Social Work Mitigates Between the Life-World and Institutional Spheres

By Mohol Nagy

 

Methods and procedures

Methods and procedures are the shapes of actual social work being done. Social work should be empowering, based in people’s reality and allowing them access to resources – (public) goods, however, the crisis pushed it to retreat into counselling, bureaucracy and ‘workshops’ – i.e. psychological, administrative and pedagogical mouldering of people’s subjectivities Flaker, 2016a). And, along with their users social workers are scapegoated for the failures of the society.

Renewal of social work ethics on the stratum of methods and procedure should be built on imperative of assuring access to resources or possibilities of generating them. This should be considered as one of human rights, which is ever so important in changing, precarious society.

Social work should be always considered as action, as doing, work – not merely listening, talking, assessing, testing. It should embody the spirit of social work in action. It should avoid various fundamentalisms (religious, therapeutic, political, and others) since they disable social work. It should in practise appreciate differences and become a signposts for a new way of appreciative transcultural citizenship (Napan, 2011).

Social work is always participatory, partisan in its method and approach, however, needs to be objective (not neutral) provide not only evidence but also demonstrate of what really works.

Procedures should be about securing people’s rights and not about legitimating their denial. There are many procedures where social work is closely involved that are dealing with denial of rights to certain groups of people (children, mental disabilities and distress, criminal justice, more and more old people). In the procedures curtailing children’s freedom of expression or contrary – stealing away their childhood when treating them as criminally responsible adults, as well as in the procedures of restraining, taking away or diminishing ‘mental’ or ‘legal’ capacity’, instituting guardianship and in the issues of criminal responsibility and insanity, there should be strong maxims of ‘no closure’ and no restraint, strife for freedom and inventing how to deconstruct the this thorough de-humanisation and construct or even intent of how the free will can be reassumed, expressed and supported by and for the community. Instead of retributive, punitive justice – restorative, transformative social justice should be championed by social work (Case & Yates, 2016; Flaker, 2016a).

For this participatory, engaging approaches are needed, which will assert the central role of users in decisions regarding their futures (involving care, rehabilitation, etc.). Social work cannot be done without the person, nor without the community – it has to be personalised – personal care planning, assistance, personal projects, recovery etc. – and it has to become a common ground for action. Person is a starting point and end of the work, so is the community. It is matter of pragmatic convenience where to start, but the end is a ethical imperative in itself (Flaker, 2015b).

This should be true also for ‘involuntary’ users (court orders) and those whose difficulties are the toughest. Social work should be transforming life-world by engaging people in changes, connecting to local and deterritorialised social movements. And above all, even when social work is partly embedded in the virtual realities of institutional world it should be in its action connecting its methods with everyday life (Flaker, 2015a).

Power of the life-world

Crisis by invention of new mechanisms of control, by pushing social workers in the role of defending the state and not championing the users, by lack of users’ involvement and participation, as well as by the persistence of alienating, poisonous ideologies, people in need are transformed into institutional objects to be managed – thus taking away their self-determination and even their own life world (Flaker, 2015a) (refuges are a clear example of such a metamorphosis).

Life world is being by post-fordist production transformed in to a commodity – life is not something that we create with other people, it is now a commodity to consume (if not to buy) (Jordan, 2012) – if we do not do this the fate is of becoming the object of technological control; excluded from everyday life and not with even this kind of control over life.  (Neo)Robinson rules again. Now on the island of himself. The way old people are being abused and stigmatised is our common destiny. The life world is being increasingly characterised by loss of social guarantees, ‘stable instability’ (the individual‘s experience of social and cultural uncertainty), marginalisation¸ exclusion and disaffiliation of social groups, ‘social vulnerability’.

In the power relationships, social work is always taking side of the weak. Although risking its own disempowerment, the power invested in social work must be used to assure the access to resources, to create alliances of solidarity – connect various groups and modalities of work and not to reduce them to only one dimension (Flaker, 2016a). Empowerment, justice, and autonomy should become community resources and common ownership of them a guarantee to be able to influence over future. Power can be generated only collectively – even when it is expressed in personal contractual capacity. People with little such power experience both need for participation and protection. Both can be achieved through common effort – one has to have right to be mad, deviant, old, but also right to be supported in one’s recovery journey, in creativity when old in loyalty conflicts (e.g. children and parents). Recovery is both individual and collective responsibility (Flaker, 2016b).

One of social works main goals is producing a better life, many times it simply means reappropriation of one’s own. It supposed taking risks, but also fulfilling need and safeguarding rights.

