Using Theories in Social Work

1
Using Theories in Social Work

• Radical, Structural and Critical Approaches to
  Social Work
• With particular thanks to Phil Lee

2
What will this session cover?

• 1960s arrival of radical social work
• The key concepts including those derived from
  Marxism
• Similarities between conventional and radical
  social work
• Differences between conventional and radical
  social work
• Influence of Radical Social Work on contemporary
  practice
• A Radical Social Work analysis of the present
  role of social work see Bill Jordans work
• Overall assessment strengths and weaknesses

3
Age Old Dilemmas

• Of course there have always been radicals in
  social work for example, the Settlement
  Movements
• There have always been central dilemmas for those
  choosing to work in social work type activities.
  As Jordan says they haunt the profession
• For example, do you make inadequate policies
  user friendly or do you try to mobilise
  resistance and change the system?
• Geoffrey Pearson powerfully argues in The Deviant
  Imagination that essentially social work is a
  morally ambiguous occupation
• In short, one may be motivated to make things
  better for the less well off and the
  underprivileged, but in doing so you may be
  simply reinforcing them in their own oppression!

4
Radical Social Work an explosive mixture.

• Langan and Lee describe the RSW movement of the
  60s 70s
• as this internally explosive mixture
  (Langan M and Lee P, p 1)
• Some of the underpinning theories deviancy
  theory, symbolic
• interactionism, community work, feminism
  will be more familiar
• to those of you who have studied Sociology
• Some of this theory allowed social workers
  others to have
• a better understanding of the role of social
  worker and
• social works practices in the wider
  society
• According to C Wright Mills, RSW enables social
  workers to
• see the structural context of their
  individual cases

5
Understanding the State

• For OConnor the state under capitalism creates
• the conditions for continual successful private
  accumulation (accumulation function)
• The conditions for the production, reproduction
  and harnessing of labour power (reproduction
  function)
• Welfare systems for a purpose to accomplish 1
  and 2 in ways that do not provoke too much social
  unrest, resistance or mass confusion, welfare
  ideology and social control (legitimation/
  repression function) is developed

6
A Cynical View or Gaze?

• Reproduction of labour and social relations
• Ian Gough in The Political Economy of the Welfare
  
• State (1979, pp44-45) argues that the welfare
  state
• is simply the use of state power to modify
  the
• reproduction of labour power and to maintain
  the
• non-working population in capitalist
  societies.
• The State achieves this through the regulation of
  education,
• health, and the Personal Social Services
• This amounts to a frame of mind which leads
  neatly
• on to the notions of ideology and social
  control
• important concepts when in evaluating the
  role of social work.

7
Is This too cynical?

• Ideology Social Control
• Examples
• Deviant behaviours, mental health and
• medicalisation
• Reproduction capacities of people with Learning
  Disabilities (Mental Capacity)
• The regulation of asylum seekers
• Managing the poor surveillance and
• social control
• Anti Social Behaviour measures

8
Key RSW Concepts for practising in a RSW manner

• Integrating these structural explanations into
  practice
• not relying on individual psychology or
  pathology
• Engaging in practices that were concerned about
  and tried
• to reduce inequalities
• Trying to bring about social transformations
  trying to give
• direction to individual and social change
  that challenged
• conventional practices
• Praxis always seeking to apply radical theories
  in practice
• Questioning the present social order and the
  established ways
• of doing things
• Conscientisation Frieres term working with
  people to allow
• them to see how social structures are
  implicated in their oppression,
• and identify appropriate actions
• Dialogic Practice working with people in an
  equal relationship

9
Some sensible observations here..BUT some things
are very difficult to do consistently in practice

• Some of the issues that the original RSW movement
  emphasised have now become part of conventional
  practice empowerment anti-discriminatory
  practice feminist and anti-racist practice
  client participation etc
• Yet much of the analysis that the RSW movement
  made about the wider social role of the social
  work profession remains unchanged
• Lets examine a critically informed analysis of
  contemporary social work

