New Directions in Social Work Practice

Kieron Hatton, Author

• Publisher: Learning Matters
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN: 9780857258137, 9780857258762
• eBook ISBN: 9780857258144
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Social Work
• Index: Social Sciences

'Hatton's book is a welcome antidote to stagnation and moribund thinking in contemporary professional practice and readers will gain much from engaging with the concepts he sets out and the challenges he raises.'

Jonathan Parker, Series Editor

Since the first edition of Kieron Hatton's important book outlining many of the New Directions facing social work a significant number of changes and challenges have continued to have a huge impact on contemporary social work practice in the UK. From the second Laming report and the subsequent work of the Social Work Task Force, Social Work Reform Board and The College of Social Work, to the Reclaiming Social Work agenda and Munro Review, the context within which social work is practice has continued to change and this new edition unpicks the challenges, opportunities and threats facing the social workers of today.

This book re-establishes an important contribution to learning from which students, their service users and ultimately society should benefit.

Chapter 1

A framework for understanding contemporary social work

A C H I E V I N G A S O C I A L W O R K D E G R E E

This chapter will help you to develop the following capabilities to the appropriate level, from the Professional Capabilities Framework:

Professionalism – Identify and behave as a professional social worker, committed to professional development.

Values and ethics – Apply social work ethical principles and values to guide professional practice.

Diversity – Recognise diversity and apply anti-discriminatory and anti-oppressive principles in practice.

Rights, justice and economic wellbeing – Advance human rights and promote social justice and economic wellbeing.

Knowledge – Apply knowledge of social sciences, law and social work practice theory.

Critical reflection and analysis – Apply critical reflection and analysis to inform and provide a rationale for professional decision making.

Intervention and skills – Use judgement and authority to intervene with individuals, families and communities to promote independence, provide support and prevent harm, neglect and abuse.

Contexts and organisations – Engage with, inform, and adapt to changing contexts that shape practice. Operate effectively within own organisational frameworks and contribute to the development of services and organisations. Operate effectively within multi-agency and inter-professional settings.

Professional leadership – Take responsibility for the professional learning and development of others through supervision, mentoring, assessing, research, teaching, leadership and management.

See Appendix 1 for the Professional Capabilities Framework diagram.

This chapter will also introduce you to the following standards as set out in the social work benchmark statement (QAA, 2008):

4.6 Defining Principles

4.7 Defining Principles

Introduction: the changing context of social work

Contemporary social work is facing a number of significant challenges as it seeks to establish a distinctive identity in the face of competing and emerging professions. For social work professionals, academics, people using services, and those training to become social workers, these challenges seem to multiply and become more complex with every new government initiative or crisis facing social work. This chapter seeks to conceptualise those changes and challenges within broader debates about social policy and legislation.

The search for a new identity for social work can be mapped against the recognition that social work has failed to meet the expectations placed on it by a combination of significant actors including the government, the media, people using services, other professionals and those involved with social work as a professional activity. Prior to 1997 many of these discourses were framed by a hostility to social work which was at least partly the outcome of the previous Conservative administration’s hostility to public-sector organisations (Savage and Atkinson, 2001), public concern about the outcome of a number of inquiries into child deaths (Department of Health, 1995), which social workers were held to be, at least partly, accountable for, and drives to create a professional identity which social work had previously been seen to be lacking (see Chapter 6).

One of the earliest initiatives under the Labour administration elected in 1997 to focus on renewing and making more accountable social work was Modernising Social Services, a White Paper presented to Parliament by the Secretary of State in the Department of Health in 1998. Subtitled Promoting independence, improving protection, raising standards, the White Paper can be seen to encapsulate the government’s key priorities for social work as it began its period of governance from 1997 to 2010. The key problems identified by the White Paper included:

• protection – the improvement of safeguards to protect vulnerable children and adults;

• coordination – improving coordination between the different elements of the system;

• inflexibility – improving the ability of service to meet the needs of service users rather than service providers;

• clarity of role – a focus on expectations and standards;

• consistency – removing the imbalances between services provided across the country;

• inefficiency – a focus on minimising cost differentials between different providers.

While it is worth noting that many of these themes are at least the partial outcome of the move toward greater managerialism and control of public services, which can be traced back to the preoccupations of the previous administration (Dominelli and Hoogvelt, 1996), the themes did highlight a number of problems within existing provision which became the focus of policy initiatives over the next ten plus years. The White Paper drew particular attention to the need to promote independence, focus on individual need, achieve parity across the country in terms of provision, secure improvements to the looked-after care system –in particular a focus on improvements in safeguarding vulnerable children and adults, better training and greater public confidence in the work of social services. The latter would be achieved by improving the training of social workers and greater statutory regulation of social workers and social work agencies. At the heart of these proposals was the idea that these improvements should be attained through partnerships between the state, the market, the family and civil society or more specifically the third or voluntary sector (see Chapter 4) (Driver and Martell, 1998; Johnson, 1999).

