The New Labour government has plenty of ideas that affect the traditional territory of social work, yet its systems for putting them into practice have bypassed social workers. Bill Jordan and Nigel Parton argue that a constructive, confident and flexible profession could and should play a central role.

New Labour's electoral triumph in 1997 was possible because John Major's administration lost the plot; the Thatcher revolution had foundered in a swamp of sleaze and factional recrimination. But as Tony Blair's poor reception at the Women's Institute conference underlined, Labour's vision of national renewal is becoming blurred. This lack of focus extends to the role of social work in the government's reform of welfare and public services.

One important aspect of political leadership is to tell society a story about itself that is persuasive - that mobilises and energises the population, by making new sense of apparently random experiences, and connecting up forces that were previously pulling in opposite directions.

The same is true of social work. It succeeds by enabling people to turn frustration, resentment, and unhappiness into positive action. When government and social work are in harmony - as they were in the early years of the welfare state - the latter can be an effective part of the former. At present, however, inconsistencies and tension are undermining both.1

New Labour's message seemed to explain the disappointing outcomes of Thatcherism - why, despite prosperity, the "feel-good factor" was still missing, and why most were worried by job insecurity, pervasive risk and the fear of crime. The trouble was traced to three main sources.

First, a substantial minority were excluded from employment, lacked incentives to work, and compensated themselves through crime, deviance or benefit fraud. Hence work must pay, opportunities must expand and more must be demanded of claimants. Welfare must encourage work, instead of providing for alternative (often lawless) lifestyles. The New Deal gave mainstream taxpayers reassurance that their contributions were being put to better use.

Second, years of Conservative economic individualism had undermined the sense of community and mutual responsibility. Here the message for the mainstream was at its blandest and most general. It endorsed the cultural trends of the previous two decades, the sense that security lay in mutual protection among groups with similar incomes and tastes, the development of Neighbourhood Watch schemes and Nimby ("not in my back yard") associations.

It is ironic that New Labour's failure to define a radical agenda of community, cohesion and solidarity now makes it vulnerable to William Hague's new brand of populism - mobilising fears of bogus asylum seekers, burglars and beggars.

Third, public services still lacked effectiveness as tools of government policy. Hence, quality standards and target outcomes must be more specific, and organisational change must build in the measurement and enforcement of such requirements.

New Labour's culture shift went beyond the reforms of the previous regime, by increasing the tempo and intensity of demands on the public sector, raising public awareness and expectations.

Social work has become fragmented between these three spheres. As a profession, it is strongly identified with the public sector, and is therefore the object of increased regulation, standard-setting and enforcement. As this part of New Labour's programme has run into trouble, with its failure to reach NHS targets and patchy education outcomes, local authority social workers are in danger of becoming scapegoats, perceived as part of the problem rather than part of the solution. In a recent article on reforming the NHS in the Guardian, there was a proposal to "abolish social workers" not because of their actual failures, but because in popular consciousness they were associated with municipal socialism and political correctness.2

On the other hand, a growing part of practice takes place in the voluntary sector, often in small-scale projects, support units and community associations, sometimes not even acknowledging themselves as social work agencies. This is the substance of new developments in community and social inclusion, the stuff of solidarity and mutual obligation, usually unsung and unrecognised.

These activities are in danger of losing touch with the local authority mainstream, and each sector risks being isolated from the other, but they contribute much of social work's continuing claim to effectiveness and street credibility.

Finally, New Labour has set up a whole range of new or revamped agencies, whose main feature is their emphasis on enforcing the demands of "tough love" (stronger conditions, stricter requirements) on service users. In establishing the roles of "personal advisers" to give "packages of help" to New Dealers, for instance, or in setting up the Asylum Support Agency, under the Home Office, for dispersing asylum seekers, the government has deliberately bypassed the public sector in general, and social work in particular.

Instead, it has created a new hybrid mix of counselling and enforcement which owes something to social work ideas, but whose practitioners have no clear common professional value base or expertise, and are intentionally fragmented among many organisations.

New Labour's message is supposed to link welfare to work, prosperity to community and public services to high standards in ways that were missing under the Conservative predecessors. But it does so in a heavy-handed, moralistic, controlling, and increasingly pompous and unconvincing way.

Above all, it does not value plurality and difference, or recognise the diversity of contributions and cultures that make up contemporary society. Instead, it relies on sanctions to enforce conformity and exclusions, blocks new connections, and is trapped by its own rhetoric of punishment and toughness.

Social work might help to provide some of New Labour's missing links, but it must first find a less fractured and more self-confident identity. Taking up the theme of renewal and cultural change, it could aim to establish new spaces for debate and criticism, in which citizens can influence the way that government programmes are implemented, and initiate new campaigns and movements.

A good example has been the recruitment of local young people to broker deals between groups of disaffected youths and the adult authorities on problem estates. The Local Government Information Unit's report of these projects, Taking Part, emphasises that what makes them effective is listening to what young people have to say and then taking action, with genuine devolution of power and choice.3 Such a broader conception of social work embraces community development (including economic and social regeneration schemes of all kinds) and emphasises mediation between formal organisations and informal local networks.

This more democratic and challenging way of working can far better meet the needs of a cultural environment in which change, not stability, is the dominant mode; in short, a constructive social work approach. Instead of using legal and procedural means to categorise service users according to scales of risk and vulnerability, it emphasises creativity in making sense of experience, self and relationships.

It enables service users to retell their stories, with themselves in the roles of survivors and resistance heroes not victims or blameworthy official stereotypes. It uses the cultural resources of their communities, including local language and interpretations.

In this way, they are encouraged to find solutions and achievements, rather than dwell on problems and failures, and to gain control over their lives. Constructive social work starts from the assumption that people, no matter what their circumstances, have significant resources within and around them, and the way these are mobilised as narratives is key to opening up new and more positive possibilities.

It sees the practitioner as an imaginative, enabling and empowering influence, using humour, tricks, allegories and quirky questions to stimulate optimism and innovation in the service user's thinking and talking.

Tony Blair's story has begun to sound hackneyed, and his way of telling it anxious, jaded and stiff. Like the social work profession, New Labour is in danger of becoming alienated from its identity and roots, and trapped in repetitive, formulaic phrases. Both need an approach that allows flexibility and uncertainty, rather than trying to impose a rigid order and discipline - open to new interpretations and potentialities rather than trying to impose meanings and answers.

In the last analysis, the success or failure of the New Labour project will depend on how practitioners and service users are able to give themselves and each other convincing versions of its values and goals, and put these into action together.

This is the style of practice we commend. In essence, social work is not a means of implementing government policy in a formal, direct way, but of mediating the local tension generated by new programmes, and engaging with service users over how to fit new measures to their particular needs.

Bill Jordan is professor of social policy, University of Exeter, and Nigel Parton is professor in child care, University of Huddersfield

1 The analysis here draws on Bill Jordan and Charlie Jordan, Social Work and the Third Way, Sage Publications, 2000, and Nigel Parton and Patrick O'Byrne, Constructive Social Work, MacMillan Press, 2000

2 Guardian, 22 May 2000

3 Local Government Information Unit, Taking Part, LGIU, 2000