When asked, the social workers could not readily define social work. They are not alone in this. The Interim Report of the Social Work Taskforce (2009 p.33) concluded that the distinct role of social workers in modern public services is unclear and that even social workers themselves struggle to articulate the central role and purpose of the profession. The social workers in my study were no different. For example, in the interview with Cath she stated:
Cath: It’s like the role of social work: what is social work? Before I started 1
I knew it was something valuable but you don’t really know you can’t 2
label each thing can you? But it can be anything can’t it? It can be 3
anything from the most [pause] innocuous thing to the most [pause] 4
[breath] I don’t know traumatic or important or legal or whatever 5
perspective you look at. 6
Here, as in the Interim Report of the Social Work Task Force, Cath is talking about how difficult it is to define what social work is, even for a social worker. Social work can ‘be anything’ (line 3). Cath positions me as sharing the same group membership through asking ‘can you?’ and ‘can’t it?’ (line 3). Next Cath makes a direct link with this inability to define social work and the profile of social work:
Cath: It’s hard isn’t it to say what you’ve done in a piece of work. I don’t 1
know. I think that’s probably why social work struggles with its profile 2
isn’t it but you can’t say people can’t see well I’ve saved a life because 3
you do sometimes but not in the medical sense Umm or I prevent abuse 4
or safeguarding or all these things you again they’re labels but they don’t 5
say what you do, do they? 6
Lisa: No, no. Do you think other social workers understand that 7
shorthand? You could say, safeguarding, today I did this 8
Cath: I think so yes and I think other social workers would say that it’s 9
really difficult to explain what social work is to someone umm cos you 10
think you just sit and speak to somebody and on the outside that is what 11
it might look like but I suppose it is everything else in the background 12
around the periphery, isn’t it? 13
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Once more this endorses Pithouse’s description of social work as an invisible trade. The work cannot be seen; in Cath’s words, ‘you can’t say people can’t see’ (line 3) and ‘it is everything else in the background around the periphery’ (line 13).
Moreover, Cath’s word ‘periphery’ is synonymous with being at the ‘margins’. Thus, social work is portrayed as not having clearly defined boundaries but operating at the periphery in ways that are unseen. However, it can be seen by other social workers (line 9).
This notion was also presented by Ed:
Ed: We really don’t have a role. We really don’t have a model. Because 1
we sort of operate between the very sort of underbelly of stuff and the 2
legal. There’s a really kind of weird kind of area that we operate within 3
and I often think that there isn’t a model for us in our society and that is 4
why the perception is so difficult. 5
Like Cath, Ed positions social work as not having a clear ‘role’. Ed portrays social work as dealing with the ‘underbelly’, operating within a ‘weird kind of area’. Ed reiterates the notion that social work does not have a ‘model’ in society (lines 1 and 4) and so is difficult for people to perceive (line 5). Again, this aligns with the notion of social work as an invisible trade (Pithouse 1984). Later in the interview, Ed talked about the positive and negative outcomes of not having a clear role or boundaries:
Ed: But then we have a lot of freedom as well because no-one really I 1
was saying to a friend of mine you know “I can walk into a police station,
2
show my badge and literally walk into someone’s cell”, you know. We 3
have a lot of freedom to do stuff and that’s partially because we are the 4
people who mop up the stuff that other people don’t want to do so with 5
that comes with a lot of criticism and the high profile cases. 6
Here Ed argues that social workers have ‘a lot of freedom’. This connects with Eva’s being ‘just left to it’; the notion of real social work as being autonomous and
independent. Again, it also connects with Pithouse’s (1984) notion of invisible work; the freedom to undertake work unobserved by others. For Ed, this freedom comes partially from being ‘the people who mop up the stuff that other people don’t want
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to do’. Thus social work is again depicted as dealing with the gaps left by other professions. However, there is a negative side to this freedom. The ‘stuff’ that other people do not want to do is directly related to the ‘criticism and high profile cases’ such as the deaths of Peter Connelly, Daniel Pelka and Victoria Climbié.
Nell also talked about this notion of social work filling in the gaps left by other professions.
Nell: a generic person like me I think we are a dying breed because 1
people see that as their job, that as their role whereas social workers 2
take on everything that isn’t anybody else’s job [laughs] That’s their 3
remit. They don’t really shift outside of that “oh it’s not my job” the 4
amount of times I’ve heard “it’s not my job. I’m a nurse, it’s not my job” I 5
say “well I could equally say I’m a social worker, it’s not my job, but
6
technically if we’re wanting to help this person get better, it’s got to be
7
done somebody’s got to do it”. 8
Here Nell presents herself as belonging to a ‘dying breed’ because she is a ‘generic person’ (line 1). Using a contrast structure, Nell portrays non-generic people as having a clear ‘remit’, whereas social workers ‘taking on everything that isn’t anybody else’s job’. She illustrates this claim by using active voicing to describe an interaction with a nurse. Again a contrast structure is used to present a nurse as unable to ‘shift outside’ this clear remit whereas the social worker will do anything that will help the service user ‘get better’. Thus, only the social worker is engaged in the ‘real work’ of supporting a service user in distress. Later in the interview, Nell stated that it is this ‘real work’ which keeps her ‘coming to work every day’ (line 6 below).