Policy and legislative framework

Those people looking for a comprehensive account of the legislative changes implemented since 1997 are referred to one of the numerous texts that provide an account of social work law (e.g. Brayne and Carr, 2013; Brammer, 2010). They are also reminded that it was asserted that Labour had introduced over 3,000 new criminal offences between its election in 1997 and 2006 (Wilson, 2006). Clearly it would be impossible to do justice to such a wide-ranging legislative timetable within the confines of this book. They are in any event well dealt with in other titles in this series (O’Loughlin and O’Loughlin, 2008; Golightley, 2008; Horner, 2013). The discussion here is more concerned with the trends in social, political and legal policy that have impacted on social work. However, before these elements are drawn out it is important to highlight to a number of the more significant legislative and policy developments that have occurred within the period since the establishment of the modernisation agenda in 1998.

Arguably the Care Standards Act 2000 was the first and most significant of these developments. The Act was introduced because of concerns mentioned in the White Paper about the need to regulate social work and ensure a higher level of professional expertise among social work and social care staff. The Act established a new regulatory framework through the establishment of the General Social Care Council (GSCC) and the Commission for Social Care Inspection (CSCI). The GSCC replaced the Central Council for Education and Training in Social Work (CCETSW) and was charged with introducing a new qualification to replace the Diploma in Social Work (DipSW) and to regulate the social work and social care workforce.

The year 2003 saw the introduction of the new degree in social work based on the National Occupational Standards for Social Work developed by the Training Organisation for Personal Social Services (later replaced by Skills for Care) and the Benchmarking Statement for Social Work produced by the subject group for social work and social policy (Horner, 2013 – now replaced with the Benchmarking statement for social work, 2008). The new social work degree has replaced the DipSW as the qualification for trainee social workers. At the core of the degree is a commitment to provide a generic training programme which will equip students to work across a wide range of social work settings. It focused on six key roles that, it argued, would enable the student to work effectively as a social worker and meet the requirements laid down in the modernising agenda. This was subsequently replaced by the Professional Capability Framework (PCF) in 2012. Each chapter in this book begins with an account of the PCF relevant to that chapter and suggestions as to how the reading and exercises can help the student achieve the necessary level of competence. However, because a key underpinning theme of the book relates to the role of other traditions in social work intervention such as community development and community action (Kendall, KA 2000), the chapters also cross-reference to the National Occupational Standards (NOS) set out for community work by the training organisation for community work (FCDL, 2015). The relationship of the arguments in the book to the relevant NOS community work is mapped out in Appendix 1.

Understanding how policy development occurs

Hill (2005) has suggested that to understand the way policies are developed, enacted and implemented we need to be clear about the model of the policy process we adopt. He argues that we need to distinguish between policy content, policy output and the policy process itself. The first of these involves developing an understanding of the genesis and development of particular policies: policy output refers to the way particular services develop, and the policy process refers to the way decisions about particular policies are made and how they are shaped by those people and agencies responsible for implementing them. Such an approach enables us to understand how there may well be an imbalance between the perceived intentions of the policy-makers and the way policies are received and understood by the people for whom they are intended. In the current social work environment this means that it is not sufficient to simply assume that the intentions of the policy-makers are translated into practice, but also that we may need to read beyond the rhetoric of the policy-makers to see if the policy really is geared to meet the needs of the groups for whom it is intended.

This is at the heart of this book. If the identified key themes of inclusion, inter-professionalism and internationalism are to be achieved, we need to be able to evaluate the processes through which policy is formulated and implemented. For example, if policies are seeking to promote the involvement of people who use services, not just the professionals implementing policy, how is this realised? How can we make involvement real and not tokenistic? This dilemma is the focus of Chapter 5.

Hill (2005) also argues that to make sense of the way policy develops we need to understand the theories underpinning these approaches. He deals comprehensively with a wide range of theoretical approaches. For the purpose of this analysis it is sufficient to concentrate on four key theories: pluralism, elite theory, structuralism and an intermediate theory which examines the way workers in public organisations exercise a degree of discretion – street-level bureaucracy.

Hill describes pluralism (as defined by Dahl and his supporters) as a situation in which

sources of power are unequally though widely distributed among individuals and groups in society. Although all groups and interests do not have the same degree of influence, even the least powerful are able to make their voices heard at some stage in the decision making process.

(Hill, 2005, p29)

Furthermore, any groups emerging through this process do so as representative of a wider societal view.

What does this mean for the analysis presented in this book? It suggests that although the groups of people with whom we as social workers interact are often the most marginalised and deprived within our society, it should be possible to redress this unfairness or inequality through developing organisations which are representative of the people with whom we work. In this context both social workers as an interest or professional group and th...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Halftitle
• Advertisement
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Series Editors’ Preface
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1 A framework for understanding contemporary social work
• 2 Social work, community work and social change
• 3 Squaring the circle – from the individual to the collective?
• 4 The voluntary and independent sectors: Communitarianism, the ‘Big Society’ and the potential for social action
• 5 Involving, integrating or ignoring? Service users, carers and social work
• 6 Developing new forms of practice: Professionalism, partnerships and social pedagogy
• 7 International social work: European and international reflections on the challenges to social work in selected European countries
• 8 Conclusion: New parameters for social work
• Appendix 1 Professional Capabilities Framework
• Appendix 2 Subject Benchmark for Social Work
• References
• Index