Reimagining the Human Service Relationship is informed by the premise that the helping relationship should be seen as developing in the interactive space between those who provide human services and those who receive them. The contributors to this volume redefine the contours, roles, institutional divisions, means, and aims of providing and receiving services in a range of settings, including child welfare, addiction treatment, social enterprise, doctoring, mental health, and palliative care. Though they advocate an experience-near approach, they remain sensitive to the ambiguities and competing rationalities of the service relationship. Taken together, these chapters reimagine the service relationship by making visible the working relevancies of service delivery.

Acknowledgments

Part I. The Human Service Relationship

1. From the Iron Cage to Everyday Life, by Jaber F. Gubrium

Part II. Service User Perspectives

2. Professional Intervention from a Service User Perspective, by Tone Alm Andreassen

3. Expertise and Ambivalence in User-Focused Human Service Work, by Margaretha Järvinen

4. Flipping the Script: Managing and Reimagining Outpatient Addiction Treatment, by E. Summerson Carr

5. Service Users' Negotiated Identity in a Social Enterprise and the Opportunity for Reflection in Action, by Eve E. Garrow

6. Between Control and Surrender in Terminal Illness, by Geraldine Foley and Virpi Timonen

Part III. Professional Work

7. New Relations Between "Professionals" and Disabled Service Users, by Per Koren Solvang

8. The Use of Elder-Clowning to Foster Relational Citizenship in Dementia Care, by Karen-Lee Miller and Pia Kontos

9. Managing the Complexity of Family Contact in Child Welfare, by Tarja Pösö

10. Risk, Trust, and the Complex Sentiments of Enacting Care, by Amanda Grenier and Cristi Flood

11. "Civil Disobedience" and Conflicting Rationalities in Elderly Care, by Signe Mie Jensen and Kaspar Villadsen

Part IV. Reimagined Service Relationships

12. Mental Health Self-Knowledge: Crossing Borders with Recovery Colleges and Tojisha Kenkyu, by Tom Shakespeare and Rachael Collins

13. Tension and Balance in Teaching "The Patient Perspective" to Mental Health Professionals, by Erik Eriksson and Katarina Jacobsson

14. Reimagining the Doctor–Patient Relationship, by Ian Greener

15. Who's Who and Who Cares? Personal and Professional Identities in Welfare Services, by Marian Barnes

16. Border Work: Negotiating Shifting Regimes of Power, by Janet Newman

Contributors

Index