Mark Hardy

Practitioner perspectives on risk: Using governmentality to understand contemporary probation practice

This article reports findings from a study investigating if, how and why concerns regarding risk are impacting on probation work in England and Wales from the practitioner perspective. It begins with a review of key debates regarding how ‘the rise of risk’ has come about and with what effects. I then briefly explain what the study entailed – its aims and objectives, methods and theoretical framework (governmentality). Findings from the study are then presented. These are at odds with the ‘critical consensus’ that risk has dramatically altered the nature of practice. The article concludes with discussion of the implications of these findings for ongoing debates regarding the significance of risk in probation practice.

Complex issues, complex solutions: applying complexity theory in social work practice

High-profile service failures in social work have ensured that the demand that practitioner decision-making be both accurate and transparent has never been as vocal or persistent. Such expectations undermine both trust and legitimacy, and how best to respond represents perhaps the most challenging issue facing social work today. Of necessity, practitioners must make judgements in circumstances characterised by uncertainty and ambiguity, while the complexity of this undertaking is routinely cited as a confounding variable in efforts to generate and apply generalisable knowledge in a technical fashion. Here, we aim to utilise developments in complexity theory to elaborate on why this might be the case, but also what, practically, social work might do about it. In particular, we will respond to Eileen Munro suggestion that it is possible to differentiate areas of social work which can be proceduralised from those which should be judgement based. Utilising recent developments in complexity theory, we aim to explore whether this can be undertaken on the basis of a ‘complexity continuum’ which enables classification of roles and tasks on the basis of inherent certainty or uncertainty. In providing a reflexive account of the development and application of the continuum, however, the relationship between theory and practice is to some extent problematised. The findings demonstrate that although complexity theory can provide useful insights, it also has evident practical limitations. In turn, these limitations have implications for discussions regarding the real-world relevance of complexity theory, and for sociological theorising to social work more generally.

Beyond power/knowledge—developing a framework for understanding knowledge ‘flow’ in international social work

How are different ‘forms’ of knowledge developed, transmitted and institutionalised in social work? Foucault’s concept of ‘power/knowledge’ famously enabled us to understand such developments via the evolving methodological approach he variously referred to as archaeology, genealogy and governmentality. In this paper, we will use this and other conceptual resources as the basis for advocating an adapted and flexible methodological framework which constitutes knowledge as local, situated and embedded, but also dynamic, interactive and ‘flowing’ between actors, institutions and jurisdictions at an international level. The model has the potential for integrating two distinct cross-disciplinary approaches to understanding the operation of power within society: first, ‘an analytics of government’, specified by Dean as particularly useful in addressing ‘how’ questions and second, the potentially complementary approach known as historical–political sociology which seeks to integrate explanatory and descriptive causal formulations. Together, these act as a basis for extending Foucault’s formulation of power/knowledge to accommodate the dynamic nature of trans-disciplinary, intercontinental knowledge flow. We will examine the potential relevance and utility of the model using the example of how one ‘form’ of knowledge, in this case, policy knowledge, has informed the development of a particular approach to social work practice—supervised community treatment in mental health—in various Western jurisdictions over the last few decades.

W(h)ither the academy? An exploration of the role of university social work in shaping the future of social work in Europe

A controversial proposal to pilot the training of child protection social workers through an intensive work-based route in England is being supported and funded by the UK Government. Frontline, the brainchild of a former teacher, locates social work training within local authorities (‘the agency’) rather than university social work departments (‘the academy’) and has stimulated debate amongst social work academics about their role in shaping the direction of the profession. As a contribution to this debate, this paper explores the duality of social work education, which derives its knowledge from both the academic social sciences and the experience of practice within social work agencies. While social work education has traditionally been delivered by the academy, this paper also explores whether the delivery of training in the allied professions of probation and nursing by ‘the agency’ is equally effective. Finally, this paper explores the Helsinki model which achieves a synergy of ‘academy’ and ‘agency’. It suggests that there are alternative models of social work education, practice and research which avoid dichotomies between the ‘academy’ and the ‘agency’ and enable the profession to be shaped by both social work academics and practitioners.

