Social Work as a Practice of Unity and Hope

Child & Family Social Work, 2002

Social Work and Social Sciences Review, 2005

Social work in the United Kingdom faces all manner of woes. Critical public inquiries, disgruntled users of the service, the bureaucratisation of practice, problems with recruitment, and the overhaul of training, all continue to reinforce a culture of pessimism. It has been suggested that social work in the United Kingdom stands at the crossroads where a decision must be made either to accept these depressing conditions as they are, or to challenge them by asserting a new future for a reinvigorated profession. The latter option is supported by the authors of this article because we share the view that as social workers we have available to us discursive freedom with which to analyse the profession's contemporary ailments and to find a way through them based on a discourse of social justice. The idea and practice of discursive freedom can be captured in the heuristic notion of 'space' which the authors use here as a shared focus for analysing contemporary social work from four different critical perspectives. In this way a dialogue is promoted between theory and practice and within critical theory. In its method and its results this inquiry is still very much work-in-progress. This provisional quality sits comfortably with the notion of 'space' and gives rein to its recursive qualities. These qualities, it is argued, must lie at the heart of transformative social work.

Journal of Social Work Practice, 2005

The article analyses one case: a sickness benefit office in a social services department. It takes as a starting point that organisations function as projection surfaces for fantasies, emotions and reactions. The psycho-societal perspective clarifies how a social services department transfers a crucial dilemma in social work onto social workers by processes of individualising. The dilemma relates to the disparity between clients’ complex life situations and the limited possibilities for social workers to resolve them. There is an ambiguity in this transference. In cases of failure, management seeks explanations not by looking at possible organisational or societal restrictions or explanations, but rather at the social workers’ personal and professional life histories—they are subjected to a life historic individualisation and stigmatisation.1 Social workers, on the other hand, display ambivalence towards influencing case administrative work, which can be interpreted as an adequate defence mechanism. The article then introduces the concept of individualisation that reflects the dialectic processes of subjectivity and objectivity and leads to a contextualised analysis of social work.

Journal of Sociology and Social Welfare, 2005

Child and Adolescent Mental Health, 2003

The Framework for the Assessment of Children in Need and their Families signifies a major achievement in the development of a coherent approach to promoting the welfare of children while safeguarding them from harm. In this article, the aspirations of the Framework are considered, with particular focus on the challenges posed by the Framework, not only to the practice of social workers but also to the status of the social work profession. The area of professional judgement making is discussed, along with the threats to the effective implementation of the Framework. The author concludes that the Framework could bring about not only a better deal for children and families service users, but a new era of professional respect for social workers.

2013

"‘Destined to become a 'must-read', this book injects titanium levels of excitement and promise to all those in social work seeking not just to study the world, but to change it.' - Donna Baines, Professor of Labour Studies and Social Work, McMaster University, Canada 'Do not expect to agree with everything you read here. Indeed, that is precisely why you should read it. It is time to shake up the social work conversation.' - Sue White, Professor of Social Work (Children and Families), University of Birmingham, UK 'This book is a gem' - Linda Briskman, Professor of Human Rights, Swinburne Institute for Social Research, UK 'An important and extremely timely book which will be of great value to all those concerned to place the challenges of inequalities and injustice at the heart of social work.' – Brid Featherstone, Professor of Social Care, The Open University, UK Fundamental to social work are the values of justice and equality. But it has long been felt that these values are being eroded under a system of capitalist power. Serving to reactivate and refresh social work’s radical tradition to form a new political agenda, The New Politics of Social Work: • Brings together leading international authors to deliver a critical exploration of the impact capitalism has had on social work • Paves the way for students and practitioners of social work to take a more transformative, radical approach This is an important and authoritative book for both advanced level undergraduate and postgraduate students of Social Work."

The British Journal of Social Work, 2017

In order to practise social work in England, all social workers must register with the Health and Care Professions Council (HCPC). Only those who are registered can legally work as or call themselves a social worker. Once registered, if concerns about their practice are raised social workers may find they are then made subject to a fitness to practise process. This article reports on the findings from interviews with social workers who were referred to the HCPC for practice issues. Our rationale was to hear and report on the lived experience of those going through the investigatory process. We carried out semi-structured interviews with eight social workers and used thematic analysis to analyse our data. The three main themes to emerge from our findings were organisational issues; representation and cost; and emotional toll. This paper discusses these findings in detail. We suggest that the current regulatory system situates social workers in a position of disadvantage during the Fitness to Practise process, and conclude by making a number of recommendations for consideration if future changes are to be made to the social work regulatory process.

""In this article we argue that current reform proposals coming from Robert Pinker and others are challenging the universalist premises of generic social work. Pinker et al. argue that social work should, for the sake of efficiency and performance, be a connected set of specialist activities. This 'determinate dispersal' which we recognise as falling within the remit of postmodern strategies, we contrast with the far more libertarian ideas of the noted post-modern theorist J.F Lyotard. Thus we side the political and cultural meanings of Pinker s ideas between generic social work which upholds ideas of universal ethical values and universal provision, and those of Lyotard whose anti-foundationalism proposes a radically heterogeneous society with no central value-structure. We express our concern that the 'new specialist' remit may allow too much power to the social worker. Thus we have considerable sympathy for Lyotard's call for a radical agonistics - a field wherein the inequalities of power between say, a worker and her client, to some extent can be redressed.""