Category: Uncategorized

Introduction

The Re-imagining Social Work blog was launched in April 2015 in response to the New Zealand governments’ announcement of an “independent review” of Child Youth and Family (CYF): New Zealand’s statutory children’s service. See this blog post for an excellent summary of our first few months. Our aim was, and still is, to use this blog, and other social media, to raise awareness about the threat to humane and progressive social work services represented by the CYF review and other recent policy developments. However, in our view, it is impossible to focus on one policy domain ­­– such as the review of child protection services – without also tracing connections with other social, economic and political developments at home and overseas. In a sense what we need to do in order to truly understand what is happening is to develop a political economy of social welfare: one that connects, for example, the aims of the Minister for Social Development’s review of CYF, with the Finance Minister’s agenda to make social services less dependent on the resources of the state, and other developments such as social bonds.