A 'different kind' of professional? Case studies of the work of parent-centred organizations

This paper considers the positions of three professionals working with parents in what we call parent-centred organizations. Our aim is to explore the extent of the 'space' they have available to them to construct their own understandings of their role, and to implement their priorities and agendas. We consider how these individual versions to professionalism articulate with the context in which these three people work, and the implications for their relationships with their parent-clients. Two main areas are examined: first, the changing contexts in which public sector professionals work and, in particular, the incursions of 'performativity' into their working lives; and secondly, we argue that the subjectivities of the three professionals provide them with personal agendas which they can, to some degree, insert into their work. We conclude by considering the extent of the autonomy available to each professional, and the ways in which they utilize this 'space'. Identity, like other forms of meaning is multivariant, so that it is only by situating individuals or groups in their specific historical and material settings that we can explore which elements of identity or which assemblages of elements are most salient at any one time. (Hewitt 1992: 320).