikalam, Louis Arockiaraj - Loyola College, India

Lambert Engelbrecht, Marianne Strydom - Stellenbosch University, South Africa

Irina Pervova, Anna Smirnova - St Petersburg State University, Russia

Project objectives

This project is part of The International Research Staff Exchange Scheme (IRSES) – an EU Framework 7 Marie Curie Action and has two research aims:

• the development of international research skills amongst the participants;
• to explore the impact of global changes to the structure, management and service delivery and the corresponding impact on social work practice and intervention.

This project focuses on the impact of neoliberalism on social work in the partner countries for this project.

Neoliberalism for this study refers to international economic frameworks that support social, cultural and political policies and practices that promote the use of markets, ideas of efficiency, consumer choice and transactional relationships to the delivery of services.

The aim of the project is to collect data on the current nature of services, the training, policy and delivery of social work services in the six partner countries in order to transfer knowledge and best practice across the consortium for the development of these parameters in each of the partner countries and organisations. In turn the project will focus on creating tools to identify the impact of change on vulnerable populations, the social work profession and develop best practice.

The project is being undertaken under the auspices of an EU Framework 7 Marie Curie, IRSES; project no: 295203; project acronym: NL_SOCIAL.