1.Critically reflect upon the answer you chose in the activity in the first seminar regarding whether you thought families, communities, governments, or businesses should take primary responsibility for assisting people in need. Reflect upon your learning since you completed this activity and whether your views have changed or remained the same. (500 words)
I chose families because i think that it is your first point of contact with the world as your biggest support in life. In the culture where I come from the government does not have a big impact in assisting people because there is a lot of corruption and funds often get lost within the government parties.
2.Critically reflect upon the activity from the second seminar regarding the group of social work theories that resonate with you the most and where you would place yourself in Payne’s (2020) triangle. Reflect upon how your own values, past experiences and motivations for becoming a social worker influence your preferred theoretical orientation. (500 words) Payne’s triangle is empowerement , problem solving and social change. Please refer to the slides attached.
3.Critically reflect upon the set reading titled ‘The end of social work’ by Maylea (2020). Drawing upon your learning in the third seminar, consider how Maylea’s contention confirms and/or challenges your emerging identity as a social worker and how it may influence your future practices. (750 words) please refer to Maylea text attached.
OP-SOCI200203 772..789 The end of social work Chris Maylea * Social and Global Studies Centre, RMIT University, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia *Correspondence to Chris Maylea, Social and Global Studies Centre, Building 8, Level 10, RMIT University, GPO 2476, Melbourne 3001, Victoria, Australia. E-mail:
[email protected] Abstract Social work literature is saturated with calls to reform social work in diverse and con- tradictory ways. This article argues that the profession of social work cannot be re- formed and must be abolished. Specifically, the master narrative of Anglophone social work must be abandoned along with the institutions which maintain it; the profes- sional bodies, the academic discipline and the formal title. Four reasons for this are presented: social work’s lack of coherent theory base, the problem of professionalism, social work’s historical abuses and the profession’s inability to rise to contemporary challenges. The fundamental theoretical tensions in social work theory are identified as preventing the profession from reconciling its aims of assuaging individual suffer- ing and achieving social justice. This has also hindered social work’s aspiration to pro- fessionalism, which is both distracting and actively prevents social workers from working with people and communities. While these issues may have once been resolv- able, the historical and contemporary contexts prevent resolution. Social work’s uncer- tain theoretical foundations, desire for professional legitimacy, past abuses and contemporary failures put the profession beyond recovery. No solutions or resolutions are suggested. What pieces are to be salvaged from the wreck of social work must be determined by the post-social work world. Keywords: contemporary challenges, end of social work, professionalism, social work, social work history, social work theory Accepted: October 2020 Introduction Across the globe, social movements are forcing a re-accounting of set- tled assumptions. The #metoo movement has led to seismic shifts in www.basw.co.uk # The Author(s) 2020. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of The British Association of Social Workers. All rights reserved. British Journal of Social Work (2021) 51, 772–789 doi: 10.1093/bjsw/bcaa203 Advance Access Publication December 3, 2020 D ow nloaded from https://academ ic.oup.com /bjsw /article/51/2/772/6018482 by Federation U niversity Australia user on 19 Septem ber 2021 http://orcid.org/0000-0003-3688-0487 diverse industries and professions, and Black Lives Matter protesters have pushed statues of slavers into the sea. Calls to ‘defund the police’ and replace them with social workers are growing louder (Kristof, 2020; Navratil, 2020). The crisis initiated by the coronavirus disease has added an enormous stress to communities while also proving that societies can actually respond effectively to social challenges. The crisis posed by cli- mate change proves, conversely, that sometimes they do not. This point in time provides an opportune time to realistically assess what is work- ing and what is not, to actively reshape both society and the tools we use to shape it. Social work, meanwhile, has been characteristically quiet on the global stage and hardly more vocal in local fora. Rather than grapple with the deficiencies of its own historical and contemporary realities, the profes- sion of social work has continued to focus on parochial issues of the last century and avoiding the reckoning demanded by this one. Reisch (2013, p. 73) points out that social work’s ‘master narrative has been dominated largely by perspective derived from modern liberalism, which reinforces the image of the profession as a benign instrument of social progress and human amelioration’. This benign image is a façade which must be demolished. We, as social workers, must take stock of our current reality and con- tend with both our contribution to both the past and the future. We, as social workers, must ask ourselves if social work is an effective model for achieving social work’s goals. This article continues a long tradition of social work academics, practitioners and activists arguing that it is not, but rather than arguing for repair and reform, as many others have done, this article argues that social work is beyond repair and must in- stead be pushed into the sea. The basis of this argument is not new. Clarke (1996, p. 43) notes that ‘from its nineteenth-century origins, social work has been viewed ambig- uously and sceptically by both its beneficiaries and commenters’. This article re-treads well-rehearsed critiques of social work to reiterate their circular nature. If, after decades of calls for reform, reform has not been forthcoming, something else must be done. This is not an accounting, nor an attempt to suggest that the ‘bad’ out- weighs the ‘good’. This article argues that the core of social work is be- yond saving and unfit for purpose, irrespective of