Peter Leonard

Reviews : The Essential Social Worker: A Guide to Positive Practice Martin Davies Heineman Educational Books 1981, £4.95:

develop left demands about the kinds of alternative provisions which are made and the control of the institutions in which these are provided. My own feeling is that an alternative strategy in which wage labour is much more flexibly organised so that people can engage in paid work, childcare, leisure pursuits, and continuing education at different points in their lives would be preferable. In order to achieve this it would be necessary for the left to struggle not only for alternative provisions and for control over the institutions in which these are provided but for a much more flexible approach to wage labour, education and income maintenance schemes. The demand for the right to work with its exclusive emphasis upon wage labour rules out of left debate any of these alternatives. It is to Sinfield’s credit that many of these questions are raised in his books. I actually think however that there is a tension in his arguments between a theoretical argument which relates to unemployment and to employment through an analysis of the labour market in quite narrow terms and much broader concerns relating to socially useful work, low pay and dirty jobs, discrimination in work because of race, sex, age, disability, hospital or prison record, and a healthy and safe environment. This is perhaps summed up by his statement that ’we need to be prepared to make (the) case (for ’work for all’) and not allow the goal of full employment to become locked into a vision of a dual puritanical duty symbolised perhaps by the manipulative routine of ’Music While You Work’. I think this is a real tension besetting left and feminist approaches to unemployment in the present period. How can we develop strategies to decrease the appallingly high levels of unemployment while also developing prefigurative strategies which embody in embryo socialist alternatives?

Conclusion: Towards a Marxist Politics for Social Work

We started this book by emphasising the difficulties inherent in both a Marxist theory and practice, and a social work theory and practice; in the bulk of the book we have tried to show the possibility of the beginnings of a Marxist practice within social work in the United Kingdom in 1970s. In all of this we have tried to emphasise the possibilities of action rather than the difficulties or blocks to action. Such an emphasis is a political choice, deliberately carried out to destroy the crippling fatalism that occurs amongst those who are working within the capitalist State in Britain, and is meant to provide hope for movement today and tomorrow, amongst a group of workers who have been led to believe that Marxism cannot provide any such guidelines for change.

Individual Consciousness and Ideology

We begin this chapter by once again considering a problem which social workers on the left experience in relation to their practice; it is perhaps one of the most fundamental problems they have to confront, one which appears to be inescapable. We refer here to the contradiction which appears to exist between, on the one hand, the development of a structural analysis of social problems and, on the other, the understanding of individuals and their experiences; this contradiction is often expressed in terms of the conflict between a macro-analysis and a micro-intervention. There are a number of issues which need to be distinguished in trying to understand this problem. One centres around the effects of structural analyses on the possibility of effective responses by social workers to individuals and families. The problem here is presented in terms of the question: Does the analysis of wider structural factors invalidate the approach to understanding individual consciousness and the effective response to individual needs and problems? Alongside this issue is linked another and similar one: in attempting to understand the complexity of social, political and economic factors in the creation and maintenance of social problems, social workers frequently appear to experience a certain distancing effect.

Collective Work and the Claimant’s Struggle

The social services team seems as chaotic as ever: every other Tuesday they have been meeting but with little coherence or purpose; they remain an individualistic collection of social workers. There had been the attempt to develop some form of team practice to cope with the problems of the area in a more collective way. The team leader had come away from a short course some eighteen months ago burning with a belief in ‘Team Practice’ and a commitment to make it work. Pauline, a social worker, had been as enthusiastic as the others at the start, believing that a collective approach to work might increase not only the instrumental effectiveness of the team but also help to develop collective consciousness among the workers. This would replace the extreme individualism that Pauline saw as characteristic of social workers in general.

Family, School and Bureaucracy

Pauline is very worried about what might happen to Derek as there seems to be no dear way in which the child can win in his situation. She had first met Derek, who is thirteen years old, about six weeks ago when she had been asked to visit the family. Apparently, the neighbours had complained sseveral times to the police about’ the noise from the Collins’s house; nearly every night there was a disturbance with screams and crashes. The police came and quietened everything down on several occasions, sometimes having to separate Mr and Mrs Collins from each other. Then other neighbours had called in the N.S.P.C.C. in order to find out whether the child was being beaten or not. The N.S.P.C.C. officer could not gain any clear impression of what was happening to the boy but had grave doubts about his safety. So the area team was contacted and Pauline went to talk it through. At the same time, the team had a referral from the school liaison officer that Derek had been missing school for several weeks for no obvious reason.

