The Blackwell Companion to Social Work

Martin Davies

• Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9781118451724
• eBook ISBN: 9781118451779
• Edition: 4
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Social Policy
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Fully revised and restructured, this fresh edition offers students and trainee social workers an incisive and authoritative introduction to the subject. As well as entirely new sections on theory and practice, the expert contributions which have shaped the companion's leading reputation have been updated and now include innovative standalone essays on social work theory.

• Comprehensively reworked new edition comprising six substantive sections covering essential topics for trainee social workers – in effect, six books in one
• Includes an extensive introduction and chapters by leading experts on the focus and purpose of social work
• Provides a unified textbook for trainees and an invaluable professional reference volume
• Features a wealth of new material on theory and practice alongside detailed expositions of the social and psychological framework, stages in the human life cycle, and the objectives and core components of social work
• Each chapter lists five key points to remember, questions for discussion, and recommendations for further reading

BOOK 1

Social Work’s Psychosocial Framework

1.1 Social Work and Society 3

Viviene E. Cree

1.2 Social Work and Politics 19

Mark Drakeford

1.3 Gendering the Social Work Agenda 31

Audrey Mullender

1.4 Culture, Ethnicity and Identity 37

Kwame Owusu-Bempah

1.5 Families 47

Graham Allan

1.6 Sexuality, Sexual Relationships and Social Work 57

Siobhan Canavan and Seamus Prior

1.7 Psychology and Social Work 69

Brigid Daniel

CHAPTER 1.1

Social Work and Society

Viviene E. Cree

Social work and society are caught in an intense and changing relationship. Just as social work seeks to influence society (and individuals and families within it), so society in its many guises seeks to control social work, by setting limits on what social workers can and should do. Social work is situated in the middle, pulled between the individual and society, the powerful and the excluded, negotiating, and at times in conflict, with both.

This chapter examines social work and society from the perspective of a history of social work in the United Kingdom. This does not presume that the United Kingdom is the only country which might offer insight into this topic. Instead, it is argued that the United Kingdom provides a useful case-study example for exploring the changing relationship between social work and society over time. Nor is it to suggest that this is the only ‘true’ history of social work in the United Kingdom. There are many possible ways of presenting history, and many voices which have often been excluded from social work histories, such as the voices of the many people who have used social work services. This account should therefore be regarded as one attempt to do justice to the histories of social work in the United Kingdom, demonstrating as it does the complexities and contradictions at the heart of the relationship between social work and society.

What is Social Work?

There have been many attempts to define social work in recent years. One definition is widely quoted:

The social work profession promotes social change, problem solving in human relationships and the empowerment and liberation of people to enhance well-being. Utilising theories of human behaviour and social systems, social work intervenes at the points where people interact with their environments. Principles of human rights and social justice are fundamental to social work.

(IFSW 2012, http://ifsw.org/policies/definition-of-social-work/, accessed 13 October, 2012)

This definition was negotiated and adopted at separate meetings of the International Federation of Social Workers (IFSW) and the International Association of Schools of Social Work (IASSW) in Montreal, Canada in July 2000, and then agreed as a joint definition in Copenhagen in May 2001. The definition has not been without its critics. For some, it is aspirational rather than practical; it tells us little about the realities of social work practice, especially in government agencies where the focus may be more on social control and safeguarding the public than on personal liberation. For others, it is seen as relying too heavily on ‘Western’ (or ‘Northern’?), developed-world ideas about rights and justice. Interestingly, the IFSW web site provides a rider to the definition: ‘It is understood that social work in the 21st century is dynamic and evolving, and therefore no definition should be regarded as exhaustive’ (http://ifsw.org/policies/definition-of-social-work/, accessed 13 October, 2012). This captures well the contested and changing nature of social work, as does the story of the historical development of social work.

As I argued in my first book, historical analyses demonstrate that social work has always been subject to competing claims of definition and practice; it is only by exploring some of the discourses within social work that we can begin to understand what social work is and what it might be (Cree, 1995, p. 1). Social work cannot be separated from society – we cannot explain or understand social work without locating it within society.

What is Society?

The Oxford English Dictionary suggests that society is ‘the aggregate of people living together in a more or less ordered community’. But what is an ‘aggregate of people’? How many people must this include for it to be considered a ‘society’? Does the definition assume a homogeneous or a heterogeneous group of people? What is a ‘community’? What does it mean to be ‘more or less ordered’? Most importantly, whose answers should we accept, and what are the implications of holding a particular position?

Classical sociologists had no problem in defining society. They worked from the assumption that ‘society’ (sometimes presented with a capital as ‘Society’) could be examined and analysed, much as any material object could be investigated in a laboratory. As the physical sciences studied the physical world, so sociology was the ‘science of society’. In the late nineteenth century and early twentieth centuries in Western Europe and the United States, sociologists’ main priority was to examine and explain what they saw as the new, ‘modern’ society in which they were living. Industrialization and urbanization had brought a new way of life: society had shifted from a feudal, agrarian, ‘simple’ society to a capitalist, industrial, ‘complex’ society. Sociologists saw this positively: the ‘modern’ world signified progress, scientific reasoning and enlightened thinking. They were also concerned, however, about the negative consequences of modernization, including the loss of traditional values and social networks. They therefore sought to find ways of ameliorating the worst aspects of industrialization and so create a better society. Capitalism and socialism represented two very different ways as to how this might be achieved.

