The Quasi-market Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2500 words

The Quasi-market - Essay Example On the supply side, there is competition between service suppliers; but, in contrast with pure markets, suppliers are not necessarily privately owned, nor are they necessarily required to make profits. On the demand side, consumer purchasing power resides not in cash but in a budget confined to the purchase of a specific service, and the service user does not exercise the final choice concerning purchasing decisions. Despite such artificiality, the quasi-market is a key concept in the quasi-business discourse. We're social work to think of itself as though it were a business, then having a market with which it had to deal was crucial to the installation of that thinking. The degree of shift involved is indicated in the powerful political legitimation function the quasi-market performed for the Conservative government. Market outcomes are neither fair nor unfair. They are either the result of the operation of impersonal market forces or they stem from the body responsible for gate kee ping access to the market in the case of social work, the local authority. As such, quasi-markets offered the possibility of central government holding at arm’s length the responsibility for the outcomes of its social welfare policy. The introduction of quasi-markets in social work, initially in the sphere of community care but later developing in a range of other services such as foster care and children’s homes, made a significant contribution to establishing the social work business, for a number of reasons. First, marketisation undermined the sense in which social services had represented a