Power, Politics, and Social Work in England

Social work in England, as elsewhere, is often seen as a straightforward response to self-evident human needs and/or as the outcome of “professional projects” pursued by social workers. In contrast to such views, in this chapter social work is regarded as a contingent activity, conditioned by and dependent upon the political context from which it emerges and in which it engages. This is evident in and illustrated by consideration of how power and politics have shaped the development and delivery of state social work in England, initially as part of the postwar social democratic welfare state and then through its transformation under the impact of neoliberalism. As part of the postwar social democratic consensus on welfare, English social work was a state-mediated profession, embedded in the state’s organizational structures, shaped by central government’s legislation and policies, and delivered by local government. Over the past 40 years, social work has been transformed and become part of a changed political settlement about the nature of and arrangements for providing social work within neoliberal discourse. Analysis of these two historical moments in English social work, and the discursive shift that has taken place, shows that the political contexts, and their accompanying welfare regimes, have been key in shaping the manner in which social work has been constituted and enacted. The current neoliberal discursive formation constructs social work through markets, managerialism, and shifting responsibility from the state to the individual citizen.