Nell: I don’t really want to be in loads of meetings and err policies and 1
procedures and tangled up in all of that. I love hands on face to face stuff 2
Lisa:And is that what keeps you in the job, keeps you motivated? 3
Nell: Yes. Yes the thought that if you weren’t there to stop these things, 4
they’d not get done or they’d not get noticed yes that’s kept me coming 5
to work every day. 6
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Here then, filling in the gaps left by other professions, doing the unnoticed (line 5) or the invisible-to-other-professions, is intrinsic to ‘hands on face to face’ real social work (line 2).
Eva also talked more about this notion of social work as not having clear boundaries and as filling in the gaps:
Eva: It’s a job about so many hats, isn’t it? It is quite difficult to say what 1
we do and err perhaps you get the feeling that what we do is paper up 2
the gaps in all the other professionals the bits that are complicated or 3
tricky that’s the bits that “oh we’ll get the social worker to do that” and 4
that’s what we do [laughs] 5
Lisa:[laughs] 6
Eva presents social work as difficult to define (line 1). Instead, the role of social work is portrayed as to ‘paper up the gaps’ between the roles of other professions by taking on all the more ‘complicated or tricky’ work. Eva uses humour and active voicing to emphasise her point. My shared membership means that I too find this funny. Like Nell, Eva contrasts social work with other professions:
Eva: I think another thing is when we assess people we tend to take on 1
all their problems whereas perhaps if it’s a nurse I mean I was talking to 2
a nurse the other day and I was saying I’d gone down with someone who 3
was having a benefits review because they’re doing that with everybody 4
now umm for the DLA and umm she said: “oh”, she said: “yeah, one of
5
mine was written to and because they didn’t reply to the letters they’ve
6
been taken off all their benefits”. And then she went back to doing 7
whatever she was doing. Well I was horrified because for me if my 8
patient told me that I’d be: “right, let’s do the forms, let’s fill that out” 9
and for her, She said “oh it’s awful isn’t it?” and for her it wasn’t and 10
she’s a lovely lady and in terms of what her role is she’s really you know 11
caring she just for her it would not occur to her that might be something 12
that she could do and her patient has probably told her this and she’ll be 13
there going: “oh that’s awful, god that’s terrible” but never have said “go
14
on, get the forms out then. I’ll help you with them”. I mean there are 15
some nurses who are much more you know into it but as a general thing. 16
And saying that there are some social workers who are not doing 17
anything as well. There’s an element of personality in this isn’t there, 18
what’s going on in people’s lives, I think. 19
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This atrocity story is used to demonstrate the differing responses to the needs of service users by nurses and social workers. In a contrast structure, a social worker will ‘take on all their problems’ (line 1-2) whereas ‘it would not occur’ (line 12) to the nurse that she could take on a task which she would see as outside of the nursing role. The depiction of the nurse as a ‘lovely lady’ (line 11) and ‘caring’ (line 12) means that her lack of action cannot be explained in terms of her being uncaring or unkind. The nurse is positioned as blinkered and lacking in awareness of anything outside of the nursing role (line 12); only the social worker is aware of the complete picture. This atrocity story echoes the points that Eva has made earlier that social work is without clear margins and boundaries. In contrast, the nurse has a clearly defined role and the social worker is presented as filling in the gaps left in between the boundaries of all the other professionals in the CMHT. In addition, in the story Eva takes a proactive stance compared to the passive response of the nurse, thus affirming the idea of social workers as assertive. The use of active voicing, asides, and the artful way Eva changes tenses within the story, make this a powerful
atrocity story. At the end of her reply, Eva acknowledges that that not all nurses are like this and that some social workers act in this way; that personality has an
influence on the way professionals act.
This section of the chapter has argued that social work is intangible. The interviews endorsed the findings of the Interim Report of the Social Work Taskforce (2009) that even social workers find it difficult to define social work or articulate what it is that social workers do, other than filling in the gaps left by other professions. This feature has been reflected in recent changes in the national organisation of the profession. One of the recommendations of the Social Work Taskforce was to set up a College of Social Work to act as the ‘voice’ of the profession and promote clarity and
coherence about the role of social work. The College was launched in January 2012 and the organisation’s first permanent Chief Executive, Annie Hudson, joined in August 2013. However, there have been some difficulties, not least being involved in a public argument with the British Association of Social Work (BASW), the largest
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professional association for social work in the UK. In September 2012, after two years of discussions, it became apparent that the two organisations had failed to negotiate the terms of a proposed merger. None of the social workers interviewed for this research project were members of the College and they were less than impressed with the fallout with BASW. Ed, for example, couched this in humorous terms:
Ed: It’s a bit like the Socialist Revolutionary Party having an argument with the Social Revolutionary Party [laughs] they just can’t get it together.
It remains to be seen if the College are able to meet their objective of promoting clarity and coherence about the role of social work. The next section will explore another theme identified from the interviews: the notion that social work is intrinsic to the self.