Alone with the Kids

Pamela first came across Deborah in January. The Electricity Board notifies the social services office of all electricity disconnections and Deborah had been one of the large number that came through in late January. Since the department had a previous contact with her, Pamela was expected to pay the family a visit.

Community Work and Politics

New Heath is the crumbling area of the city. Built about a hundred years ago, some of it has collapsed, some of it has been bombed flat, and some of it is in a serious state of dilapidation. However, some areas have been looked after: in a few streets, owner-occupiers have retrieved their buildings over the past few years by their own efforts. Philip was appointed as the social worker who would liaise with the City Planning Department in its local plan for the area. This represented half of Philip’s duties, the other half was the work produced by being attached to the team that covered the area. It was a system of employment that he had resented at the outset and one that he had struggled with throughout his work. It was obvious to him why the local authority wanted him employed directly through an area team and into the structure of the Social Services Department: they had anticipated a whole range of troubles between their own workers and the planning department, had foreseen demonstrations and other campaigns organised against the council by their own employees.

Old Age: Loneliness and Struggle

Most of Paul’s cases produced a feeling of immobility, but his four cases with old people represented a much deeper problem of futility. At least with kids, claimants and women there was some future possibility of movement; and even if he felt that all he was doing was a waste of time, at least something might turn up from outside. It was also the case that in these other areas nearly all his clients were active in their relationship to him as a social worker — the kids would attack him, the claimants complain and the mothers pressure him for action. So there was usually a combination of pressure from clients and at least a possibility of ‘something turning up’ to help move the situation.

Production and Reproduction

Each of these chapters show the way in which certain concepts in Marxism and certain aspects of reality that social work comes across, are converging. The process of this convergence is by no means purely idealistic, that is to say, it is not simply that social work theory and Marxism are coming doser together on the plane of ideas, but rather the convergence signifies that the material reality which social work comes up against is forcing its theory and its practice along certain lines. These lines are intelligible, we believe, only through a Marxist analysis. Thus, in the chapter on Class, we will show how, increasingly, social workers come across inequalities and how Marxist analysis of class is but one form of explanation of those inequalities. In the chapter on the State, we will show how social workers are becoming increasingly aware of their role as part of the State apparatus, and we will provide an analysis of that apparatus and the social workers’ role within it With regard to the family, social workers are increasingly questioning whether this particular institution is one that it should always buttress or whether, in fact, it is one which does more harm than good; in Marxist terms, we will analyse this debate. Similarly, within social work the role of the individual in society and its exact importance is being increasingly questioned, and we will try to provide a beginning of a Marxist analysis of individual consciousness and ideology.

Family Conflicts: Double Binds and Contradictions

Barbara is fifteen, getting nowhere at school and obviously hating it. She never really talks about school except with an occasional sneer and her mother is always going on about her lack of effort and the fact that she does not do her homework. Mrs K., the mother, referred her daughter to the social services team as ‘uncontrollable’. She came storming into the office with Barbara in tow about two months ago, screaming and crying. She calmed down after a while and explained that she believed that Barbara was taking drugs and sleeping around with half the boys on the estate. She wanted Barbara put into care immediately as she ‘just couldn’t cope’ with her behaviour. Having seen the threat of being ‘put into care’ as a punishment for her daughter, she felt satisfied enough with Barbara’s public humiliation. Mrs K. showed her daughter that she had real power over her; that the law of the land ensured her parental authority and that unless Barbara obeyed her the law could make life very difficult for her. Having her ‘put away’ had obviously been used in a number of family rows over the past couple of years and the incident was simply underlining her determination to be obeyed. Having gone through this ritual, Mrs K. left the office before the interview was complete, taking Barbara with her. Only ten days later the same scene was enacted again and, with two half-completed interviews, the team leader decided to ask Pauline to see the family and decide whether any further action was needed.