Using Theories in Social Work
Radical, Structural and Critical
Approaches to Social Work
With particular thanks to Phil Lee
What will this session cover?
1960s – ‘arrival’ of radical social work
The key concepts – including those derived from
Marxism
Similarities between conventional and radical social
work
Differences between conventional and radical social
work
Influence of Radical Social Work on contemporary
practice
A Radical Social Work analysis of the present role of
social work – see Bill Jordan’s work
Overall assessment – strengths and weaknesses
Age Old Dilemmas
Of course there have always been ‘radicals’ in social work –
for example, the Settlement Movements
There have always been central dilemmas for those choosing
to work in social work type activities. As Jordan says they
“haunt the profession”
For example, do you make inadequate policies ‘user friendly’
or do you try to mobilise resistance and “change the system”?
Geoffrey Pearson powerfully argues in The Deviant
Imagination that essentially social work is a morally
ambiguous occupation
In short, one may be motivated to make things better for the
less well off and the underprivileged, but in doing so you may
be simply reinforcing them in their own oppression!
Radical Social Work – an explosive mixture….
Langan and Lee describe the RSW movement of the 60s & 70s
as “this internally explosive mixture” (Langan M and Lee P, p 1)
Some of the underpinning theories – deviancy theory, symbolic
interactionism, community work, feminism – will be more familiar
to those of you who have studied Sociology
Some of this theory allowed social workers & others to have
a better understanding of the role of social worker and
social work’s practices in the wider society
According to C Wright Mills, RSW enables social workers to
see the structural context of their individual cases
Understanding the State
For O’Connor the state under capitalism creates:
1. the conditions for continual successful private
accumulation (accumulation function)
2. The conditions for the production, reproduction and
harnessing of labour power (reproduction function)
3. Welfare systems for a purpose: to accomplish 1 and
2 in ways that do not provoke too much social
unrest, resistance or mass confusion, welfare
ideology and social control (legitimation/
repression function) is developed
A Cynical View or Gaze?
Reproduction of labour and social relations
Ian Gough in The Political Economy of the Welfare
State (1979, pp44-45) argues that the welfare state
is simply “the use of state power to modify the
reproduction of labour power and to maintain the
non-working population in capitalist societies.”
The State achieves this through the regulation of education,
health, and the Personal Social Services
This amounts to “a frame of mind” which leads neatly
on to the notions of ideology and social control –
important concepts when in evaluating the role of social work.
Is This too cynical?
Ideology & Social Control
Examples:
Deviant behaviours, mental health and
medicalisation
Reproduction capacities of people with
Learning Disabilities (Mental Capacity)
The regulation of asylum seekers
Managing “the poor”: surveillance and
social control
Anti Social Behaviour measures
Key RSW Concepts – for practising in a
RSW manner
Integrating these structural explanations into practice –
not relying on individual psychology or pathology
Engaging in practices that were concerned about and tried
to reduce inequalities
Trying to bring about social transformations trying to give
direction to individual and social change that challenged
conventional practices
Praxis – always seeking to apply radical theories in practice
Questioning the present social order and the established ways
of doing things
Conscientisation – Friere’s term – working with people to allow
them to see how social structures are implicated in their oppression,
and identify appropriate actions
Dialogic Practice – working with people in an equal relationship
Some sensible observations here…..BUT some things
are very difficult to do consistently in practice
Some of the issues that the original RSW
movement emphasised have now become part of
conventional practice – empowerment; antidiscriminatory practice; feminist and anti-racist
practice; client participation etc
Yet much of the analysis that the RSW movement
made about the wider social role of the social work
profession remains unchanged
Let’s examine a critically informed analysis of
contemporary social work
Explaining that dilemma in the here and now : a radical social
analysis of contemporary British social work
Even before New Labour, contemporary British public sector social
work had according to Jordan & Jordan:
…..become locked into a style of practice that was legalistic, formal,
procedural and arm’s length……..increasingly concerned with
assessing and managing risk and dangerousness ( Social Work and
The Third Way, p8)
New Labour extended and reinforced many of these tendencies
Modernising Social Services (1998, DoH) was primarily a very
narrow document focussing primarily on regulating local authority
SSDs through a series of supervisory and monitoring bodies; setting
new standards and targets against which to measure performance;
agencies to enforce these; and a new system for training social
workers under the guidance of the GSCC. The Children Act 2004
can be seen as the same.
QUESTION: How does Personalisation fit into this analysis?
Thorough Critique of contemporary social work?
Jordan & Jordan go on to cover all aspects of
contemporary social work practice and related
welfare state practices:
Fragmentation of public services into a number of
specialist functions, all with very narrow instrumental
briefs
Each with practice largely dictated by extensive
central government manuals & guidelines – removing
scope for social work professional discretion and
criticism
New agencies with strong deterrence and
enforcement ethos – Asylum Seekers (NASS);
Benefits Agency Fraud Investigation……”tough love”
Evidence based approach to social care – leads to a
very narrow understanding of what is of benefit for
clients – and has effectively led to the de-skilling of
both social workers and probation officers
Too narrow a view…..
Much New Labour policy revolves around the concept of social
exclusion; assuming that the deficiencies of the excluded are
what need to be addressed to rectify poverty etc
However, most of the better off constantly pursue positional
advantage - by buying houses in better off areas, using better
schools, accessing private education, “normalising” private
health as a workplace benefit, developing gated communities,
joining private health clubs and gyms, shunning public
transport, preferring membership of clubs to public facilities etc
Thus, social exclusion is as much about the every day
choices of the better off as it is about any alleged deficits
of the less well off
Capitalism generates such inequalities – and social work
could play a much more progressive role in addressing
this. But how can it?
A more critically aware social work would:
be based on more imaginative, creative, democratic &
challenging ways of working
follow such methods as constructive social work (Parton &
O’Byrne, 2000) and Fook’s critical practice ( Fook, 2002)
Allow for ambiguity & uncertainty – rather than always
seeking to ensure rigid order & discipline
In short for the Jordans “social work is not a means a
implementing policy formally and directly, but of mediating
local conflicts generated by many of the new programmes,
and engaging with service users over how to fit new
measures to their needs”
Is this realistic?
Differences between RSW and conventional
social work
Tendency for conventional SW to reduce complex
social problems to individual ones – ‘blame the
victim’..deflecting attention away from social
arrangements
Better therefore to ‘adjust’ to the present order
than challenge it, as RSW would urge
Conventional social work almost can be seen to
‘privatise’ people’s problems – via confidentiality
– rather than allowing them to see how
widespread they are…and organise with others to
seek change
Ultimately conventional social work practice
reinforces the status quo and that, of course,
means the present order of global capitalism
Weaknesses of radical social work
Focus on collective practice and justice – can mean
that it appears to ignore/neglect the immediate
personal needs of users
Therefore weak in offering practice guidelines
Not focussed much on emotional issues
Conscientisation requires insight and then action –
not always clear how both can be brought about by
social workers in present practice situations
Limited view of power – tends to see all power as
control
Under-estimates the value of conventional insight
therapies
Often untestable in practice – therefore allows itself
the luxury of critique without responsibility
Possibly over-estimates people’s desire for justice
and change
Strengths of radical social work
Has led to change – a great deal –
influence of feminism; anti-racism; disability
rights; user focus etc
Forces social workers to take power
seriously in theory and practice
Users’ problems need to be
contextualised in wider society and
practices
Important to constantly subject
conventional practice to criticism – Payne
states that it digs away at the weaknesses
of conventional practice (p 249)