Social Work

Introducing Professional Practice

Patricia Higham

• Publisher: SAGE Publications Ltd
• Year: 2006
• ISBN:
  9781446229613
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Social Work
• Index: Social Sciences

?Comprehensive and user-friendly. The book is helpfully constructed around a number of key themes, starting with a good attempt to define social work from historical and international perspectives and moving on to address key issues concerning the practice, knowledge, values and skills required from contemporary social work in the UK. I believe social work students, newly qualified and experienced social workers will find ths a valuable resource, especially when one is confronted by challenges in practice? - Professional Social Work

? Social Work is a good overview that should refresh learner and tutor alike. Pratice assessors may find this book a useful update for their work with students and also a neat refresher. It is a well-written and up-to-date text, with a good sense of where future challenges lie for the social work profession in the UK. Higham is confident enough to voice the profession?s uncertainties as well as mapping the changing organisational landscape that social workers might populate. [This book] is likely to appear on many social work reading lists. [It has] the potential to provide good learning opportunities for post-qualifying as well as pre-qualifying training? - Health and Social Care in the Community

`The unique aspect of this book which distinguishes it from other competitors is that it is constructed explicitly around the key roles and benchmark statements... this book will offer something new and interesting to the growing field of social work education literature and is likely to be relevant to both students and practitioners in the UK and elsewhere? - Dr Caroline Skehill, Queens University Belfast

What is the role of social work? What does it mean to be a social worker? What are the changes affecting social work training?

Social Work: Introducing Professional Practice addresses these questions and provides an understanding of the knowledge, values, and skills requirements of professional social work. The author has played a key role in constructing the subject benchmarks for the social work degree and offers a reflective and thoughtful commentary upon training, education and practice. Written in a lively and readable style, the book captures the essence of the changes sweeping through social work and engages the reader in these debates.

Key features of this book include:

-Comprehensive content structured around the guidelines for training and practice

-Bridges the gap between theory and real-life practice

-Student-friendly features such as case-studies, discussion questions, further reading and a glossary

This exciting publication will be a core textbook for trainee social workers as they progress through the qualifying social work degree, or as they begin their practice as newly qualified workers seeking to consolidate their learning.

1	WHAT IS PROFESSIONAL SOCIAL WORK?

Contemporary definitions of social work as a degree subject reflect its origins in a range of different academic and practice traditions. The precise nature and scope of [social work] is itself a matter for legitimate study and critical debate. (Quality Assurance Agency [QAA], 2000: §2.2)

Introduction

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What is the most appropriate definition of contemporary social work? Competing definitions of social work vie for acceptance. This chapter provides an initial understanding of what social work aspires to be, how the British social work degree is constructed, and why the caring services need professional social work. Social work changes and adapts to new social concerns and organisational structures, so that contemporary social work is characterised by its changing nature, rather than its agreement on a specific definition.

Social work’s search for a definition was prompted by its quest to attain professional status. Leading figures in the development of British social work after the Second World War asked:

• What is social work?
• Is social work a profession?

The answer to the second question is now more evidently ‘yes’, but the search for professional status is not yet concluded. Higher expectations of social work pose a challenge for social workers. Social work practitioners themselves will validate social work’s claim to be a profession as they develop their professional practice to the high standards required by the social work degree and by their post qualification studies. Whether you, the reader, are a social work student on a degree programme or an experienced practitioner, you will be (or will become) familiar with the climate of change that challenges social work’s ability to respond. Social workers have to grapple with new social issues and dilemmas that affect the lives of people seeking help. To function at that level of practice, they have to be well informed and confident in their professional ability to exercise appropriate judgements.

