Practising Social Work

Christopher Hanvey, Terry Philpot

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2002
• Print ISBN: 9780415092371
• eBook ISBN: 9781134872725
• Topic: Medicina
• Subtopic: Atención sanitaria

Practicing Social Workprovides a systematic exploratiuon of ar ange of social work approaches. Each chapter focuses on a single theme and explains the practice implications of a particular method.

1	The systems approach Chris Payne

Interest in the application of systems theory to social work gathered momentum in the late 1950s and 1960s (e. g. Buckley 1967, Hearn 1968) and reached its height with the publication of major American texts by Howard Goldstein and Pincus and Minahan in 1973. These and other texts that proclaimed a ‘unitary’ perspective were used widely on social work training courses in the UK during the 1970s and beyond together with the important ‘bridging’ text of Specht and Vickery, Integrating Social Work Methods (1977).

When first introduced, the systems approach was regarded not just as a conceptual framework, but also as a symbol of unification that would promote the incipient power and influence of the social work profession. Here it needs to be noted that the approach was introduced at an early stage of development of the new monolithic social services departments and of ‘integrated’ social work training (i. e. CQSW) courses. These developments required some common, unifying principles to underpin the methods of service delivery of the new ‘generic’ social workers. Such principles were articulated in a variety of publications on unitary approaches. Not all unitary perspectives used systems theory for underpinning, however, and certainly there has never been any wholesale and uncritical adoption by social work training of either a systems or a unitary approach.

The other pressure for integration, which the systems approach was expected to assist, was of the methods and techniques at the disposal of social workers, notably casework, groupwork and community work, and arguably residential work (Payne 1977). The approach provided a means by which a wide range of interventive methods, including some based on opposing treatment ideologies and theories such as behavioural and psychodynamic methods, could be differentially and acceptably employed within a comprehensive unitary model of social work.

In brief, systems theory historically has made three major contributions to social work developments.

1	To provide the basis for a unified profession of social work; this has certainly not been achieved.
2	To provide an overarching and permeating theory for social work practice. This, as we will see, has been problematical to say the least.
3	To assist with the integration of the different traditions and methods that have characterized social work, i. e. casework, group work, residential work and community work; and of the different academic disciplines that inform social work, i. e. sociology, psychology, social policy, etc. How effective this has been is also difficult to evaluate.

The history is important because the systems approach has now lost much of its potency to stimulate debate and controversy and little of substance has been written on it over the past few years. It may still be referred to and used in social work training and practice; for example, implicitly in relation to the community social work approach (Smale et al. 1988) and explicitly in some forms of family therapy (e. g. Minuchin 1974). There is an excellent systems analysis of residential practice by Atherton (1989). Systems concepts are also implicit in ‘ecological’ and ‘social networking’ models (e. g. Davies 1977, Whittaker and Garbarino 1983). However, it would seem that social work has to a large extent lost its taste for ‘grand theory’, which the approach represented, and for the political interventions and confrontational style which were seen to follow from a systems analysis of social needs and problems.

During the 1970s the systems approach provoked quite passionate debates between its proponents and antagonists. For example, one critical article by Bill Jordan, which appeared in New Society in 1977, provoked such a furore that a special correspondence page had to be given over to the responses. The approach was criticized by Marxists because it appeared too conservative and offered little analysis of the structural causes of personal distress and difficulty. It was criticized by traditionalists because it allegedly took social work away from its roots of helping individuals and made social work an impersonal and bureaucratized set of activities. Alternatively it could be criticized because it potentially took social workers into the political arena and into confrontations with, for example, the employing agencies.

Some criticisms of the approach were based on a misunderstanding of the role of systems theory, which was less that of a comprehensive ‘grand theory’ of society on a par with, say, Marxism, than that of a ‘meta theory’ that could help social workers organize and integrate different perspectives and methods for achieving relatively small-scale personal and social changes.

There are several possible explanations as to why the systems approach is today deemed less fashionable and tendentious. First, in recent years, as a response to criticisms of so-called ‘generic work’, and coining mainly as a result of the series of child abuse scandals and inquiries, there has been a growing trend to return to specialization by client group. With the implementation of the 1989 Children Act and 1990 NHS Community Care Act with its ‘purchasing/providing’ divisions, specialization is likely to increase further. These trends towards greater specialization are correspondingly reflected in the changes to qualifying social work training and the new Diploma in Social Work regulations. They do not, it should be stated, invalidate the systems approach, but may make it more difficult to apply.

