Patterns of representation in move 6 interpret fact in relation to client’s

Move 6 describes the client’s properties and economic status to assess whether the client’s income is sufficient for the family. This move was found in 49 of the 64 reports only. Therefore after discussing the patterns identified, I will look at the reports that do not have this move to see how they convince the screening committee. There are 118 clauses in this move with the client as grammatical subject, 62 material clauses, and 46 relational clauses of which 27 are possessive 19 are attributive and 14 projected clauses. I am also looking at how the social worker

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represents the clients in this move in terms of direct reference to the client or through the use of the client’s voice.

In direct representations, there are more material clauses in this move because the social workers are interpreting the facts they got from the clients in order to intervene fairly. They describe the status of the client, the social background as provided by the client, what the client is capable of doing and the property of the client as stated in the policy. They use language that is straight-forward and that describes the situation of the clients. Pithouse and Atkinson (1998) point out that “the story is constructed by the worker as an act of bricolage. That is, bits and pieces

of family life are picked out and reassembled into narrative format of case talk” (p.194). The details cannot be analysed in tables like in the sections above because points tend to be built up over combinations of clauses

For example Extract 12

Case 2: She can sustain herself, the two children that she is staying with are not working and she has no assets to generate income from.

Extract 13

Case 4: Sethunya is unemployed and has no source of income

The social workers may also draw attention to what they themselves have observed. For example:

Extract 14

Case 5: The officer observed that the client had no food in the

165 Extract 15

Case 5: From a health point of view the client coughed uncontrollably but insisted that medical doctors failed to diagnose him even with the use of x-ray.

Extract 16

Case 16: The client is not terminally ill; it’s only that he is weak. Extract 17

Case 28: After assessing T.R holistically, he could not work because of his health.

Secondly, the social worker directly brings in the voice of the client. There are more clauses that explain whether the client has assets or not, in relation to the policy, see definition given earlier in this section

Example: Extract 18

Case10: The client told this officer that the only 2.5 kg of maize meal was the last meal.

Extract 19

Case 33: The client has mentioned that her partner’s relatives took her kitchen equipment; they said they belonged to their brother.

Facts discussed in this move are based on move 3 and 5 as well as recommendations in the policy. The social workers intervene according to what the policy says and what they have observed during their home visits and interviews. The social workers are explaining what has happened, describing their clients and explaining what should be done that will show competence in their profession. Hall et al (1999) explain that:

In any context of institutional intervention, the prospect of having to justify one’s actions and decisions brings within the purview an implicit (or explicit) ‘test’ against what other

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professionals and the client(s) have said, written, or reported about the case or its details. (p.540)

Recommendations of the screening committee are based on what the social worker has said in relation to this move, whether the client can be assisted or not. Hall et al. (1999) go on to state that “in a situation where different professionals are involved in the processing of a case, different viewpoints are likely to emerge” (p.540). This indicates that the fate of the client could be highly dependent upon what the social worker has written and the amount of facts collected from the client. For example B.B clarified this in an interview

Extract 4.11

Unity: What happens to the recommendations that you make? B.B The recommendations, either the committee that will be in there accepts them as they are or they can even go against what you recommended. [Interview with BB 9.3.2011]

Unity: And when they go against what you recommended, doesn’t’ it affect the client because you do the recommendation looking at how the client is, like we talked about them being underprivileged?

B.BThat is why it’s important that when you do your assessment

you do it thoroughly otherwise if you leave other issues unattended to, chances are that it will be deferred, because you

wouldn’t have given them the picture or even the full information

about the client. [Interview with B.B 9.3.2011]

In the light of the comment above, I was surprised to observe that a number of reports did not include move 6 at all, However, from a theoretical point of view the fact that these reports do not have move 6 does not mean that they are not destitution reports, Swales (1990) states that, “Communicative purpose has been nominated as the privileged property of a genre. Other properties, such as form, structure and audience expectations operate to identify the extent to which an exemplar is

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prototypical of a particular genre” (p.52). In the following section I will look at how

the writers convince the committee in reports that do not have an explicit move 6.