We are two social work students at London South Bank University. Towards the end of our first year of study, having been troubled by reports of front-line practice, we felt that we needed to debate the future of social work as students. We have a proposition for student social workers across the UK.
Last week, those involved with social work in the UK had a keen focus on the Social Work Taskforce’s final report. The report’s recommendations may be progressive and ameliorate some of the problems affecting social work. As students looking ahead to our future careers, however, it seems likely that some of the deficiencies underlying and threats to the profession of social work in the UK will persist. These issues include those addressed by the Taskforce; social work’s public image, tightly constricted resources, problems with retention of staff and the time consumed by bureaucracy, to pick a few. There are also issues, however, which the report does not address such as the policy underlying performance indicators and rigorous means-testing which may lead social workers away from practice consistent with their values. Furthermore, there are issues outside the report’s remit which will affect social work in future such as the changing population profile, public spending cuts and the impact of climate change.
We feel that students need to not only critically appraise the profession we will enter against the social work values common to us all, but to prepare ourselves to change practice for the better. We need to consider the challenges of the future today if we are to contribute to social justice and serve humanity tomorrow; the reasons so many of us enter the course.
We know that students lack experience of the role we seek to influence, though many, particularly those on employment based routes, may have spent many years working in social care. Many are or have been service-users or carers themselves. As future practitioners our opinion must have an influence. We also know that it would be counter-productive to exclude service users, carers, academics and current practitioners from our debate, and we welcome their input. At the same time, we recognise that a student-orientated forum developing a coherent student voice has value.
To this end, on 17th February next year we have devised and arranged a student conference entitled ‘Neo-liberalism vs. Social Justice’ Can I practise the social work I believe in within the statutory sector?’, to address these issues. At this point, because of limited space, the conference is restricted to those students based in London.
Nonetheless, we call on social work students across the UK to consider the social work they want to practice now, while there is opportunity to reflect, organise and campaign. Our firm wish is that students open up this debate for themselves and start imagining a social work of which they wish to be part, not simply one they do not favour or reject. If we do not have a destination, we cannot plan to reach it.
As a start, we propose that we distribute the outcomes of our conference to any students who are interested in campaigning for a better social work future. There are many ways in which we could do this, conferences, seminars or student campaign groups, but the goal is planning what to do when we enter practice.
Please contact us for more information on what we are doing and spread the debate among all social work students.
Dan Morton and Natalie Angel
December 2009
Fair play lads. I am an Irish social worker based in London but also doing a PhD. I used to be the student representative on the Irish Association of Social Work council. It is great to see students kick start a debate that will slap social work in the face. My interest is around how social work has become informational as opposed to what we aim to do, explore the narrative and the person's experiences.
On another topic, what is with the 'grow a social worker' thing? Seriously can u see this being applied to a clinical psychology career or nursing? Try growing a Psychiatrist? Nope, as a social worker and some one who prides themselves on a good career with ample postgraduate studying experiences, I am sick of the Ed Ball's school of thought around how to improve social work via a Royal College or hiring Oxford graduates etc etc. Bottom line, if there is no culture of professionalism from student to manager, then we don't have a profession.
I am based in the Maudsley, aka Dante's Hell when it comes to mental health. My main research area of interest if gender in social work literature, an absence. I am doing my PhD in the Institute of Education, feel free to drop me a line @ 075 25024785 and would be interested in speaking to a group of you students and supporting this project
All the best
Aidan Cooney, Msc (King's), BSW (UCC), NQSW
I am a student in my final year PLO. I must say i am a little disapointed that your conference is only being held for London students but it sounds very interesting.
"We speak, and the word goes out beyond us, to consequences and ends which we had not conceived of." - Gadamer
Hello both,
Thanks for your responses.
Aidan - thanks for your encouragement and support. We've got the structure of the conference plus all workshops arranged now, but I may well be in touch regarding about arranging something with you in afterwards, if that sounds OK.
I am not sure I understand the 'grow your own social worker' debate - is it just local authorities encouraging access to the social work degree through employment based routes? I see it to be good practice to offer career development opportunities to those who have worked in social care for many years with plenty of experience, and to widen access into the profession for those who might otherwise face a barrier financially.
Adra - we too are sorry that we couldn't widen the conference beyond London. We only have 250 spaces in our lecture theatre and we wanted to offer it to those who stood most chance of being there on the day so we have a full event. Where are you based? Perhaps you could set up a similar conference or seminar in your area too? We can let you know how we put ours together...
