Question:
Is there a profession less valued than social work? Answer: yes - social work lecturing.
There now seem to be serious concerns that social work practitioners are reluctant to move into academia, leaving ageing lecturers increasingly isolated from social work practice. This may be a new concern, but underpinning it is a longstanding and even more worrying issue for social work - its frequent failure to ensure that face-to-face practice is at the heart of its activities and organisations.
Social work's structures and organisations have not encouraged senior managers, academics and other key figures to maintain direct involvement in face-to-face practice. Here is one field where social work might learn some lessons from health. Academic nurses frequently seem to maintain their practice registration. It is unremarkable for senior medical academics to maintain clinical work. Yet frequently social work academics are put in a position where their knowledge of practice dwindles and may only be replaced by what they hear from students and practice partners, or read in social work texts predominantly written by non-practitioners.
A long time ago, Martin Richardson, a social work student, and I, a social work lecturer, came to the conclusion that there were intractable problems in basing social work education in universities and colleges, where it became academicised and separated from the world of practice. We argued instead for deschooling social work, basing learning resources in local areas, strengthening their independence from service agencies and developing clear principles rooted in linking theory and practice.
Predictably nothing came of this, but social work education has since sought to reinvent itself in other ways, emphasising the importance of practitioners and service users. So perhaps we now need to look more to higher education than to social work itself, to make sense of social work practitioners' current reluctance to make the move to academic life.
There may be issues of formal university terms and conditions discouraging crossover. But I suspect the problems are more basic. In the public mind, universities may still be "ivory towers" but such stereotypes take no account of the huge cultural and funding changes wrought by Thatcher. Modern universities are run as if they were multinational corporations, often by people with little relevant experience who have mostly had a cushioned life of public sector employment. Too often the result is underfunding, overwork, stress, bullying and breakdown.
Universities are also preoccupied with the government's Research Assessment Exercise. It means that valuing students and being a good teacher is not enough. Academics must succeed in "grant capture" and publish in suitable places (which are unlikely to include service users' newsletters).
Many good practitioners may have a limited background in research and require mentoring and support to develop their research skills. Needless to say, given the other work they and their colleagues have, this doesn't necessarily happen.
No wonder then that social work practitioners think twice about entering academic life. It is time universities and social work bodies got together to set in train a process to do something about it.
So long as practitioners are not included at the heart of all social work activities, from policy-making to research, and from management to education, then social work practice itself is likely to continue to be weakened. We also need more equal access to the social work education workforce for people with experience as service users, but until universities become more positive work places, this too is unlikely to happen.
