There are a number of factors to be considered when examining social work in a post-industrial, free market society and these have implications for understanding new directions in social work education. Conceptual frameworks are being developed which help to clarify the meaning of present trends. One question that comes to mind is whether " the skills based industry and economic imperatives [will] overtake and disempower social work?" (Rodopoulos, 1 994: 13). Markiewicz identified four aspects of the new order which she considered significant for social work students and which are relevant to the question. Firstly, the context of public welfare work and secondly the organisational context in which it occurs help to shape practice. The politics of policy development and consequent service
delivery in public welfare are. the third and fourth aspects of the new order which influence social work and education (Markiewicz, 1994: 1 ).
These aspects provide a framework for presenting the m ultiplicity of significant d imensions which is used in this section. There is a further aspect which perhaps belongs here, namely the change in language and terminology that has taken place in the 1990s. Educators as well as agencies and government organisations have been drawn into this new language with remarkable speed as the New Right economic p olicies were implemented. (These policies are discussed in Chapter Eleven). Terms like "service providers", "purchasers", " inputs", "outputs", "competencies" and so on caused considerable distress among staff when introduced, but they have now adopted the newspeak and are quite fluent. The language of managerialism has operated as a significant mental coloniser and mechanism of domination in this area.
It is argued that the context of public welfare work is becoming predominantly one of social control (Markiewicz, 1994: 3). The ideals of social justice and prevention are either dangerous in the eyes of employers or hard to account for in terms of outputs, and, on both counts, to be eschewed. Industry is a new concept for the social service sector, which traditionally regards itself as a not for profit sector (Kane and Hopkins, 1995). How social workers will go along with marketing themselves is difficult to assess. In Aotearoa /New Zealand there has been a rise in the number of private practitioners (Baskerville and Durrant, 1996) and certainly the market is ready for them. The General Manager of the country's main statutory social service agency, NZCYPFS, in his address to the Asian and Pacific Association of Social Work Educators in 1995, described his agency as ,a business which should be able to deliver "the best possible product to our clients [and be] able to respond with ease to changes in the marketplace" (Page, 1995: 3).
The second significant aspect of the new order is the organisational context in which management has become a generic concept, such that social service agencies may now be managed by people who need know nothing about social work. In 1995, Mr. Griff Page was appointed General Manager of the Children and Young Persons Service. He described himself thus:
I am not a social worker. I am a manager, with a purchase agreement with the Government to provide certain results for an agreed price (Page, 1995: 10).
A manager, moreover, committed to delivering the goods in. line with the accountability requirements of the Public Finance Act which he defended on the grounds that it demands the delivery of effective social services, good case management and good results (Page, 1995: 9). Page's difficulty was, as he admitted, that he was working in the dark. How does one measure good outcomes from the outputs of one's employees? He was uncertain, but, in 1995, announced his determination to find this out (Page, 1 995). If successful, might he then be in a position to analyse the social work task, break it down into steps and apportion graded tasks to workers with varying skills levels? This practice represents the fragmentation and de-skilling, or routinisation of work. It is regarded as reducing professional autonomy and "expropriates the worker's knowledge" (Uttley, 1994: 5). At the same time, it risks turning tbe social worker into an investigator whose manager is likely to assess the client using the information provided (Howe, 1992, cited in Markiewicz, 1994).
Yet what is wrong with arguing in favour of effective social services if they really work? Two areas of concern exist. In the first place there is the distinct possibility that social workers are already working to deliver agency policies which conflict with professional standards. The second worry is not that social work might improve, but that it could be distracted by the urgency of economic imperatives and the skill-based industry and lose sight of its structural analysis and the social justice dimension embedded in its code of ethics (Markiewicz, 1994; Nash, 1996).
The politics of policy development, Markiewicz's third aspect, refers to pressures by for example, the media, on social work, particularly when a child is murdered or abused. In Britain, Maria Colwell (1974) was the first such case to really affect social work practice. There have been several such
cases lately in New Zealand. It was in response to in
1987, that the Minister of Social Welfare set the target of having 90% of her
staff qualified and competent by the turn of the century of the
Team on the Circumstances of the Death of
a 1988). As a result of such situations, systems are often put in place
workers have received new, tighter, procedures to follow which, while laudable in one sense, prescribe their actions and risk reducing their freedom to think and act on their professional knowledge.
The fourth point to consider is service delivery and preparation of the worker. It is commonly recognised in Aotearoa/New Zealand that, where public policy objectives used to be couched in terms of social goods, they are now expressed in terms of economic goods. The dominant style of administration has become corporate or generic managerialism. This means that economic policy now has to provide the opportunity in which social good can develop. In some cases, groups can harness these opportunities for their benefit, by contracting to offer social services which suit them. This new organisational context for social work raises questions as to what happens to theoretical knowledge under the new, fragmented and prescriptive social service approach. l o It also reopens old questions as to whether the profession to date can be so sure that it does know what makes a difference to clients and how social work performance can be measured. The identification of key tasks, and the knowledge and skills these require, is one method by which social work could, some would argue, be assessed for effectiveness. This is where the competency approach has been able, understandably, to gain acceptance in many quarters. Social work in Aotearoa/New Zealand is cognisant of the competency movement. The NZSWTC Competencies Working Party described competence as
a key element in developing systems of accountability for practice, determining the quality of service, developing appropriate education and training and assessing effectiveness and efficiency (NZSWTC Competencies Working Party, 1987: 9) and noted that
The competence of graduates is a meeting point for the concerns of educators, administrators and practitioners (ibid: 9).