It does sound a good idea, but I agree with Adra, that limiting it to London based students is disappointing for those of us in other parts of the country. When you say conference - what exactly is it that you're planning? If it is a conference then surely it'd be fairer to widen the call for papers to the whole country and then select what is most relevant - this also gives something that would be easily disseminatable after by e-mail or webpage. If you mean rally or discussion forum then I can understand your reasoning perhaps better. If you are planning a conference based format, I'd be very interested in submitting a paper (on my area of interest from my first degree - ethics). I'll try and add you as a friend so we can discuss this further.
It's probably fairer to call it a discussion forum rather than a formal conference, though it will be set up in a conference format (plenary, panel debate, workshops). This is the first time either of us have done anything like this, so you will need to forgive any naivity about the process. A call for conference paper was not something we had considered, only because it is not something we're not familiar with.
I see now that limiting our own 'conference' to London in the context of this call out may appear touch contradictory. I will see if we could maybe put aside some of the spaces for those outisde of London. In the meantime, I will send you a PM, and RAG1 also who has contacted me.
Dear Dan & Natalie,
Thanks for the reply and forgive me, as I wasn't looking to present a paper. My criticism, while a bit from the hip, related more to the language around social work and developing a profession. I suppose my views were more a critical stance around how social work has developed in the UK and Ireland too. One of the core issues around social work, is how do we define out professionalism? The GSSC hasn't achieved this, in my eyes. The SCIE has begun to develop a body of knowledge but who is this knowledge benefit; the client or the target?
I like the emerging theme from this conference; self reflection / critical reflection in student social work. I wonder if practitioners can attend?
Once this even has finished are you planning a pack outlining things discussed and outcomes? Basicly some information on how things went and maybe breakdowns of some of the aspects of the conferance? I would be interested in seeing that information so if you are going to do it please provide in an online-friendly format and provide us with a link. Thank you
Adra - indeed we are planning to put together a pdf after the event of everything we discussed and agreed at the conference. I will see if we can upload it somewhere that it is available for everybody to download. I think we need to set up a website actually what do you think?
Aidan - I'll have a chat with my mate and get back to you. It is aimed at students predominantly, but if practictioners are keen on attending and there are places available I see no reason why not.
This sounds like a fantastic idea. On behalf of the Joint Social Work Unit (which supported the Social Work Task Force) I wanted to ask whether we could be of any help - either perhaps fielding a speaker for the event, or providing some background information/slides etc which you could use?
Hello Laras - thanks very much for the offer. It might be very effective to have a speaker advocating the Task Forces recommendations among other voices on the panel. Again, I will get back to you about this. This is a collaborative effort so I must discuss all of the suggestions/offers with my colleague before responding!
Hi Tangiers, I meant to reply to your earlier comment about the pdf - you can use CareSpace to upload documents if you want, and anyone can download them from there. Just go the Upload section
CareSpace support
OK - I suspect we'll use this facility, so thank you for pointing me in its direction.
I am a newly qualified social worker and I have been in post for about 3 months, I have already battled to make some small changes in the team and I really think that it would useful for you and us to take up the issue together, we are still as fired up as student workers and have that added bonus of experiencing the issues!!
Sounds like a brilliant idea. I am first year at Middlesex and am happy to keep people updated. Keep me posted on what is happening.
Aidan, I may be missing your point but as someone who has lived and worked in Cuba, I can assure you that you can grow social workers, doctors, nurses, engineers and any other manner of worker if you don’t obsess about ‘professional’ status. The best practitioner’s are those that either come from the communities they hope to serve or have an instinctive regard to who they serve. The real problem with social work is that in its blind regard to being accepted as a profession, it has lost sight of what its real purpose should be. There is no chance that social work is ever going to have a coherent knowledge base to ever fulfill the definition of a profession. If we had the confidence to validate our own practice base rather than measuring our worth in relation to others, be they nurses, lawyers or doctors, we would develop the confidence to demand respect form others. I find your comment about Ed Balls rather confusing when you follow it up with the statement “if there is no culture of professionalism from student to manager, than we don’t have a profession”. By your parameters the best thing to happen to social work surely is a Royal College. Those of us not concerned with status however, still hope that we can return to our roots as a vocation.
