Charlotte Williams

Moral outrage! Social work and social welfare

As guest editors of this Australasia-Pacific Special Issue, we are inspired by Stephane Hessel’s poignant call in Time for Outrage! (2011), which implores us to shirk complacency and indifference and be moved to react to the unbearable things we see around us. Social work/social welfare practitioners are critically placed to bear witness to these injustices and morally obligated to speak out, act up and resist. Infringements of ethical standards such as fairness and respect, violation of rights, the compromising of trust and deeply held beliefs, evoke profoundly felt emotion which can be channelled towards beneficial change. Practitioners often find themselves in situations that confront their integrity as individuals and professionals, and frequently bear witness to the impacts of inequities and injustices on those with whom they work. The reach of our view and involvement in injustices has expanded, as we are interconnected across the globe in ways never experienced before. At home, our sensibilities are currently being affronted by the spectre of children in offshore detention in Nauru, where documented and witnessed abuses compromise child welfare. As doctors in the Australian Medical Association refuse to comply with government policy in returning vulnerable asylum seeker children to the Nauru detention centre, we in turn question our role as social workers in speaking out and acting in the best interests of these children. And more: in the light of entrenched inequalities for Indigenous peoples in Australia and the lack of progress on key Closing the Gap targets, we cannot but feel the shame. We are outraged but we so easily look away. And looking away from a distance, we view the crisis of humanitarianism troubling Europe as conflicting perspectives surround the unprecedented image of Syrian migrants walking to seek safety. Our perspectives on moral outrage are necessarily shaped by our positioning, social and geographical, by issues of distance and proximity, both literal and constructed. The tyranny of distance is at one and the same time a fact of our geographical positioning but more acutely a reflection of our ability to distance ‘the other’. Connecting with the experience and source of suffering and injustice raises fundamental questions for us about proximity, distance and identifications with ‘others’ at home and away. At the same time, our ambition must be to transcend national boundaries in seeking out social justice. Hessel argues (2011, 35), ‘it is high time that concerns for ethics, justice and sustainability prevail’ and urges us collectively as political actors, intellectuals and citizens to be moved to action. Engaging as it is, Hessel’s polemic raises more questions than it settles for social work and welfare practice and obliges us to ask searching questions such as: Whose outrage? Why? How is it expressed and what type of response should it evoke? This type of

Social Work and The Urban Age

Urbanisation is identified as among the most significant trends of the twenty-first century. By 2030, two thirds of the world’s population will be residing in cities—cities which are increasingly diverse, increasingly ageing and increasingly complex in their institutional arrangements. This chapter outlines the major transformations affecting the modern city and critically considers concepts such as ‘the urban age’ [UN-Habitat (United Nations Habitat). (2012). State of the worlds cities 2012/2013. http://unhabitat.org/books/prosperity-of-cities-state-of-the-worlds-cities-20122013/. Accessed 10 July 2015], ‘the urban crisis’ and the urban condition, drawing on writers such as Gleeson [(2014). Coming through slaughter (MSSI issues paper No. 3). Melbourne Sustainable Society Institute, University of Melbourne. http://www.sustainable.unimelb.edu.au/files/mssi/MSSI-IssuesPaper-3_Gleeson_2014_0.pdf. Accessed 5 Sept 2015], Glaeser [(2014). The triumph of the city: How urban spaces make us human. London: PanMacmillan] and Brenner and Schmid (Int J Urban Reg Res 38(3):731–755, 2014) in unravelling the key debates. The chapter asks ‘What are the opportunities and what are the challenges posed by these major shifts and changes? How have cities affected how we live today? What are the specificities of the city for social work consideration?’ It explores key sociological theories and conceptual frameworks for analysing the city, suggesting competing interpretations of how we come to know the city. It presents a view of the city as complex and multi-faceted, rather than a unified problematic.

Reconstructing Urban Social Work

This chapter returns to themes, issues and debates that turn on considerations of the modern city. Here, I reconstruct the notion of ‘the urban social worker’ and, drawing on a small study of ‘voices’ from the front line, illustrate the demands of practice, workforce issues and social work person power. Here, social workers speak about the city and its possibilities and potentials. We hear about the ‘the caring and inclusive city’, ‘the eyes on the street’ and navigating the city. We hear about constraints of practice, about experimentation and innovations. The thrust of the argument is the appeal to building alliances for change efforts, inserting social work in policy circuits, the focus on the local state, building a variety of networks and collaborations, and engaging in advocacy work and grassroots mobilisation. Social workers are positioned as active agents in creating the city and bolstering its redistributive values. The chapter concludes by drawing out a number of principles for urban practice.

Beyond the Soup Kitchen

Social work is a child of the city. Its historical origins mark it as a response to the urban poor and its methodologies emerge from the impacts of industrialisation. This chapter reaches back to the philosophical beginnings of the profession and provides a colourful introduction to the symbiotic relationship between social work and the city, confronting the ambiguous positioning of the profession and its uncertain mandate. It makes reference to the Elizabethan Poor Law, to eighteenth-century philanthropy, to the Fabian Socialists who enumerated the city, and to interventions such as the Settlement Movement. Social work is a product of its time, its mileu and its context. It is also a product of dual loyalties to state and to the service user. This chapter considers this tension within the shifts and transformations from Social Darwinist residualist thinking to the doctrine of neo-liberalism and the impact on social work methodologies of the city. This notion is extended in several ways to engage critically with traditional tensions at the heart of the role of the social worker and how these require reworking in the face of opportunities within the modern city. Dilemmas and tensions of the professional role will be made explicit in redefining the place of ‘urban social work’. This chapter proposes a number of competing visions of the city that shape ideas about the nature of urban social work. It argues for a repositioning of social work in relation to the contemporary city based on a reconnection with issues of place and space, scale, sustainability and new civic governance.

Social work research and the city

Shaw’s initial review of major social work databases indicated little contemporary published research on social work and the urban (Eur J Soc Work, 14(1):11–26, 2011). The opportunity to introduce social workers to a consideration of innovative research methodologies in the context of city life is apparent. This chapter revisits the insights from urban sociological research practice, outlining key traditions such as the social administration tradition, the Settlement ethnography, the Chicago School and others. It draws examples of innovative methodologies utilised in the context of assessing needs, engaging with hard-to-reach and very vulnerable communities, including ecological research models, ethnography, community mapping, psychogeography, audio walking and social impact assessment, among others. The intention is to foreground research as a social work practice and to highlight the possibilities for social work practitioner research, as well as point to academic research trajectories on urban/city issues. The role of research in social justice advocacy will be highlighted.