Politicisation or Professionalisation? Exploring Divergent Aims Within UK Voluntary Sector Peer Mentoring

Meaningful ‘user involvement’ is an established aim of social work practice, and increasingly, an aspiration of criminal justice, yet there are unique challenges to participatory work within punitive contexts. Drawing upon a study of peer mentoring in the voluntary sector, this article unveils some...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Howard journal of crime and justice 2019-09, Vol.58 (3), p.349-365
Main Author: BUCK, GILLIAN
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Aspiration
Collective action
Criminal justice
Experts
Interest groups
Mentoring
Mentors
Offenders
peer mentoring
Peers
Professional practice
Professionalization
rehabilitation
Social change
Social conditions & trends
Social work
User involvement
Voluntary organizations
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:Meaningful ‘user involvement’ is an established aim of social work practice, and increasingly, an aspiration of criminal justice, yet there are unique challenges to participatory work within punitive contexts. Drawing upon a study of peer mentoring in the voluntary sector, this article unveils some core tensions related to (ex)service user involvement in criminal justice. Interviews with mentors, mentees, and key stakeholders, along with direct observations of practice, reveal that respondents often see their work as personal‐political, emphasising the value of lived expertise and of collective action to address limiting social conditions. Simultaneously, however, mentoring is framed nationally and shaped locally by more established aims to correct, improve, and manage, individual ‘offenders’. There is, therefore, a fundamental tension between processes of politicisation, or coming together to assert a user voice and affect social change; and professionalisation, wherein mentors are co‐opted into forms of practice they often critique.
ISSN:2059-1098
2059-1101
DOI:10.1111/hojo.12305