any past successes it might claim. Social workers have achieved great things, individually and collectively, but social work as a profession cannot take credit for indi- vidual passion, compassion and effort. Passionate and compassionate people, some of them social workers, have always done vital work for societies’ most disadvantaged. This work still needs to be done, but social work, as a profession, is not well-positioned to do it. This article focuses on the profession of social work; the professional bodies, the aca- demic discipline and the title, calling for their abolition. This, admittedly, The end of social work 773 D ow nloaded from https://academ ic.oup.com /bjsw /article/51/2/772/6018482 by Federation U niversity Australia user on 19 Septem ber 2021 creates something of a straw man, a bronzed statue of social work rather than ‘real’ social work. These institutions of professionalism, academia and titular status are exactly the false idols which we must topple. These institutions are the straw effigy which we must torch. Only social work- ers can embark on the project of dismantling social work. Do not misconstrue this as an attack on the people, the ‘social work- ers’, who have attempted to make the profession of social work some- thing more than it is, or those who do essential, excellent, difficult work. This is an attack on our institutionalisation, a rejection of our profes- sionalisation. The destruction of the institution, of the profession, is an act of our own liberation. It is not a coincidence that the majority of so- cial workers identify as women in a world where so many problems can be traced to toxic masculinity, but that a disproportionate number of men occupy leadership positions in the social work profession and the academy (McPhail, 2004). It is the very masculine notions of profession- alism and institutionalism that we must dismantle. This must not be construed as progressing the conservative agenda to depoliticise or abolish social work. Social work has already been success- fully depoliticised. It has, as a political force, already been abolished. Social work has always been criticised from a range of perspectives, and criticism of social work is not automatically conservative. Clarke (1996, pp. 48–49) writes that ‘bureau-professional regimes of welfare face an as- tonishingly diverse range of critiques – from a variety of left and liberal democratic positions, from feminists, from minority ethnic groups, and from alliances mobilising or speaking for service users as well as . . . think tanks of the right’. The reality is that a toothless, depoliticised so- cial work serves the agenda of the right, providing an ineffective cover for inequality while failing to address it. Only by clearing the field of battle can other, stronger forces progress the struggle against inequality. This article focuses on professional social work in the Anglophone world, primarily the UK, USA and Australia, as representing both the largest population of professional social workers and the profession of social work’s geographical home. This is the social work described by Morley and Ablett (2016, p. 3) as ‘a project of Western capitalist moder- nity and consequently complicit in perpetuating many of its oppressive features’. Other social works exist in a diversity of countries and amongst colonised peoples which are not included in the contentions of this analysis (see, e.g. Truell, 2019). Even within the domain of the Anglophone world, such as in Scotland (Cree and Smith, 2018) and Wales (Williams, 2011), there is some evidence of social work diverging from the Anglophone master narrative. There are, and have been for decades, counter-narratives of critical and radical social work which push against the dominant hegemony (Morley and Ablett, 2016). Free from the stranglehold of conservative mainstream social work, we might 774 Chris Maylea D ow nloaded from https://academ ic.oup.com /bjsw /article/51/2/772/6018482 by Federation U niversity Australia user on 19 Septem ber 2021 progress these social works into something fundamentally different from the progenitor. The end of social work There have been several premature announcements of the death of so- cial work, with publications titled ‘the end of social work’ published reg- ularly in the preceding three decades (Kreuger, 1997; Bhui, 2001; Powell, 2001; Schram and Silverman, 2012). These are not critiques of social work itself but responses to technology, managerialism, neoliberal- ism, postmodernism, marketisation or other external toxins. Other cri- tiques recognise the ailment as being of internal origin. Williams and Briskman (2015, p. 3), for example, note ‘a growing sense of unease within the profession at its inability to reconcile its social justice ambi- tions with the realities of practice’. Marston and McDonald (2012, p. 1023) argue that fundamental reform is required if social work ‘seeks to remain relevant to the material needs of citizens and the goals of old and new social movements that seek to redress injustices’. Various solutions to this malaise have been presented, with Jones’ (2014) appeal for social workers to commit to professional organisations, van Ewijk’s (2010) bid for re-professionalisation, Ferguson’s (2007) call to reclaim a radical tradition, Dominelli’s (2010, p. 608) proposal to indigenise, Beresford and Croft (2004) entreaty to ally with service users and Reisch’s (2013) attempt to redefine professionalism being but a few. Garrett (2015, p. 1207) memorably calls for ‘a radical rupture with the dominant social theory frameworks monopolising the academic literature of social work’. Even Stoez et al.’s (2011, p. 197) dismal accounting ends in a ‘call to action’. These divergent perspectives might be viewed as dynamism, as robust debate, if only anything useful emerged from this ‘debate’. Instead, with- out exception, each call to reform social work is unheeded before being repeated ad nauseam. Social work is unmatched at self-diagnosis but un- willing to accept the terminal nature of its disease. There are many contributions to the fall of social work. Internally, so- cial work is weak and divided, riven with internal disagreement. Externally, capitalism marches on, entrenching inequality, while power- ful institutions outmanoeuvre social justice. In the UK, at least, social work from the 1970s onwards came to be determined by government funding and legislation, at