This endorses the argument in this thesis, that educators, administrators and practitioners are interested parties in terms of determining what happens in the preparation of social workers for practice. ) )
This chapter has examined what is entailed in the concept of an academic discipline and noted the identification of social work as a soft, applied discipline, one which, moreover is intrinsically vocational and therefore predictably susceptible to industrial pressures. The early alliance between profession, educational provider and educational fund er has, of late, been dissolved. Agency theory advocates that the funder be divorced from the provider to ensure, in managerial terms, a more efficient and effective delivery of service. The adoption of this theory has m eant that, for example, in Aotearoa /New Zealand, the funder (Government: Vote Education) could, in theory, leave industry to negotiate with providers concerning the type of education and training they believe will adequately equip their future employees (Marginson, 1993). This would, however, leave an important and interested party out of the equation, namely the student, who, in Aotearoa / N ew Zealand, is fast becoming a m ajor purchaser and should therefore have an input.
What does this mean for social work in the universities? It means inevitable tension between those involved, and here one has to include students, who pay an increasingly high proportion of the cost of their studies. This is in accordance with the philosophy of normative economism:
The subordination of education to economic values means that what is good for the economy becomes what is good for education, and that education is only beneficial to the extent that it is beneficial in economic terms. In the language of mainstream policies it is inconceivable that there could be "too much" wealth or "too much" economics. However, because economic goals are the dominant ones and public spending on education is an economic cost, there can be "too m uch" education people can be too well informed, too well prepared for the social good . Educators want to maximise the 1 1
Three organisations currently working to improve competency levels in social work are: the New Zealand Association of Social Work, the New Zealand Children, Young Persons and Their Families Service and Te Kaiawhina Ahumahi Industry Training Organisation.
intellectual, cultural, academic, political and economic development of people. At a certain point, this objective becomes incompatible with economic production and exchange as conventionally defined (Marginson, 1993: 65). This quote epitomises the dilemma facing social work education in Aotearoa /New Zealand. In a way, this has been an underlying tension throughout the history of social work education in this country. The present economic policies, coupled with the new managerialism have a bare bones effect which highlights the possibility of "too much education" and legitimates the expression of such an idea.
Marginson argues that, in Australia, competency based training affects methods of teaching, learning and assessment, and is employer and industry driven. He considers that it strikes a minimalist level for students to reach and, as such, works against professionalism (Marginson, 1993: 144). Social work courses offer a combination of theory alongside the practical and skills training modules. In this sense, such courses embody both instrumental and academic approaches to curriculum. Professional social work education therefore includes training because it entails at least two substantial fieldwork placements.
Aotearoa /New Zealand academics have similar concerns to those mentioned above, in relation to the NZQA and the unit standards and the question of what will become of their curricula (Gwyn, 1995). Will the state eventually decide that minimal competency levels are sufficient for practitioners and that, to be professional (to be educated to a level where cognitive ability and specific knowledge exceed what appears to be necessary), will come to be considered a luxury for students to buy and for clients to take pot luck as to whether they encounter it?
The lasting consequence of the basic skills debate has been to tie education more closely to work in the minds of business, politicians, students and the public, while weakening the authority and autonomy of the professional educators in education policy (Marginson, 1993: 149).
This comes back to the questions raised at the beginning of this chapter about what people are being educated for, and the debates concerning status
of knowledge that Goodlad, 1976, Becher, 1989, Lyons, 1994 and Dominelli, 1996, have raised. Who will now decide what people will be educated for? The OEeD has recommended a competitive market in training in which private and public tertiary institutions offer courses. It recommended the system of Industry Training Organisations now being established in Aotearoa /New Zealand, in which the public sector sets standards and maintains them through accreditation of courses (Marginson, 1993: 152).
There is a complex set of circumstances at play in this whole area. While politicians may evaluate or apportion blame, scholars and policy analysts will examine the choices which are made and try to understand them in their social, political, economic and cultural context (Openshaw, 1995). The next chapter is a focused life history of one of the leaders of professional social work in Aotearoa/New Zealand. Drawing extensively on the oral history material collected from Merv Hancock and others, it follows his social work career through fifty years of social work and education. This chapter is unusual in that it relies heavily on his own words, interspersed with commentary and explanation. Merv Hancock was made a life member of the NZASW in recognition of his outstanding contribution to social work, including social work education. His reflections on what happened and why, represent an invaluable contribution to this history. The chapter emphasises the significant role that a purposeful individual can take when determined to have an influence on shaping things for the future. It is followed by the chapter looking at supply and demand relating to qualified social workers. Together, these two chapters set the scene for the historical chapters which follow.