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Social Workers – What and who are we here for?

As we know, social work is a broad church with many different fields of practice. As a teacher in a social work programme I often tell students that this depth and variety is one of the beauties of the profession. In this sense, unifying definitions are always something of a challenge. For example, some earlier blog posts have questioned the supposed professional commitment to social justice when social workers generally help people to adapt to our exploitative social and economic system, rather than working to radically change it.

More disturbingly, social workers can potentially entrench social injustice by working in systems that discriminate against certain sections of the population in structurally unequal societies. Social work can therefore be understood as a complex and contradictory undertaking. However, in this short post I would like to keep things simple. I think it is important to cut to the chase a little and get one or two things straight.

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Why social work needs pride

A guest post by Eileen Joy, PhD candidate, University of Auckland

This weekend just past, I took both my children, and one of their friends, to the Auckland Pride parade. They had an absolute blast. They loved the colours, the energy, the vibe. They adored collecting stickers and ‘high-fives’ and cheering loudly as Jacinda Ardern passed.  We even had the privilege of a number of hugs from people we knew in the parade who ran over to share their excitement with us. And, thanks have to go to the lovely group of men beside us, whom I assume were not altogether straight, who laughed alongside us, made room for the three children, and gave their rainbow flags to us. I have to say it was, hands down, the best Pride parade I’ve been to yet.

But.

We still get asked why we need the Pride parade. We still get told there are bigger issues. We still get told, you have marriage equality, why do you need more? We even get these questions from fellow social workers.

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Social workers call for the release of child political prisoners

This is a speech made by Shannon Pakura on 3rd February 2018 to a rally organised by Wellington Palestine protesting the arrest of Ahed Tamimi and all Palestinian child political prisoners

Kia ora, I’m Shannon Pakura, President of the Aotearoa New Zealand Association of Social Workers and I’m here to protest the arrest and detention of Ahed Tamimi and all Palestinian child political prisoners.

The facts are appalling: the Israeli state detains between 500 and 700 children (aged between 12 and 17) each year. They are tried in military courts with a prosecution rate of almost one hundred percent. The vast majority are tried for the crime of throwing stones at heavily armed Israeli Occupation Forces and their military vehicles: a crime that is punishable, depending on circumstances, by up to ten or twenty years in prison.  A UNICEF report found that around two thirds of children detained by the Israeli military testified to being violently abused during their arrest and detention, some said they were threatened with sexual assault. Since the year 2000 more than 12,000 children have been detained, and the problem is becoming more acute. The Palestinian child prisoner population has doubled in the last three years.

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A new paradigm for child protection practice

Across the English-speaking world social work in child protection has taken an authoritarian turn. Child protection social work will never foster social revolution, but it does not have to be the soul-less practice that it has developed into. The rationale for child welfare intervention in family life and the appropriate form of such intervention is contested (Fox-Harding, 1997; Grey & Webb, 2013). We have a choice about the shape of future practice and to make an informed choice we need to examine the wider political and economic context of current practice. Our child protection paradigm does not exist in a vacuum. It is tangled with the failed political ideology of neoliberalism – and it needs to be untangled!

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Promote the empowerment and liberation of people: Boycott Israel!

Context is everything. All social workers know this: that to make sense of a situation, to assess it, we need to put events into context. Put another way, private troubles are often connected to public issues, but we only see this when we make an effort to join the dots, to locate the micro in the macro. This connection, between the personal and the political, is at the heart of what it is to do social work. As the International Federation of Social Workers (IFSW) states:

Social work is a practice-based profession and an academic discipline that promotes social change and development, social cohesion, and the empowerment and liberation of people. Principles of social justice, human rights, collective responsibility and respect for diversities are central to social work.  Underpinned by theories of social work, social sciences, humanities and indigenous knowledges, social work engages people and structures to address life challenges and enhance wellbeing (IFSW, 2014)

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