Citation

Cuthill F, Johnston L. Sociol. Health Illn. 2019; ePub(ePub): ePub.

Affiliation

Public Health and Gender Based Violence, NHS Lothian, Edinburgh, UK.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2019, Foundation for the Sociology of Health and Illness, Publisher John Wiley and Sons)

DOI

10.1111/1467-9566.12968

PMID

31241189

Abstract

Street-level bureaucracy is an increasingly useful way to understand how strategic policy is implemented in day-to-day practice. This approach has uncovered the ways that individual health and social care practitioners work within institutional constraints to influence policy implementation at the micro-level. Nonetheless, despite the diversity of settings where these street-level bureaucrats (SLBs) work, little attention has been focused on the impact of place on policy delivery. This paper draws on empirical research to examine the ways that delivering government domestic abuse policy in the intimate space of the family home shapes the delivery of strategic policy in the everyday. Drawing on qualitative research with Health Visitors (HVs) in the UK in 2016, the study findings illuminate the ways that the material, socio-spatial and idealised boundaries of the family home shape the implementation of policy. Key themes in the HV's narratives emerged as they described themselves as both a danger and in danger in the family home. In challenging the ontological security of the home (Giddens 1990) - privacy, security and control are key concepts here - HVs described how they shape their actions to achieve policy outcomes while simultaneously managing threats to the home, to professional identity and to self.

© 2019 Foundation for the Sociology of Health & Illness.

Language: en

Keywords

Giddens; community care; domestic violence; gender; health policy; health visiting