Has social work lost its political edge? Participants in a roles and tasks project in Northern Ireland think so.
A report published by the Northern Ireland Social Care Council found that social work is less political and needs to reaffirm its role as an influencer of societal change.
Not that I can draw from memory, but I gather that the profession, and particularly the British Association of Social Workers, commanded a much stronger influence in social work's heyday of the 1970s.
The minister for social services was a regular speaker at BASW conferences, and many more professionals took part in social and political debates, in the pages of Community Care and elsewhere.
Contrast that to the sorry state of public relations and the profession's national voice now. For example, despite sending an invitation, BASW failed to secure an appearance from care services minister Phil Hope at its annual conference in 2009, while two-thirds of council press officers described their social work colleagues as "reluctant" or "extremely unwilling" to engage with journalists for a Community Care survey last year.
The NISCC, like the Social Work Task Force in England, identified a need for a stronger voice for social workers and for practitioners to "become more politically, strategically aware and have a higher profile where policy and funding decisions are being made".
In conclusion, it also reached a widely-held view: that the bureaucracy created by an emphasis on policies and procedures had led to a dilution of the relationship with service users.
The view was summed up by a pithy comment that lent the report its name: that social work had become more about paperwork than people work.
I agree – in the dim and very distant past as a social worker I recall reading a book on “political social work” and preparing an essay on using this as a social work method. That is slightly different to the focus of your posting but in a sense it is connected.
What you are exploring is the nature as distinct from the methodology of work of the profession and the response to the now seemingly continuous bad press – it is worse than I can ever remember it. In one sense perhaps we should not complain as it is very difficult to get social care into the headlines – we then either see it then as a threat or as an opportunity.
It (the profession) does however need a voice and whereas Hilton Dawson was initially promising (anyone that falls out with Ed Balls has my vote) but of late he seems to have lost the plot entirely over this fiasco with the social work college – to the point of self destruction I think.
There is a definite vacuum of a coherent and politically savvy voice capable of engaging with the press and being sufficiently assertive (and in my view if necessary – aggressive) in tackling the poor image and (mostly) ill informed opinion on complex matters.
It is not helped by the fact that Ofsted are an utter laughing stock and the GSCC et al are a complete disgrace. How can a profession be respected when even its regulator (the GSCC in England) is under special measures?
You make a good point and a small number of bloggers are at least making an effort, albeit unconventionally in my case – what do you expect when you one has Guido Fawkes blog as a inspiration.
Wilt
www.regulatorwatch.co.uk