Dear Nihat,
Thanks for the reply and yes you missed the point. On the following issue:
~ You are from Cuba, lovely and well done to you
~ Professional status; why the big problem with the term 'professionalism? I sometimes wonder about the earthy kind of social worker. Your view of professionalism is to get social work to be more medicalised in their thinking. Professionalism is simply about student, professionals and academics with service users taking responsibility for how social worker practice outside of the mainstream. If that means social workers ditching Care Management posts and becoming advocates that will shoot down this neo-liberal approach to servcies, then so be it. My arguments were never about pushing for professionalism to the disregard of the ethics. Although ask youself, how many social workers really practice with an ethical conscious? If they did they wouldn't be peddling the services they do. No was it about letters after my name to be in with clinical psychologists. No, it was more along the line of getting a decent structure in the occupation and professionalism adds to an occupation and gives it focus. As Foucault said, knowledge is both good and bad but it is linked to power. Professionalism in social work would give us a certain parity to engage and challenege abusive and powerful discourses with our emergeing professional discourses that would be client centered.
- Coherent knowledge base; what is this? who sets the tone for a coherent knowledge base in social work? In fairness I won't brag but I am doing a PhD in IoE. I couldn't find a decent University in Ireland or the UK that offers a decent postgraduate community for social work. At best I hope to contribute to this knowledge base but I don't see many Universities engaging with social workers in the areas around them to develop this knowledge base.
~ to break down the Ed Balls thing; on the back of the Baby P, Balls suggested employing graduates from Oxford and Cambridge in social work to well give the occupation an air of respectability. Now forgive me but with a Royal College (muck name) will this add what to social work? Jobs for Oxford and Cambridge graduates, who will conduct research to underpin daft neoliberal social policy in UK? I advocate for social work courses in areas of Disability to be conducted by people with disabilities and their carers.
By all accounts thanks for the reply and critical discussion but don't come across smug. When you mean 'us'; get a grip. Practitioners do exist in the field that challenge their professional counterparts day in and day out.
Oh dear Aidan, I rather suspect this is going away from the thread. My problem with “professionalism”? Maybe I can just say, smugly of course, that the English Rugby Union team regards itself as “professional”. Not much of an advert for competence though is it? Since when has coming form a place been a basis for an argument? I used it to show you that there is another way of doing ethical work without being submerged in the sterile pursuit of “professional” status. Whether it will be you or the multitude pursuing it, no one will ever provide a coherent social work knowledge base. Other than the vacuity of what passes for most of contemporary social work thought, there are too many people, me included, who look at the life around us form political perspectives to be seduced and subjugated by academic thought. We get paid and we do our job. We strive to do what we do in a way meaningful to who ever uses us and our services. We do not magnify our work. What we do is have challenges to orthodoxy and class power as our first stepping block in our thinking. Sorry if it is all a bit unreconstructed but there you go. In truth you and I are probably not that far apart in what we are trying to articulate. It’s just seems to me to be self evident that if you are advocating teaching by those who use the service, you cannot equally advocate separateness by advocating your “professionalism”. That’s a status thing and it’s hollow and not that attractive nor desirable to me. I’ll pass your invective re: challenging professional counterparts. It is never a productive thing to assume and ascribe, particularly as you have no idea what I do or where I work. Suffice to say I too have walked through the hallowed ground of the Institute of Psychiatry and know the subterfuge it can be. By all means rage against the Neo-Liberal approach to services. How ever, if you are arguing for a collaborationist approach to social work practice, why be so hang up about creating structures to “an occupation”? Surely structures set the barriers that separate workers form those they are meant to serve? I do not need to be reassured by “professionalism” to challenge abusive or inconsiderate colleagues or their discourse. I rather hope that we all would respond to disparagement and discrimination in the most appropriate way and not just through an artificially imposed “professional” language? I have not really understood your point about being in the margins but having parity with those you define as engaging in abusive and powerful discourses. Surely those with the status to engage in abuse sit in the realm of the powerful? Why want parity with them?
I love it, thanks for the reply. One question, if so anti academia and professionalism, why do the social work course? I take it, if you were this argumentative, ok maybe critical, in your essay work at BA or MSW, the academics must be losing their nut with you.
Anyway, we could go on for hours arguing back and forth. Good luck with your studies and hope the earthy Cuba, anti-professional and system approach to social work serves u well.
