HAVING just retired after 43 years as a social worker, I’ve had the opportunity to look back at the changes to our profession since I qualified back in 1980.

Many will argue that social work has become more “professional” as a plethora of research has been published into all aspects of the social work role, alongside tools for assessing service users on all sorts of things — their likelihood of reoffending, their ability to care for their children, their need for adult services  — and frameworks for writing all sorts of different reports.

This has been presented as progress, but many of these developments have focused practice on the individual rather than setting it within the wider social and political context, understanding that the vast majority of the people we support in social work live in the poorest communities and are the most disadvantaged. The practice has become more focused on “individual failings” and social work has often been experienced by service users as both unhelpful and judgemental.

I know that things were not perfect when I started, but we did recognise the key importance of getting to know the people we supported, building a relationship with them to find out what was important to them and what they thought would help their situation.

We recognised the power differential of course. We acknowledged it and were honest about the circumstances in which we would use those powers, for example, to protect their children, themselves or the community.

We also recognised the impact of poverty and disadvantage on the people living in the communities in which we worked and most of us practised in a way that might now be called community social work, working closely with other professionals and residents to support capacity building.

And what we saw, among the poverty and disadvantage, was immense strength — people who, despite their circumstances, were hugely resilient. We sought to support that by empowering rather than judging, by maximising families’ incomes and giving them a voice.

Social work was strongly unionised back then. We were all members of Nalgo, and most of us were active members too. We recognised the link between how we were treated as workers and our ability to provide the best service to our clients. We fought hard for our pay and conditions and we fought hard for the rights of the people we supported. We saw no distinction — it was all about equality and social justice.

Things have changed dramatically since then. The challenges have grown of course. However, we have also seen the impact of growing neoliberalism on communities and individuals — austerity; spiralling inequality and poverty; the demonisation of benefit claimants and other groups; and the rise in foodbanks — forcing families to rely on charity to survive in the sixth-richest country in the world.

The impact on social work has been just as marked. The dilution of our profession through policy and legislation; the increase in bureaucracy and managerialism; the focus on risk-averse practice on the back of child abuse enquiries; the move away from community social work and balanced caseloads; increased, often unhelpful regulation. Much of this reflects a deliberate neoliberal agenda that has harnessed social work as an agent of social control rather than a force for change.

As Jane Fenton points out in her 2019 book Social Work for Lazy Radicals, many younger workers have known nothing other than neoliberalism, and with the demise of trade union membership, have often come to social work with little in the way of political perspective.

Of course, this is not true of every social worker. Many come into the profession with the values that underpin good social work and have done their level best to continue to practice in this way. Many are still union members — possibly more for their protection than to challenge neoliberal agendas though — with the number of activists much smaller.

Unison’s Social Work Issues Group in Scotland has been supporting radical social work practices among our social work members for many years. It has been instrumental in keeping the focus on relationship-based practice and highlighting the changing sociopolitical context. Its series of lunchtime webinars has looked at a range of issues from a radical perspective to promote critical thinking among social work members.

An annual conference for front-line children and families social work practitioners, Pride in Practice, sponsored by a range of organisations, including Unison Scotland, also provides an opportunity to hear from front-line practitioners about radical social work practice, “doing with” rather than “doing to” children and families — and taking account of the social and economic challenges faced by those we support.

The review of the care system in Scotland should promote this approach for care experienced by young people and their families. However, that demands the kind of investment in front-line social work and preventative services that we have so far not seen, alongside a massive culture change throughout the profession to shift away from managerialism and bureaucratic approaches. Unison has a key role in pressing for this.

Fenton suggests that there are ways to be radical in social work without being a political activist — hence the “lazy” in her book title. I respectfully disagree. You can be a better social worker without being an activist, but truly espousing social work values requires, in my view, a passion for equality and social justice. The way to campaign for that is through your trade union.