What is the role of social work as a profession: is it to help people overcome their individual social circumstances? Or is it a political movement that aims to change society itself?
That is the question being asked of social workers at a world conference in Seoul, South Korea, this week.
Delivering a keynote address on the third day of the Social Work, Education and Social Development conference, Silvana Martinez, a regional president for the International Federation of Social Workers (IFSW), said: “I want to ask you: can we speak about social work without speaking … about power, about politics, about those who hold power?
“Unless we deal with these issues … then we will only end up blaming the social subjects [people] for their own situation.” Martinez said to do so would limit social work to “mere assistance and support”.
Martinez, president of the IFSW Latin American and Caribbean region, added: “If we limit ourselves only to this type of practice, no matter how noble it is, we would be hiding the reality rather than revealing it. We will end up only acting on the surface of an absolutely cruel and unequal social order. We will be turning our backs on social inequality, we will be turning our backs on the essence of social work.”
Earlier in the conference, which is hosting 2,500 delegates from over 200 countries, Ian Hyslop, a lecturer at the University of Auckland, argued that “in a changing world, who decides what social work is, what it can be and what it should be is very important”.
Hyslop said neoliberal governments in the western world gave rise to a world view that contradicted the experience of social work, by focusing on personal responsibility for disadvantage and poverty, rather than acknowledging wider causes.
He argued that this view had led to the development of a type of professional, effective social work: “Social work that’s measured, social work that efficiently targets and fixes deviant individuals, under the rubric of neoliberal politics.”
He said: “I think in the current climate, social workers have to be more aggressive in standing up and asserting their own value position, which is about understanding structural injustice and structural inequality as opposed to blaming individuals for their circumstances.”
He urged social workers to instead be a voice of dissent: “We can either roll over and not assert our identity, or we can speak up for ourselves and speak up for the clients that we serve, for the clients that we aim to bring justice and dignity to.”
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