The ethics of practical reasoning—exploring the terrain

ABSTRACT Social work has been under sustained scrutiny regarding the quality of decision-making. The assumption is that social workers make poor quality decisions. And yet our knowledge and understanding of how social workers make decisions is, at best, partial. In our view, examination of practitioner decision-making will be enhanced by considering the role that ethics plays in practical judgement in practice. Although there has been significant work regarding the role of values and ethics in practice, this work tends to idealize morality, setting up external standards by which practice is judged. In this paper, we will argue that ethics in practice needs to be understood as more than simply the operationalizing of ideal standards. Ethics also entails critical engagement with social issues and can challenge idealized statements of values. We outline the idea of the ethical dimension of practical reasoning, consider its relationship to professional discretion, judgements and decision-making and argue that this opens up an area of investigation that can illuminate the interaction between practice and ethical thinking and reflection in novel and – for social work, at least – unconventional ways.

'I know what I like and I like what I know' : Epistemology in practice and theory and practice again

This article is a reflective piece in which I account for how and why I have developed my current understanding of the relevance of epistemology to practice, to social work research and to the relationship between the two. Social work as a profession has itself faced something of an epistemological crisis of late, which has impacted on both practice and research in ways which have not necessarily been beneficial. I will draw my own practice and reseach to highlight the twists and turns in the development of my thinking about these issues and as a corollary, my views regarding the bridging role that pragmatic epistemology might play between research and practice.

Integrating Practice and Research on Mental Disorder

In this chapter, the question of whether assessment is best seen as ‘art’ or ‘science’ is explored in connection with the overarching question of the role that research can or ought to play in clinical practice and what the integration of research evidence into practice actually involves. Exploring the strengths and limitations of each position (‘art’ and ‘science’), the chapter discusses the use of tacit knowledge and reflective practice in the more ‘bottom-up’ intuitive approach, as well as the use of structured and actuarial approaches in the more ‘top-down’ analytic approach. It then outlines the basis for a ‘knowledge-based’ approach to assessment and diagnosis in which evidence is synthesized from multiple sources, and practice-based research is utilized to challenge the limitations of more traditional approaches. It concludes by making the case for critical pluralism, a pragmatic approach to assessment that allows practitioners to assess the relevance and utility of particular forms of knowledge for particular clients and to reconcile some of the tensions between competing, and often polarized, approaches to diagnosis.

The Probation Service — Pragmatism in Practice?

This chapter is a genealogical case study which traces the development of social work with offenders in the probation service from its inception to the present day. In what follows I analyse changes in the probation service over time, from its seemingly humanitarian roots to its present day manifestation as part of the National Offender Management Service. I cover its origins as missionary work and trace subsequent developments as the original methods and philosophy of the service underwent a process of modification, including the shift to a statutory service utilising the techniques of social casework, the use of probation as an alternative to custody and as a form of punishment in the community, and the shift to ‘justice’. Both ethos and practice are significant in this analysis, illustrating as they do the centrality of the balance between the individual and society which is so significant in the developing role and identity of the probation service, and social work more generally. The rise of risk and evidence based practice are seen as part of a shift from art to science which is also related to an associated shift from care to control.

Accounting for the Rise of Risk

There are numerous theoretical accounts which relate the rise of risk to broader social transformations. In this chapter, I will briefly review these perspectives. It is worth noting that the literature on risk — what it is, where it comes from, how we can make sense of it, what can be done about it, the various approaches that might be used in doing so — is voluminous. It is beyond the scope of this chapter to do justice to the sheer complexity and diversity of these debates and perspectives. Rather, my intention is to focus on a number of key theoretical frameworks, as they represent a useful contextual backdrop for the analysis which follows.

Mental Health Social Work — A Case in Point

Social work occurs in a variety of settings, disparate agencies and in notably distinct contexts and domains which inform to varying degrees its nature and function. In the next two chapters, I use two specialist areas of practice — mental health social work and work with offenders in the probation service — as exemplars of areas of practice at different positions on the care-control continuum. Here the former is positioned as a generally ‘caring’ form of social work and the latter as a generally controlling approach to practice. This is, of course, an overly simplified distinction which does justice to neither the complexity of social work’s foci nor the diversity of approaches and perspectives within particular domains (see, for example, Burnham 2012, Vanstone 2004). Nevertheless, as we shall see, mental health social work emerged in response to a perceived need within the mental health system for a less coercive and more socially oriented counterpoint to the dominance of medical psychiatry and asylums. The probation service, meanwhile, has always found it difficult to straightforwardly represent its roles and functions as unproblematically ‘caring’, given its clientele. Consequently, these two domains of practice usefully function as loosely comparative counterpoints, albeit mainly for heuristic purposes.