Chapter Structure

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The chapter is based on four main themes:

1. The problems of defining social work because of its changing nature. Social work is located in the context of the helping professions, the caring services, and the history of the British welfare state. Comparing different definitions of social work from North American, British, European, and international perspectives provides some understanding of how and why social work became recognised as a profession.
2. The role of social work in wider contexts and in the context of contemporary developments. Social work is influenced by the modernising efforts of organisations that regulate social work practice and education, and is characterised by an emergent partnership and alliance between social work and social care.
3. History and origins. Social work is influenced by the contributions of casework, social inequality, and social inclusion models.
4. Considering the future of social work. Differing views of the nature and role of social work can lead to fragmentation, so there is a case to be made for recognition of ‘Allied Caring Professions’ and a collective non-governmental voice for social work and social care. Recent attempts to define social work have led to broad agreement on an international definition and a new kind of professionalism that calls for a broader remit but recognises further challenges to defining social work.

Social Work, Helping Professions, Caring Services and the Welfare State

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Social work is located within a network of caring services or personal social services staffed by members of the helping professions. The term helping profession is self-explanatory. Social work is not the only helping profession (Heraud, 1970). Other helping professions include the well-accepted roles of nursing, teaching, and medicine.

Social workers practise alongside other professional and vocational workers in a range of service provision designated as the caring services. The term ‘caring services’ is an imperfect description of the service provision delivered by different organisational structures (Tossell and Webb, 1994). Not all of these organisations are overtly ‘caring’. History determines their inclusion on the list. Current networks of services developed after the founding of the British welfare state in 1948 (Jones, 1994), for which the Beveridge Report (1942) supplied a blueprint. Beveridge identified five giants (want, ignorance, idleness, disease, and squalor) that had to be overcome through establishment of the range of comprehensive services that are known as the welfare state. For the purposes of this book, the term caring services is used to refer to the following areas of provision:

• Advice, guidance, and information
• Benefits and pensions agencies
• Carer organisations
• Children’s and young persons services
• Community development and regeneration
• Education
• Health
• Housing
• Service user organisations
• Social care
• Social work
• Social workers in the justice field, youth justice workers, and probation officers
• Support roles in education, including education welfare, learning mentors, and in England, Connexions personal advisers
• Welfare rights
• Youth work

The organisational structures of the caring services vary according to location within the UK. Each broad service category may comprise statutory organisations based in local authorities, nationally based organisations with regional structures, regional organisations, and large and small independent organisations that are charities or private organisations. Munday (1990: 48) helps us to understand what is usually meant by caring services in contemporary contexts.

Caring services comprise:

• work undertaken by social workers, but also other occupational groups, and possibly volunteers;
• services provided for particular groups including elderly people, people with physical and/or mental disabilities or mental health problems, children and families, and sometimes young and adult offenders;
• services provided through fieldwork and in domiciliary, day care or residential settings, with some trend towards ‘community care’;
• a selective rather than universal service aimed at individuals, clients or users with particular needs;
• work aimed at achieving change (whether in human relationships and/or social environment); providing social support and/or control; and protecting civil rights.

Caring Services and Multi-professional Teams

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The organisational context for social work practice requires social workers to work with different professionals in multi-professional teams, for example, in primary health care trusts, children’s services, and youth offending teams. For example, in England and Wales the Youth Justice Board (YJB) promotes multi-professional Youth Offending Teams (Yots) as key components of the youth justice system. The Crime and Disorder Act 1998 established Yots in April 2000 to bring together services that work with young people and prevent crime, including the police, probation, social services, workers in the field of drug and alcohol misuse, housing officers, health, and education. Each local authority in England and Wales has a Yot whose work is coordinated by a manager. The YJB argues that the multi-professional nature of the Yot provides a more appropriate response to the needs of young offenders. Yots use a national assessment tool to assess young offenders’ needs, the particular problems that led to offending behaviour, and the risks posed to others. The Yot then identifies programmes that address the needs identified to prevent further offences taking place.

A Yot Inspection Report (September 2004), published by the Audit Commission, the Commission for Social Care Inspection and the education inspectorate Ofsted, points to examples of good partnerships in Yots. Inspectors commented positively on the team members’ hard work, positive engagement with children and young people, enthusiasm and commitment (YJB, 2004).