I don't think we are going off thread with this at all particularly. This sort of debate is exactly what I was hoping we could start to bring out among students - students attitudes to professionalism and how they view/interact with other professions is crucial to how we will behave in future practice. If we reject professionalism per se do we open ourselves up to the kind of policy hi-jacking Aidan mentioned.
It seems to me that this is a particularly crucial topic to how new practitioners progress in their careers - stay at the frontline (if possible) and become serious advocate of and collabrator with service users thus developing a grassroots social work movement, take a research/academic route and promote the concept of professionalism that possibly Aidan is suggesting or climb the management hierachy and try to exert change/promote an ethical practice from a more top down approach. These are oversimplifications, but they are the ones I (and possibly other students) tend to think in at the second year stage of my degree.
Social work student 2012 - there are 25 places available for students at Middlesex. I'll add you as a friend here and then let you know how to book a place if you want to come.
Sorry I had not appreciated that this debate was restricted to students only. I am not anti-academic. I value theory but only if it is allied to real situations and those insights inform and change orthodoxies. What I am is anti the sterile and self-indulgent pursuit of wanting to be validated as a “professional” particularly when this has nothing to do with improving social work practice per se but seems to me, with gaining parity with other professions. I have not wavered in this opinion in 28 years of frontline practice and am not likely to be persuaded otherwise now, which no doubt makes me something of a dinosaur.
It may not improve practice but doesnt having a valued workforce that feels they get the respect other professionals do improve the quality of output? Having pride in ones position isnt always built on ego, sometimes its well deserved.
Adra, you may well be right. Surely though our purpose is to always improve our practice? What gives us the right to demand respect and ask to be valued if we indulge in poor practice? Would’t earning respect for the way we work and the positives we bring into the work we do be more inspiring and give us pride, than any reidual ‘respect’ we get from a nominal professiona status? Ofcourse pride is not always about ego, but we need humility too. I would rather have the genuine appreciation of one service uswer than the paltitudes acquired from percieved professional rank. But that’s enough from me. Good luck all of you with your studies.
Nihat - I didn't intend that the debate should be strictly limited to students, so thanks for this and all of your contributions. The intention of the call out and our conference is that it should be student focused and facilitate a student campaigning voice in broad terms. This leaves us, as many of the contributions on this thread have shown, with some ambiguity particularly over who attends the conference.
Therefore, I will respond to everyone on the board who has shown an interest in the conference and who would be interested in attending on 12th January. This is when I next meet with my colleague who is out of the country until then. I have attempted to make contact with her several times, but I have not had any success until now.
My apologies for the frustrating delay, but please bear with us. We would rather take our time and operate with some consistency, rather than make piecemeal concessions which seem inconsistent with our objectives.
Thanks again for your good will and interest,
Dan.
Dan, I think it is really important that as student you all have the space to discuss your concerns and the issues running through this thread. I think the enthusiasm to debate and argue as students is valuable and I am sure will drive colleges and lecturers to evaluate their input to the development of social work theory and thought. I would support you keeping this day for student as you are the body that can shift teaching and challenge the orthodoxies stifling radical departures in contemporary social work practice. I wish you good luck in this. I will pop in to the thread and will follow where this takes you all.
Well after all that, I have just spoken to Natalie. Please ignore the previous post!
- I can confirm that we will open up a small number of places at the conference to those students who are outside London and who are keen to come. If you are a student outside London who wants to attend on the 17th Feb, please email me at mortond@lsbu.ac.uk to book a place. I have explained why we focused on London students elsewhere, and we must honour the spaces we have already offered.
- We have decided that it would not be appropriate to offer delegate places to non-students for this conference, as this is the first attempt at generating a student voice. If a student forum develops from this conference, it will be up to that forum to decide how it engages with interested service users, practitioners, academics and so on.
- Laras - we would indeed be interested in having a speaker from the Joint Social Work Uni or indeed Task Force, to contribute to one of the workshops on the day which will look at how the Task Force recommedations match our concerns as students (and the themes of the conference in particular). I will add you as a friend to discuss this off-forum.
p.s. Nihat - thanks for your support.
Nihat Erol:Adra, you may well be right. Surely though our purpose is to always improve our practice? What gives us the right to demand respect and ask to be valued if we indulge in poor practice? Would’t earning respect for the way we work and the positives we bring into the work we do be more inspiring and give us pride, than any reidual ‘respect’ we get from a nominal professiona status? Ofcourse pride is not always about ego, but we need humility too. I would rather have the genuine appreciation of one service uswer than the paltitudes acquired from percieved professional rank. But that’s enough from me. Good luck all of you with your studies.
