Terry T.F. Leung Department of Social Work The Chinese University of Hong Kong

1. Authentic argumentation between the welfare service users and welfare professionals – Rhetorical or real? Terry T.F. Leung Department of Social Work The Chinese University of Hong Kong

2. The Habermasian vision of authentic argumentation • Deliberative democracy • Innate orientation to mutual understanding • Disagreements and conflicts are rationally resolvable through a mode of communication that supports the force of the better argument • Communicative action • People are able to take part in a process of argumentation to make or question any assertion without domination of power structure • Validity claim by truth, truthfulness and normative rightness • Goal of communicative action is to ensure that • all participants have equal opportunity to put forth reasons for their claims • to learn from explicit mistakes • to improve collective decisions by exposing claims to criticism

3. Deliberative democracy is gathering momentum in the welfare and social care sector • Increasingly, welfare service users are included in the decisional processes for service management andplanning • User participation has a strong appeal to social workers for its congruence with the professional mission of empowering the service users • User participation promises organizational effectiveness and gains legitimacy for the service system

5. Institutional presence of the welfare service users • What happens in the discursive platforms? • To what extent is the discursive platforms free from domination of power structure? • To what extent can participants’ claims be exposed to criticism for improving collective decisions?

6. In the context of Hong Kong, this study asks… • Qualitative approach

7. Data collected from… • 3 focus groups • 15 individual interviews • 25 service users who were members of functional committees in Hong Kong welfare service organizations

8. Some findings from the Habermasian perspective

9. Two different attitudes towards system representatives • Discordant • “we are very frustrated….we don’t have many representatives in the Executive Committee….they (system representatives) always see things from an administrative perspective, the money perspective….But for us service users, the mission and goal is more important. I cannot feel their genuineness in proactive development of service for us. Really disappointed.” (Care giver, user member of governance structure in Organization A) • Amicable • “They (system representatives) are willing to listen to views of the service users. If not, there is no need to organize the users’ committee, isn’t it?....Of course our views are sometimes filtered, to make them more workable.” (Older people, member of user committee in Organization B)

10. discordant group • Instrumental orientation of system representatives

11. Discordant group • “We-they” demarcation between the service users and system representatives • Participation as a means for redressing unfair allocation of services and resources • Rejecting the normative rightness of system representatives to control the decisional process • The participatory platform becomes a venue for contest rather than mutual understanding • The service users were instrumental too

12. Amicable group • Readily accept power of system representatives

13. Amicable group • Appreciation of lifeworld in systems • Sense respect for their everyday life experiences in the cooperative encounters and supportive interactions users had with social workers • In return, users were more ready to understand the difficulties system representatives had in dealing with dilemmas in service management and planning • Rationalization of lifeworld • In communicative action, the taken-for-granted content of the lifeworldis subject to constant challenges to enhance ability to solve problems • Only a few was able to express reflection and learning from participation in the discursive platform -those few came with questions rather than answers • Lifeworld and system remained separated

14. was authentic argumentation between welfare service users and system representatives rhetorical or real? • Prevalence of power influence • Overt system power perceived by the discordant group • Covert system power in the amicable group • Lack of readiness for rational adjudication of validity claims • The discordant group denounced truthfulness of system representatives and pre-conceived their assertions as invalid • The amicable group had total trust in the system representatives and gave up rational adjudication of their assertions • Separation between lifeworld and systems • The discordant group regretted the colonization of their lifeworld by system logic • The amicable group remained detached from the system, only a few could rationalize their lifeworld through participation

16. Thank you