Suzy Croft

The politics of participation

’Participation’ is one of those contentious words like ’community’ and ’care’ which can seem to mean everything and nothing. There is little agreement about its definition. Even its terminology constantly changes, for example, from ‘participation’ and ’empowerment’, to ’self-advocacy’ and ’involvement’. ’Participation’ generates enthusiasm and hostility in equal proportion. For some it is bankrupt; for others it offers hope. Interest in participation appears to be episodic. Currently we are going through another period when it seems to be heightened. According to our views on the subject, this may be

Service Users’ Knowledges and the Social Construction of Social Work

• Summary: This article considers the implications for social work and social care education, policy and practice of including the viewpoints and knowledges of service users. The development of policy and practice for user involvement is critically discussed and the role of service users and their organizations in the construction of social work explored. • Findings: Disabled people’s and service users’ organizations have developed their own knowledges, theories and models, based on their first-hand experience. This paper examines the implications of such users’ knowledge for social work and social care theory, policy and practice. It draws on discussions and developments in the disabled people’s and other movements whose members are the subjects of social work theory and practice. It is informed by the authors’ work and experience as service users, educators and practising social workers, as well as writers, activists and researchers in this field. • Applications: The article examines the progress that has been made in involving service users in social work education, theory building, research, practice development and standard setting. It explores some of the practical and philosophical issues involved in developing a more inclusive and socially constructed social work and suggests that this may offer a route to restoring social work to its core values.

User-involvement, citizenship and social policy

User-involvement is emerging as a key concern in social policy. So far debates have largely been framed in narrow social administration terms. The idea embraces conflicting conceptions of consumerism and self- advocacy. Here it is considered in the broader context of citivenship and human need. Beginning with peoples own experience and ideas about them, the article explores their relationship with an empowering approach to involvement which enables us to become producers rather than consumers of our own welfare.

It's our problem too ! Challenging the exclusion of poor people from poverty discourse

Poverty discourse is characterised by the exclusion of people with experience of poverty. This has shaped the nature of both debate and policy responses. This discussion looks at the reasons for this ex clusion, the effects it has had and makes the case for an inclusive poverty discourse as the basis for the reconceptualisation of poverty and the development of more effective strategies to deal with it.

Whose empowerment? Equalizing the competing discourses in community care

There is now considerable interest in issues of involvement and empowerment in community care. The publication of this book is one more expression of it. Much work is currently being done on the analysis, development, implementation and evaluation of involvement and empowerment. However, much less attention has been paid to the social construction of the debates and developments taking place; to the influences, ideologies, organizations, institutions and interests which affect and shape them. This is what we want to focus on here.

Women, caring and the recasting of need — a feminist reappraisal

We know the immense sacrifices which people will make for the care of their own near and dear for elderly relatives, disabled children and so on, and the immense part which voluntary effort even outside the confines of the family has played in these fields. Once you give people the idea that all this can be done by the state, and that it is somehow second-best or even degrading to leave it to private people (it is sometimes referred to as ’cold charity’) then you will begin to deprive human beings of one of the essential ingredients of humanity personal moral responsibility. Margaret Thatcher, 1978(l) >

Working together – innovative collaboration in social care research

This article reviews literature to provide context for a reflective narrative on a collaborative research project undertaken by disabled people, practitioners and academics. This approach required reconsidering many aspects of methodology and practice as the research relationships are altered. The article reflects on how the collaborative and participatory approach was developed and sustained and how it impacted on the research process and its outcomes. The article explores how the group of people worked together on a complex large-scale research project to bring the voices of service users and other key players together in a discussion about social care. The article is written by one of the academic partners and draws on consortium documents and reflections from other consortium members provided for the article.

Striking back for the empire

In Critical Social Policy No 8 (Autumn 1983) we published an extended, controversial review by Jock Young of The Empire Strikes Back: Race & Racism in 70s Britain (ESB) written by the Race and Politics Group at the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies at Birmingham University. The review aggressively and destructively dismissed the book’s analysis of complex issues such as the relation between race, gender and class, policing the inner city, Afro-Caribbean culture in Britain. It was the kind of review which is all too common; it distorted, caricatured and ignored much of the book and concentrated on airing the reviewer’s prejudices on some of the issues. Some of the CSP collective were very unhappy about publishing the review without comment. We hoped, naively and rather in the style of Pilate, that it would elicit a strong response from readers, which has not happened, with the exception of a mild riposte from Richard Johnson in CSP 9. This response is prompted now by reading What is to be done about Law and

Critical Social Policy special issue: Vocabularies of citizenship and gender in Northern Europe

to Sage Publications that we would develop a more comparative and international dimension to the journal. This particular Special Issue emerged from the annual seminars of the European Network for Theory and Research on Women, Welfare State and Citizenship organized between 1994 and 1996. One of the concerns of the research groups set up by the Network was the difficulty in pursuing comparative social policy research when key concepts within that research, such

Child neglect: Participation, poverty and distress - the crucial coupling

Abstract We want to focus in this discussion on three of the issues most closely associated with child protection, child abuse and child neglect. These issues are are mental distress, poverty and participation. A key theme in our discussion will be the connections that exist between the individual, society and the state. We want to keep these relations to the front of our discussion because underlying it is the view that only by focussing on both the personal and the social can policy and practice operate effectively to safeguard common rights and meet peoples different needs.