FOR
Social work values remain a powerful force and there is no evidence that closer working with health will erode them.

The values we associate with social work took shape in the great charitable foundations of the eighteenth century and were consolidated into parliamentary and political thinking throughout the nineteenth century. They have survived their incorporation into the state organisation of welfare during the past 50 years.

Those values are predicated on the respect we offer social care users, seeing them as unique individuals in their own right: people to be enabled to take control of their own lives and become fully responsible for their own decisions. “Enabling” and “empowering “ are our current take on those values.

When discussing, a year ago, apparent government plans for the health service to “take over” social services, the Association of Directors of Social Services warned that such a move would pose a threat to those values. Subsequent discussions with government and our partner organisations have been fuelled by a determination to ensure their well-being.

Those talks have borne fruit: there will be no “take over”. Closer integration will take more than one form. Nor is it clear what impact such integration will have on the quality of front-line working relationships of local authority and NHS staff, and their wider relationship with the public they serve.

There is no evidence so far that closer working with health colleagues has led to erosion of those values, despite concern from some quarters that “checklist” social work is making deep inroads into professional standards - concerns which should be treated seriously.

Indeed, there is every reason to hope that as social care values are brought up against attitudes to users that tend to see them exclusively as patients awaiting cure, it is those latter attitudes which will struggle to survive.

And no one should underestimate the significance of the establishment of the Social Care Institute for Excellence, the General Social Care Council and the National Care Standards Commission as indicators of our determination to root social work values in principled institutions which will support them.

Nor should one too easily discount the influence of those voluntary and local government organisations in which social workers are, and will continue to be, employed. Despite their imperfections, they have been, and will go on being, vital institutions within which the very best the profession has to offer can be organised and delivered.

Moira Gibb is president, Association of Directors of Social Services.

AGAINST
Social work risks losing confidence in itself and, if it does, its values will be the first casualty

I  am now a senior social work manager, social work is my profession, and a strong value base underpins my practice. If social work values do not survive in the emerging organisational structures in which social workers are being located, we will have no one to blame but ourselves.

Much has been lost: procedures have become more important than process; social workers can spend more time facing a computer than a service user; many senior managers, who have been social workers, seem to have forgotten social work values; and, of course, an increasing number of senior managers come from a non-social work background.

We also have an identity crisis to some extent. What is a “care manager”? The title is shared by a range of allied professions. Have we lost confidence in ourselves and does that explain concerns about retaining our value base? Yet social work in Northern Ireland has had long experience of working in joint organisational arrangements and remains strong professionally, positive, and confident about the social work task and its ethical basis.

Our health colleagues have much to learn from us in the age of consumerism and the extent to which patients are treated as persons with rights and their own views, as anyone who works in a health-related setting will know. We have the experience of involving those who use our services in staff recruitment, training, service management and planning.

The Third International Conference on Social Work in Health and Mental Health in Finland earlier this year came up with a new definition of social work: “The social work profession promotes social change, problem-solving in human relationships and the empowerment and liberation of people to enhance well-being. Utilising theories of human behaviour and social systems, social work intervenes at the right points where people interact with their environments. Principles of human rights and social justice are fundamental to social work.”

I recently met a manager who has had cards of this statement printed for her staff.

If we don’t believe in ourselves and the value base which underpins our work, who will?