The Future of Social Work

1
The Future of Social Work

• Defining and Refining the Roles and Tasks of
  Social Work in the 21st Century and The Social
  Work Taskforce
• Nigel Horner Deputy Head of School of Health
  and Social Care

2
The Session

• Locating Social Works Life expectancy
• Can we do anything about it?
• Whats on the Horizon?
• Understanding Social Work as a Role, and as a
  Profession
• The Link with Health Les Liaisons Dangereuses
• The Future Agenda
• Other models Holland and Russia
• The Radical Critique RSA and UK

3
Have we been here before?

• ..towards answering the question about the
  future role of social work in welfare. The
  approach I have taken flows from some very quick
  study of the futurology of social work For
  those of you who are interested, the fare ranges
  from prophets of doom and disaster, the
  annihilation of the social worker, the absolute
  end of the social work profession, to statements
  of confidence and commitment and prestige in all
  kinds of areas
• (David Green, Australian Social Work, 1979)

4
Can We Do Anything About It? Is this inevitable?

• Here is Edward Bear.coming downstairs now,
  bump, bump, bump, on the back of his head, behind
  Christopher Robin. It is, as far he knows, the
  only way of coming downstairs, but sometimes he
  feels that there really is another way, if only
  he could stop bumping for a moment and think of
  it
• A A Milne, 19261

5
Roles and Tasks of Social Work in England (GSCC,
2007)

• Generated by GSCC, with SCIE, SfC, CWDC, CSCI and
  OfSTED
• We believe that social workers share a distinct
  set of knowledge, skills and values which are
  vital to helping improve community well being and
  enhancing the opportunities of marginalized and
  excluded people and groups

6
Core Features of Social Work

• Social work is a world-wide profession with a
  common core
• It has explicit values and principles which
  inform professional judgements on need, risk etc
  
• It has an expanding knowledge base for practice,
  integrating research, practitioner and user
  expertise
• It applies social model approaches to
  understand barriers to fulfilled lives

7
Roles and Tasks

• It operates in a collaborative way with
  individuals, families and groups, and is not a
  clinical activity
• It operates with people in situations of
  complexity, uncertainty, risk, stress, trauma,
  threatened or conflicting interests, and major
  life change and
• These core roles and tasks are deployed in a
  diversity of settings
• Social work is done with the individual, not to
  or for

8
Taskforce findings

• Our vision for social work is a profession
• confident about its values, purpose and identity
• working in partnership with people who use its
  services, so that they can take control of
• their situation and improve the
  outcome
• working cohesively with other professions and
  agencies in the best interests of people in
• need of support
• demonstrating its impact and effectiveness and,
  therefore, its value to the public
• committed to continuous improvement, with the
  training and resources it needs to be
• effective and a vigorous culture of
  professional development
• understood and supported by employers, educators,
  government, other professionals and
• the wider public and
• well led at every level in frontline practice
  in influencing the shape and priorities of local
• services in setting and maintaining the
  highest possible standards within the profession
• and in influencing policy developments
  and priorities at national and political level.

9
Taskforce Themes

• Theme one We have been told that social workers
  feel they do not have enough time to devote
  directly to the people they want to help. They
  feel overstretched by staff shortages and tied up
  in bureaucracy.
• Theme two We have been told that social workers
  feel very frustrated by some of the tools and
  support they are given to do their jobs.
• Theme three We have been told that new social
  workers are often not properly prepared for the
  demands of the job and that the education system
  does not effectively support ongoing development
  and specialisation.
• Theme four We have been told that the social
  workers do not feel that their profession speaks
  with a strong national voice or is well supported
  at national level.
• Theme five We have been told that systems for
  managing the performance of social workers are
  not driving quality first and foremost.
• Theme six We have been told that the social
  workers feel that their profession is
  undervalued, poorly understood and under
  continuous media attack. This is making it hard
  for them to do their jobs and hard to attract
  people into the profession.

10
Social Work Taskforce Interim Report 2009

• Recommendations from the report include The
  creation of a national college for social work
  Based on the "royal college" model in medicine or
  Occupational Therapy, the national college would
  speak to the media about the profession,
  represent frontline professionals in policy
  debates and develop practice and training
  standards.
• Greater partnership between employers and
  educators for the improvement of social work
  educationAssuring the quality of entrants to the
  profession, and CPD culture
• Clearer career and progression structure
  Rewarding frontline expertise as with Senior
  Teachers, Clinical Psychologists etc A much
  more sophisticated understanding of supply and
  demand National Workforce Planning issues
• Securing the resources social workers need to be
  effective Time, Technology, Supervision,
  Training, Research

11
The NHS Workforce Plan

• The Skills Escalator is the primary vehicle for
  the Workforce Strategy in the NHS Plan
• Its elements are
• Workforce Planning
• Pay structures
• Regulation
• Education and Training
• Its objective is to develop a coherent and
  integrated Escalator across Health and Social
  Care. The Childrens Workforce Strategy has
  parallel objectives

12
The NHS Skills Escalator Framework ..a very
brief summary

• LEVELS
  QUALIFICATIONS
• Consultant
  Higher degrees
• Expert Registered Practitioner Degrees
• Skilled Assistant NVQs and
  Higher NVQs
• Cadet/ Starter Entry Level
  Orientation

13
The Future Agenda

• Occupational Standards for Practitionersbut not
  profession specific?
• So if w define a level of competence for
  particular mental health role, who can do it?
  Medic? Psychologist? Social Worker? OT? Mental
  Health Nurse? Psychotherapist? Counsellor?
• This is a battle between post modern employers
  and traditional / feudal guilds..and where
  does the service user fit?

