Working-class women lead the fight for fair work and equitable pay and against sexual harassment, the rise of the far right and years of failed austerity policies, writes ROZ FOYER
How can we keep social work politicised?
In the past, egalitarian trade union politics went hand in hand with how we saw our role in society itself — we must fight to preserve that in the changing sociopolitical context, writes KATE RAMSDEN
KELLIE O’DOWD reports on an event to highlight the GMB sisterhood
The Scottish labour movement’s rejection of the Supreme Court ruling on sex-based rights jeopardises not only the credibility of the unions but also poses legal risks and opens the door to far-right reaction, warns JANE McLENACHAN
ROGER MCKENZIE argues that it was correct to ban the notorious Israeli side who were likely to cause trouble in Muslim areas of Birmingham, but asks, given the occupation and slaughter in Palestine, why any Israeli team is being hosted anywhere
ARTHUR WEST alerts readers to peace-centred activities in Scotland in November
With the last bricks of the red wall crumbling in the Caerphilly by-election, Starmer and co cannot count on the spectre of Farageism translating into votes for them come the next general election, argues ANDREW MURRAY
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.
Similar stories
The devastating impact of austerity has left Scotland’s education system on its knees, argues ANDREA BRADLEY, urging politicians to show courage by increasing wealth taxation to fund our schools properly
From the ‘marketisation’ of care services to the closure of cultural venues and criminalisation of youth, a new Red Paper reveals how austerity has weakened communities and disproportionately harmed the most vulnerable, write PAULINE BRYAN and VINCE MILLS
Tackling poverty in Scotland cannot happen without properly funded public services. Unison is leading the debate
From the ‘motherhood pay penalty’ to low-paid care work, the Morning Star Women’s Readers and Supporters Group in Scotland has been looking at how neoliberalism has been pushing back women’s hard-won gains, writes KATE RAMSDEN