Dont you think your asking for saints? I will except that bad practice does not deserve praise...obviously. But good practice deserves more than the occational thanks from a service user. And it has been identified by various investigations of teams that moral in sw teams plays a big role in the quality of practice. How do you think moral is affected by not being valued by anyone as a proffesional when you work darn hard? I'm not a saint, when i work hard i take pride in that work and like it to be reconised. Sure I get alot of pride from the welcome clients but also from being told ive done a job well. And if people said "yeah social workers, they deserve our respect cos they work hard" well that gives me pride in the proffesion as well.
For those people attending the conference on the 17th Feb at London South Bank Uni, the following speakers have been confirmed:
June Sadd, Equality Advisor
Peter Beresford, Brunel University and Shaping Our Lives
John Nawrockyi, Director of Social Services, London Borough of Greenwich
Gurnam Singh, Coventry University
Moira Gibb, CEO Camden Council and Chair Social Work Reform Board
David Barnes, BASW
Chris Taylor, Haringey Unison
I look forward to seeing some of you there.
A last call for this Wednesday's (17th February) student social work conference at London South Bank University!
Please email angeln@lsbu.ac.uk for a place; your confirmation and a list of workshops to choose from will follow.
hi
i would love to attend this confrence on the 17th, what do i need to do? just give me the address and i will find my way or tell me what i need to do.
thanks Evelyn
Hi Evelyn,
Just send an email to angeln@lsbu.ac.uk and you will be sent more info from there.
The conference is from 10am - 4pm this Wednesday at the Keyworth Building, London South Bank University, Elephant and Castle, London SE1 0AA
Hi Natalie and Dan,
Thanks for the message through to uni account - I think this is where you meant for us to post plans, ideas, etc. Also, just to quickly say thank you for organising the conference - it was a brilliant day, incredibly inspiring, and made me feel positive that other soical workers (and social work students) do want to change things for the better - some good old collective action! We've had a bit of talk amongst ourselves at Goldsmiths, but not really taken things forward or known how to.
Out of your conference I've organised for Rich Moth of SWAN to come to Goldsmiths to talk to all social work students there. Ths should be good because we havn't had any information about such a network and not many of us were able to come to the conference, and I know that lots of people are interested (and also now in the event on the 24th April.) Hopefully out of this we will be able to create some further discussion and ideas.....
Thanks again for getting the ball rolling,
Cat
Hi Cat
That sounds great - I'll be going to the Personalisation/Anti-Discriminatory practice event on 24th too. London SWAN are just trying to find a venue at the moment!
Great to hear there's interest at Goldsmiths. Have you considered putting on an event or seminar yourselves, perhaps partnering up with a local service user group?
We've got a few ideas for Student SWAN (which I am also involved with) which will hopefully get the ball rolling.
Many thanks to Natalie and Dan for organising the conference, it was a great opportunity to discuss some of the key issues facing us as we progress into our future careers. Looking forward, I am keen to keep the debate alive and hopefully engage other students. We have set up a social work society at my university and one of my key aims whilst chair is to raise awareness of the political nature of social work and to engage in debates around the future of social work. I have arranged some lunchtime lectures and focus groups focusing on issues that are not fully addressed by the degree programme such as politics, domestic violence and the Taskforce report to name a few. This is proving to be very popular with fellow students and I would recommend this to anyone looking to create a space for debate within their universities. Following on from the success of the recent student conference, I am considering holding a similar event next year at my university (University of Bath) however this would be a national conference. Natalie and Dan, any advice you can offer on organising such an event would be much appreciated. I am in discussion with members of my society about the possibility of organising such a conference and shall let you know if we decide to go ahead.
Sorry, I was just being inpatient, as you can see it has now been posted!
Tantan; that's brilliant to hear, just the sort of thing we were hoping to inspire.
A national conference sounds great - we only aimed our conference at London Students out of a lack of ambition/resources!
I would certainly be interested in getting involved in helping you to organise a conference (I think Natalie would too).
Thanks for your support Dan, your help would be much appreciated as this would be a complete first for me! I have a meeting with my committee next week so will let you know what we decide but I am very keen for this to happen...watch this space!