Case Study 1.1 – Multi-professional Practice

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Jonathan Allen is an experienced social worker who was seconded by his local authority into the Yot when it was first established. At first he found it difficult to communicate effectively with his new colleagues, none of whom were social workers. He noted the different practice cultures. For example, the police were used to quick action while the social workers were accustomed to more reflection before deciding what to do. He had never worked in a team with a teacher or a nurse, and at first he expressed some stereotyped views of their contributions. The Yot set a short time frame for responding to referrals. He felt under pressure. His line manager was not a social worker. Jonathan was the sole representative of social work, working in an environment where a shared understanding of social work was missing. At first this was daunting, but over time he and his new colleagues built a team relationship. Their uniting concern was their wish to work with young offenders in a constructive way to prevent re-offending and meet individual needs. The team’s use of a shared assessment provided a way forward that in its ideal form resulted in complementary pooling of knowledge and skills. At times, Jonathan thought that his perspective and values were entirely different from those of his non-social worker team members. The importance of communication and working with shared goals provided a bridge across potential professional divides and helped Jonathan to appreciate the values and skills of his colleagues.

Social workers comprise an important part of Yots. As the example in Case Study 1.1 shows, when social workers first joined Yots, they were likely to find the working environment different from their experiences when working alongside other social workers. Similar multiprofessional models of practice are being developed at accelerating rates in other service areas and in other countries of the UK. Part of the art of being a social worker in contemporary practice is to become acquainted with the professional and vocational workers employed in the myriad of allied service delivery organisations – they are colleagues on whose collaborative efforts social workers will depend to deliver the best possible services to people who use services. Instead of working across the divide of agency boundaries, social workers increasingly will work with these multi-professional colleagues in the same team.

The example in Case Study 1.1 illustrates the changing nature of social work practice. Over the years, different definitions of social work have tried to capture social work’s essential nature.

Definitions of Social Work

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The lack of an entirely satisfactory or agreed definition of social work makes it more logical to take a comparative critical view rather than argue a particular definition. The Benchmark Statement suggests that ‘contemporary definitions of social work as a degree subject reflect its origins in a range of different academic and practice traditions’ (QAA, 2000: §2.2). These include:

• North American traditions of social work
• UK traditions of social work
• European and international traditions of social work

The Benchmark Statement identifies three main issues for defining social work: its location in different welfare contexts in different countries; ‘competing views’ (QAA, 2000: §2.2.2) about the nature, place, and purpose of social work; and the changing nature of social work as it responds to external challenges and demands (QAA, 2000: §2.2.3). In order to understand the social work profession of today and where it might be heading in the future, one should consider the historical attempts to define social work.

North American Definitions of Social Work

American perspectives of social work dominated the early search for a definition because the professionalisation of social work proceeded more rapidly in the USA than in the UK. Kenneth Pray (1949: 33–4), an American academic, suggested that social work was:

a normal constructive social instrument … a necessary part of the structure of a civilized, well-planned society because it is directed to helping individuals meet the problems of their constantly shifting relations with one another and with the whole society, and to helping the whole society, at the same time, adjust its demands upon its members and its services to them in accordance with the real needs of the individuals that compose and determine its life.

This definition emphasised social work’s benevolent change agent role in the interaction between the individual and society, affirming that social work’s role was caring about and promoting the ‘real needs’ of individuals.

Almost a decade later in 1958, the National Association of Social Workers (CSWP NASW, 1958: 15–16) in the USA defined social work as ‘a constellation of values, purpose, sanction, knowledge, and method’. The three purposes of social work were:

1. To assist individuals and groups to identify and resolve or minimize problems arising out of disequilibrium between themselves and the environment.
2. To identify potential areas of disequilibrium between individuals or groups and the environment in order to prevent the occurrence of disequilibrium.
3. In addition to these curative and preventive aims, to seek out, identify, and strengthen the maxi...