Some critical imaginings on a wet afternoon in late November, Tamaki Makaurau, Aotearoa New Zealand. Can social work escape the care – control (help – surveillance) bind? Social work services are provided to a particular section of the population – those at the bottom of the social and economic heap. Social work ‘assists’ those at the margins to cope/survive. However, the ‘position’ of those who are constructed as ‘clients’ is structurally generated – a function of capitalist social and economic relations. Capitalism is unjust by definition in terms of process and outcomes. It requires an exploitative relationship between owners and workers. It is a system that produces and reproduces inequality. What the experience of social work practice does do – for those with eyes to see – is expose the human consequences of structural injustice. However …