Editorial

Abstract

As I write the new regulatory body for social work – Social Work England – has announced that it will take over the regulatory role of the profession in December 2019. So, once again the sector will undergomore churn and change. At one level being returned to the oversight of a regulatory body that is social work specific might be welcomed, but the terms and conditions underpinning its creation have certainly not been. Constraints on how this new body has been constituted and the greater involvement, compared to previously, of central government in its operations, have raised questions about the profession being subjected to an additional level of surveillance and scrutiny. In contexts of change we are all familiar with the common human responses and our inclination to revert to defensive behaviours from earlier developmental stages. How can we then as a profession and discipline engage with these changes in thoughtful ways that use the resources we have available as mature adults? Familiarity with our own individual defensive responses is one way of reducing instinctive reactions, as is an awareness of the powerful dynamics associated with the social systems and collective behaviours that can emerge in the face of anxiety. All of the papers and the two Clare Winnicott prize winning essays in this issue tackle this challenge head on and explore how support systems can reduce the adverse impact of anxiety. Levinger et al’s paper, the title of which begins ‘In life and in death . . . ’ goes straight to the heart of anxiety. Their research explored the experiences of people living with diagnoses of metastatic cancer and highlighted how individuals found strategies for holding their experiences of life and the prospect of death in a creative tension. Of pivotal importance in achieving this is the role played by support groups and the sharing of collective experiences. Support is the central theme in Elizabeth Harlow’s paper which explores the challenges of accessing post-adoption support. Growing awareness of the heightened emotions associated with the post-adoption phase has led to a recognition of the importance of adequate support systems being made available to adoptive parents. The paper underlines the anxiety provoking challenges faced by all involved in the adoption process, manifested in adopters’ ambivalence in seeking help and professionals’ uncertainty about what type of support to offer. The findings of an evaluation of a service specifically designated to offer ‘fit for purpose’ adoption support, undertaken by the author, offer encouraging indicators of how the anxieties associated with this challenging life event can be reduced. Building on ideas relating to the role of support systems in tackling anxiety McLaughlin et al’s paper details their experiences of ‘planning and implementing a group supervision pilot with a team working in a homeless service’. Focusing on what is needed to maximize the potential benefits of group supervision for professionals the paper underlines the importance of group members being enabled to resist binary thinking. Similar to the participants’ ability in Levinger et al’s study to hold their potentially polarized experiences in a creative tension’, in this instance the tension is one that allows professionals to be JOURNAL OF SOCIAL WORK PRACTICE 2019, VOL. 33, NO. 3, 251–252 https://doi.org/10.1080/02650533.2019.1648070