The application of a unitary model has also been affected by other factors: ideological pressure from the Right to reduce ‘welfarism’; changes in legislation and procedures, particularly in relation to child protection, which have increased the social policing role of the social worker; and resource constraints and other financial pressures on the main employers of social workers, the local authorities, which have resulted in an erosion of the ‘resource systems’ available to social workers. The scenario of the 1990s is one of mainstream social work becoming, if anything, more conservative, procedural and managerial, in effect returning to its historical role of helping individuals as opposed to achieving radical social change through systemic action. In The Essential Social Worker Davies perhaps represents most clearly what social work has in fact become, when he argues that the main function of social work is not the achievement of large-scale social change, which is implicit in some unitary approaches. Its role is rather that of maintenance. ‘Social workers are the maintenance mechanics oiling the interpersonal wheels of the community’ (Davies 1981:137).

Given the current state of social work, a renewal of interest in the systems approach could be no bad thing. I state this because the profession appears to have become sadly fragmented and to have lost its vision of the kind of society that would seem to follow from the articulation and application of its values. It is true that there is currently a great deal of ‘issue-raising’ about equal opportunities, anti-oppressive and anti-discriminatory practice, but few well thought out strategies to realize these goals. The systems approach does not have all the solutions here, but it does have the merit of offering a way of analysing and thinking through these issues and identifying appropriate strategies for action.

The systems approach also acts as a conceptual framework, which can reduce theoretical fragmentation. For example in a recent study of student placement records covering nine CQSW courses, it was stated there ‘was no evidence at all of the consistent or systematic application of a particular framework, approach or theory. Where theorising did appear to be taking place it was on a piecemeal basis with no overall strategy or tactic discernible’ (Thompson 1991).

THE SYSTEMS APPROACH

For a much fuller description and critique than can be offered here, the reader is referred to M. Payne (1991). Here we provide a simple guide for getting to grips with a fairly complicated set of ideas (which could also explain its unpopularity!).

The basis of the systems approach and its understanding lies in social systems theory. Thus to start with we need a definition of a social system. Buckley’s is generally considered to be helpful:

A complex of elements or components directly or indirectly related in a causal network, such that each component is related to at least some others in a more or less stable way within a particular period of time.

(Buckley 1967:41)

This definition can thus be used in relation to:

•	human beings as biological and psychological systems;
•	simple social relationships, e. g. couples whose actions and behaviour will invariably need to be explained in relation to one another: A’s behaviour towards B being determined by B’s behaviour towards A through their continuing interaction. Thus an explanation of the behaviour of one cannot be made without reference to the other, not as separate individuals, but taken together as an entity. A ‘symbiotic relationship’, for example, is one that can only be explained systemically;
•	nuclear and extended families and kinship networks;
•	neighbourhoods and social networks, organizations and associations of different sorts, e. g. community groups, political parties, Round Table, etc.
•	work organizations, local authorities, voluntary agencies, etc.
•	the civil service, the government, the world, the universe, etc.

The assumption made in describing any social organization as a ‘system’ is that behaviour, events and social processes cannot be fully understood in isolation, but only in relation to one another. Systemic influences may be direct and indirect; connections may not be obvious but could arguably be identified from research and analysis. For example the composition and culture of, say, a particular middle-class residential neighbourhood, is clearly not created from ‘individual choice’ alone. It will be influenced, for example, by the range and style of houses, and the planning processes that have been employed, which will determine their price and therefore who can afford to live there. Some income groups (and social classes) will therefore b e excluded from taking up residence there. Many of the influences on people’s lives are covert or indirect, such as the economic and political, but when analysed systemically can be identified and weighed up accordingly.

The emphasis in systems theory on interactions, transactions, context, interrelatedness, and the idea that the sum total is greater than the individual parts certainly shifts attention away from ‘disease’ and ‘pathological’ theories of behaviour towards multi-causal, interactional explanations (Triseliotis 1978). Social systems theory is itself a prog...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Notes on contributors
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1 The systems approach
• 2 Task-centred work
• 3 Groupwork in Britain
• 4 A participatory approach to social work
• 5 Community work
• 6 The behavioural approach to social work
• 7 Practising feminist approaches
• 8 Alternatives to custody
• 9 Anti-racist social work: a black perspective
• 10 Crisis intervention: changing perspectives
• 11 Casework
• 12 Family therapy
• 13 Welfare rights
• 14 Written agreements: a contractual approach to social work
• Name index
• Subject index