In more recent years, the idea of society as a single entity has been severely criticized. Pluralist approaches present society as a mosaic of competing worlds. Postmodern analyses have taken this further, emphasizing the contingent nature of existence and the chaotic, unexpected characteristics of late capitalist society. Society is here perceived as being complex and fragmented: just as we all have more than one identity, so we live and move in many diverse societies. The different ways in which society has been conceptualized are illustrated in Table 1.

Table 1 Conceptualizations of society.

Pre-industrial society	Modern society	Postmodern society
Feudalism	Capitalism	Global capitalism
Agrarian	Industrial	The information society
Rural	Urban	Decentralized
Simple	Complex	Fragmented
Religious	Secular	Pluralist
Faith	Science	Scepticism/relativity
Superstition	Reason	Diverse beliefs/ambivalence
Tradition	Universal truths	Contingencies/contradictions

The history of social work in the United Kingdom offers unique insight into the social, economic and political changes which have taken place in the past and are being lived through in the present. It provides a window onto the modernization process; we can see at first hand the social changes which led to the emergence of ‘modern’ social work and the struggle within social work to professionalize and live up to the ‘modern’ ideal. An examination of social work’s current position throws postmodern ideas and analyses into sharp relief. The complexities and uncertainties which seem to be endemic in social work are inevitable given the dynamic and contested nature of post/late modern/risk society.

Social Work and ‘Pre-Industrial’ Society

There have always been those who need help from others, though this help was not always called ‘social work’. In pre-industrial society, poverty was widespread. However, there was no notion at this time that the state should have any part to play in alleviating hardship. It was accepted that it was the family’s responsibility to care for those in need. The 1601 Poor Law Act confirmed this:

It should be the duty of the father, grandfather, mother, grandmother, husband or child of a poor, old, blind, lame or impotent person, or other poor person, not able to work, if possessed of sufficient means, to relieve and maintain that person.

Beyond this, churches and monasteries provided residential services for older and infirm people without family support through almshouses, infirmaries (for the care and treatment of the sick), and hospitals (literally ‘hospitality’ for the poor, especially the old, and for travellers in need of temporary shelter). At the same time, landowners gave extra help (sometimes financial and often in kind) to tenants and their families at times of sickness or poor harvest.

The social and economic changes known as the ‘agrarian revolution’ changed established systems of social support for ever. The process of enclosure which converted arable land to pasture led to mass unemployment for rural labourers, rural depopulation across vast areas of the countryside, and a decline of traditional obligations between landowners and tenants. Simultaneously, the dissolution of monasteries destroyed the provision of institutional social care services and led to hundreds of older and disabled people being thrown out onto the streets. Fears of social disorder led to the passing of the 1601 Elizabethan Poor Law Act (England and Wales). The Act reaffirmed the principle of family responsibility, while authorizing parishes to levy rates on property to pay for services for the poor and needy who had no family support. It also determined what help should be provided:

• the ‘impotent poor’ (the aged, chronic sick, blind and mentally ill who needed residential care) were to be accommodated in voluntary almshouses;
• the ‘able-bodied poor’ were to be set to work in a workhouse (they were felt to be able to work but were lazy);
• the ‘able-bodied poor’ who absconded or ‘persistent idlers’ who refused work were to be punished in a ‘house of correction’ (Fraser, 2009).

Parishes were never able to raise sufficient funds to make this a realistic programme of social support. Nevertheless, what the act demonstrates is a series of propositions about a new relationship between the individual and society. Firstly, it recognized that individual and charitable efforts were no longer sufficient to meet need; the state must therefore intervene to provide services. Secondly, it formalized the notion that there were different types of poor people, requiring different kinds of intervention. Finally, it presupposed the idea that the state’s responsibility should be limited to the control, punishment and deterrence of the ‘bad’ poor, whilst ‘good’ poor people would be helped by voluntary agencies. Subsequent legislation and social welfare policy in the United Kingdom built on these ideas, with significant implications for the development of social work practice.

Social Work and ‘Modern’ Society

If the agrarian revolution of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries marked the beginnings of a transformation in the relationship between individuals and society, it was the social crisis known as the ‘industrial revolution’ in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries which consolidated this shift across Western Europe and North America. Social work emerged as a response to this crisis, and as a compromise between different views about what form that response should take.

The industrial revolution brought with it rapid industrialization and urbanization which changed for ever the lives of all people, rich and poor alike. Social problems that had been dispersed and largely invisible in the countryside (for example, poverty and overcrowding, poor housing, ill health and disease, alcohol and drug abuse, prostitution, unsupervised children) became more concentrated and more visible in the new towns and cities. Working-class freedom and social deprivation spelt danger to the middle-class city dwellers who clamoured for something to be done to contain and control the threat from the ‘dangerous classes’. This is clearly illustrated in the following excerpt from a sermon preached by the Reverend Thomas Chalmers in 1817:

on looking at the mighty mass of a city population, I state my apprehension, that if something be not done to bring this enormous physical strength under the control of Christian and humanised principle, the day may yet come, when it may lift against the authorities of the land, its brawny vigour, and discharge upon them all the turbulence of its rude and volcanic energy.

(Quoted in Brown, 1997, p. 95)

Something was done. The n...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Praise for The Blackwell Companion to Social Work
• Dedication
• Title page
• Copyright page
• Contributors
• Introduction
• BOOK 1 Social Work’s Psychosocial Framework
• BOOK 2 The Human Life Cycle
• BOOK 3 When Social Work is Needed
• BOOK 4 Social Work in Practice
• BOOK 5 Social Work’s Core Components
• Book 6 Social Work’s Theory Base
• Legislation and Related Matters Index
• Name Index
• Subject Index