14
Professional Autonomy?

• Employers shape the roles social workers
  undertake, but
• How the prescribed roles are undertaken can
  either be prescribed as a technical activity or
  will be an individual professional
  responsibility, by accountability to the
  regulator and the person receiving the service
• There is tension between the need for greater
  clarity in defining roles and tasks, and to
  maintaining the holistic, person centred and
  flexible basis for social work relationships with
  individuals, their families and carers

15
What Roles and Tasks should be reserved for
registered Social Workers?

• A registered and experienced social worker should
  always be involved in safeguarding the well being
  of, and assessing, planning and managing delivery
  of any intervention of service required, for
  children, adults and families
• In need of protection or safeguarding/ in danger
  of exploitation or significant harm
• Likely to cause significant harm to themselves or
  other people
• Unable to exercise mental capacity or provide
  informed consent
• Whose future home, care or custody arrangements
  are disputed

16
The Intellectual Attributes?

• Braye and Preston Shoot (2004) argue that social
  workers should not only be competent technicians,
  who are good fixers, but also critical thinkers
  well rounded professionals with knowledge,
  judgement and wisdom to address strategy issues.
• In other words, Social Workers need rational
  technical skills within the given status quo, and
  the capabilities arising from a post modernist
  critique to think outside the box, to make
  creative links, to embrace flexibility, flux and
  uncertainty.

17
The Epochs of Social Work Practice

• Service provision has been dominated by the
  following successive models
• Welfarism social democratic paternalism
• Professionalism emphasising expertise and
  professional authority
• Consumerism focusing on the service user and
  the customer
• Managerialism privileging managerialist sand
  economic/business concerns
• Participationism stressing more equal
  partnerships between service users, carers and
  service providers

18
Epochs and Knowledge

• The knowledge base is clearest in the
  Professionalism phase, because it is one way
  top down, and imposed
• to understand social work, therefore, we must
  understand how knowledge is validated within the
  profession (Askeland and Payne, 2001)
• BUT.most social work knowledge about service
  users applies equally to teachers, psychologists,
  doctors, nurses etc
• It is the knowledge about practice that is
  distinctive to Social Work, and therefore it is a
  practice discipline

19
Russia and Holland

• Boat repairs and Social Work practice a case
  example from Amsterdam
• Knowing the neighbourhood and supported living in
  the community a case example from Nizhni Novgorod

20
The Big Picture

• Social work bases its methodology on a
• systematic body of evidence-based knowledge
  derived from research and practice evaluation,
  including local and indigenous knowledge specific
  to its context. (IFSW News, 2/2000).

21
SOCIAL WORK MANIFESTO A STATEMENT BY THE FINAL
YEAR STUDENTS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF THE
WITWATERSRAND, SOUTH AFRICA. October 2009

• We entered the social work profession because of
  a commitment to social justice, in order to
  challenge poverty and discrimination and to bring
  about positive change. We did not enter social
  work to be care managers, supervisors of service
  users or dispensers of community punishment. We
  did not enter social work to maintain the status
  quo. We chose social work because we wanted to
  make a positive contribution to the lives of the
  poor and oppressed.
• Today social work is shaped by managerialism
  fragmentation of services financial
  restrictions lack of resources, bureaucracy and
  unmanageable workloads. Client-worker
  relationships are characterized by control and
  supervision rather than care. We find ourselves
  in difficult working conditions, being
  office-bound due to bureaucratic and
  administrative demands and unable to work with
  service users in the way that we believe is
  right. And so as social workers we leave the
  profession disillusioned and demotivated.
• We believe that there is an alternative. Social
  workers need to be active and involved in social
  movements. Social workers must be engaged in
  anti-capitalist efforts. We want to return to a
  focus on grassroots empowerment of those that are
  poor and oppressed. Values that should be held
  include solidarity, accountability,
  participation, justice, liberty, diversity and
  equality.
• We need to organize ourselves collectively. We
  need to be conscientised and we need to be
  willing to challenge the structures that
  contribute to the failure of social work to
  achieve its vision. The vision of social work for
  a better society must be defended.

22
Social, Work After Baby P Iain Ferguson and
Michael Lavalette (April 2009) (www.socialworkfutu
re.org)

• Managerialism is primarily concerned with
  bringing the values and practices of private
  sector management (in reality a wholly idealised
  and inaccurate version of these practices) into
  the public sector in general, and social work and
  social care in particular. Managers, operating
  within the parameters of economy, efficiency and
  effectiveness, were depicted by the Audit
  Commission as the Bolsheviks of the managerial
  revolution, which would revitalise what was seen
  as a failing profession. They would do this by
  putting in place a strategic vision (usually in
  the form of a mission statement) introducing
  common values, which in practice means
  identification with the organisation, rather than
  with core social work values refashioning
  clients as customers and emphasising customer
  care, in reality complaints procedures an
  emphasis on performance review, through
  inspectorates such as Ofsted much tighter
  budgetary procedures, based on the view that
  efficient management, not increased resources, is
  the key to quality services and clear
  leadership, or in other words, stronger
  managerial structures
• See Social Work and Social Justice A Manifesto
  for a New Engaged Practice