10
Explaining that dilemma in the here and now a
radical social analysis of contemporary British
social work

• Even before New Labour, contemporary British
  public sector social work had according to Jordan
  Jordan
• ..become locked into a style of practice
  that was legalistic, formal, procedural and arms
  length..increasingly concerned with assessing
  and managing risk and dangerousness ( Social Work
  and The Third Way, p8)
• New Labour extended and reinforced many of these
  tendencies
• Modernising Social Services (1998, DoH) was
  primarily a very narrow document focussing
  primarily on regulating local authority SSDs
  through a series of supervisory and monitoring
  bodies setting new standards and targets against
  which to measure performance agencies to enforce
  these and a new system for training social
  workers under the guidance of the GSCC. The
  Children Act 2004 can be seen as the same.
• QUESTION How does Personalisation fit into
  this analysis?

11
Thorough Critique of contemporary social work?

• Jordan Jordan go on to cover all aspects of
  contemporary social work practice and related
  welfare state practices
• Fragmentation of public services into a number of
  specialist functions, all with very narrow
  instrumental briefs
• Each with practice largely dictated by extensive
  central government manuals guidelines
  removing scope for social work professional
  discretion and criticism
• New agencies with strong deterrence and
  enforcement ethos Asylum Seekers (NASS)
  Benefits Agency Fraud Investigationtough love
• Evidence based approach to social care leads to
  a very narrow understanding of what is of benefit
  for clients and has effectively led to the
  de-skilling of both social workers and probation
  officers

12
Too narrow a view..

• Much New Labour policy revolves around the
  concept of social exclusion assuming that the
  deficiencies of the excluded are what need to be
  addressed to rectify poverty etc
• However, most of the better off constantly
  pursue positional advantage - by buying houses in
  better off areas, using better schools, accessing
  private education, normalising private health
  as a workplace benefit, developing gated
  communities, joining private health clubs and
  gyms, shunning public transport, preferring
  membership of clubs to public facilities etc
• Thus, social exclusion is as much about the
  every day choices of the better off as it is
  about any alleged deficits of the less well off
• Capitalism generates such inequalities and
  social work could play a much more progressive
  role in addressing this. But how can it?

13
A more critically aware social work would

• be based on more imaginative, creative,
  democratic challenging ways of working
• follow such methods as constructive social work
  (Parton OByrne, 2000) and Fooks critical
  practice ( Fook, 2002)
• Allow for ambiguity uncertainty rather than
  always seeking to ensure rigid order discipline
• In short for the Jordans social work is not
  a means a implementing policy formally and
  directly, but of mediating local conflicts
  generated by many of the new programmes, and
  engaging with service users over how to fit new
  measures to their needs
• Is this realistic?

14
Differences between RSW and conventional social
work

• Tendency for conventional SW to reduce complex
  social problems to individual ones blame the
  victim..deflecting attention away from social
  arrangements
• Better therefore to adjust to the present order
  than challenge it, as RSW would urge
• Conventional social work almost can be seen to
  privatise peoples problems via
  confidentiality rather than allowing them to
  see how widespread they areand organise with
  others to seek change
• Ultimately conventional social work practice
  reinforces the status quo and that, of course,
  means the present order of global capitalism

15
Weaknesses of radical social work

• Focus on collective practice and justice can
  mean that it appears to ignore/neglect the
  immediate personal needs of users
• Therefore weak in offering practice guidelines
• Not focussed much on emotional issues
• Conscientisation requires insight and then action
  not always clear how both can be brought about
  by social workers in present practice situations
• Limited view of power tends to see all power as
  control
• Under-estimates the value of conventional insight
  therapies
• Often untestable in practice therefore allows
  itself the luxury of critique without
  responsibility
• Possibly over-estimates peoples desire for
  justice and change

16
Strengths of radical social work

• Has led to change a great deal influence of
  feminism anti-racism disability rights user
  focus etc
• Forces social workers to take power seriously in
  theory and practice
• Users problems need to be contextualised in
  wider society and practices
• Important to constantly subject conventional
  practice to criticism Payne states that it digs
  away at the weaknesses of conventional practice
  (p 249)