Tag: activism

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Courage and Convictions

The exemplary work of anti-racist researcher and children’s rights activist Dr Oliver Sutherland and his associates in ACORD (Auckland Committee on Racism and Discrimination) documents a deeply disturbing history of abusive state care in the 1970s and 80s. The following discussion draws on a witness statement, dated October 4th, 2019, which Dr Sutherland presented to the current Royal Commission into Historical Abuse in State Care and the Care of Faith Based Institutions.

The aim of this post is to encourage some reflection on the role of advocacy organisations in bringing hidden injustice and suffering to light. None of this happened very long ago and it  happened here in Aotearoa; at the hands, or at least under the noses, of state social workers. There are some lessons in here for us all in my humble opinion.

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Feeling the tension: where to from here?

A guest post from Bex, Luis and Su:

‘Workers find themselves assigned substantially changed workloads and mandates and charged with enforcing definitions of need and entitlement with which they may be politically, professionally, and personally at odds.’                                  Aronson & Sammon, 2000, p.168)

What started just like any other ANZASW Facebook page post spawned a series of entries regretting the way in which social workers were, at times, forced to practice in ways which did not align to their beliefs and values. This got a few of us thinking as to why this may be the case. What powerful forces were in play that compelled some social workers to practice in ways incongruent to their value systems and, according to one entry, potentially against the law?  Why and how do skilled and passionate social workers end up in positions where they must compromise on practice integrity? What creates that tension and are there ways to resist?

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OK Social Work?

A guest post by Jude Douglas

For years when I was working in statutory child protection I didn’t easily admit to being a social worker. There was a sense of shame for me personally about the control aspects of the work and also, people’s ideas of what a social worker was were hazy at best and often just downright wrong. So I just put my head down and did the job. Several years ago and about the time I was moving to broader level roles and when the debates about registration and professionalisation were really ramping up I decided that there was an opportunity to reclaim the title of social worker and own it, and put out there what we did. This was without a strong media interest in issues around social care – it’s still that way unless of course there’s a disaster – then there’s a baying of hounds for a while and the silence resumes.

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Hey you! – A call for blog posts on RSW

This blog site has been up and running for a little over five years now. Time passes rapidly. The object of our collective has been to provide viewpoints on a broad range of issues relevant to social work in contemporary society and to provide a platform for information and analysis that troubles the status quo. In some ways it seems that social workers are more reluctant to publicly critique the practice and policy frameworks which surround them than ever. Politics and management are often all about controlling the narrative: mandating what can be said and by whom. Increasingly social workers have taken on the message that they can only be active citizens within strict ideological parameters.

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The ‘New Normal’?

A guest post by Mike O’Brien

The focus for the last few weeks has been on health (containing/eliminating the virus) and the economy – getting business going again. These priorities are what are seen to matter, even to the extent that last weekend one commentator argued that “the very basis of our society is business” (Sunday Start Times, April 12). Health matters, the economy matters, but is that all that matters?

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