Social work must replenish its power to act in actual world and change it to a better with others with the mandate (alliance) with the movements and communities. Part of the past, but also the future of social work, is an activist one, and lively communities need activism of their own (e.g. old age activism), securing participation of the people concerned. Participation and empowerment are the strategies to foster social cohesion and sustainability, common welfare – reclaiming community as source of identity, of resilience, also common enterprise, and a way of getting out of the clinches of economism – with a modest goal to live the life of our own!

Life-world is what counts and where sovereignty matters – and is only possible for everybody – in a praxis of dialogue common can be constructed.

References

Case, S. & Yates, J. (2016) ‘Examining social work with children in conflict with the law: Trajectories and possibilities’, Dialogue in Praxis (Ethics of Inclusion – special issue), vol. 5, no. 1­­. (forthcoming).

Flaker, V. (2015) 'Impact of social movements on deinstitutionalisation: case of Slovenia and a case for social cooperatives', in 1914–2014 from the Europe of World War 1 to Social Europe: report, Social Firms Europe, . Gorizia; Nova Gorica, pp. 10–22.

Flaker, V. (2016a) ' Social work is the art of remaining human in the inhuman conditions’, Dialogue in Praxis (Ethics of Inclusion – special issue), vol. 5, no. 1­­. (forthcoming).

Flaker, V. (2016b) ‘Social matrix of the recovery and empowerment’, in Aufbruch / Ausbruch: Baustellen der Gleichstellung: Fachsymposium von DAS BAND – gemeinsam vielfältig, (Sozialpädagogik, 28), J. Erkinger, Richter, V. & T. Schmid eds, LIT Verlag, Vienna, pp. 66—80.

Jordan B. (2012) Individualisation, liberal freedom, and social work in Europe, Dialogue in Praxis: A Social Work International Journal, Volume 1 (14) Issue 1–2 (22–23), 2012, pp. 7–25, [On line] Available at: http://dialogueinpraxis.fsd.uni-lj.si/index.php?id=5&a=article&aid=10

Napan, K.  (2011) 'An inquiry into scarcity, mutuality, social justice and what can social work offer to the changing world', Dialogue in Praxis, vol. 0 (13), no. 0 (21), pp. 23–34. [Online] Available at: http://dialogueinpraxis.fsd.uni-lj.si/index.php?id=5&a=article&aid=3

Common-fare and Self-organisation

Social policy

European social model is in crisis, we witness growth in poverty, unemployment, marginalisation and isolation – the very mechanisms of exclusion. Whole segments of population are under stress. Children experience poverty, are in labour, do not get fair deal in education (girls). Old people are condemned to low income and poverty. Welfare State is withering.

A visible impact of austerity is retrenchment of universal services available to all. Entitlement to services is more and more related to presumed danger, to the risk of crime, violence etc., rather than the needs or distress people experience (Case & Yates, 2016). We are witnessing the re-criminalisation of needs and poverty alongside with their medicalisation.  Indirectly it is true even for old people – if in need of help or support, they are mainly a burden to the family, when they transgress the ‘subsidiarity threshold’ they must conform to the paternalism of institutional care; Monty Python prophecy of  ‘senile delinquents’ is, in a twisted way, becoming true. 

Long-term care and development of personalised services has been a successful response for growing needs, where implemented in socially responsive manner, however, on its own, with withering rights and without community responses, remains just a light in the tunnel (Flaker, 2011; Jordan, 2012; Mali, 2016). Community work, much needed in the times of crisis has fallen few decades ago as a victim of managerialism, supported by the idea of welfare mix, an excuse for privatisation of social care where instead of real voluntary sector and true community groups large multinational companies seem to be gaining upper hand (Flaker, 2012). 

The crisis pronounces the basic social work ethical dilemma of freedom vs. security even more. In order to avoid social work becoming totalitarian control and not tool of social change, in an age of flexibility, this can be resolved with prevalence of rights-based approaches. Long-term care as a new universal provision and a new pillar of social security, based on the needs rather than merits, on the universal citizenship rather than employment, points in this direction (Flaker, 2011). So, does the right to live in the community – not only that the prolongation of institutional care is a hidden euthanasia (and so is the lack of community care), but also it bring out the issues of what community is about and how inclusion of the excluded is changing the tissue of solidarity (Mali, 2013, Flaker, 2015). It is not enough to organise community based care merely changing the location, it must become also the community development (not only care).

The way forward is to one hand connect conceptually and actually link transnationally to the new wave of post-NGO social movements (in South East Europe and beyond) and their connections to ‘radical’ social work (Stubbs, 2016). On the other hand to promote the ‘institutional’ rights based and community oriented solutions (e.g. long-term care, deinstitutionalisation, children’s rights, and similar) (Mali, 2016; Flaker & Ramon, 2016, Tjelflaat, 2016). This double pincerlike action of seemingly separate realities of doing must yield in production of new solidarity, the common welfare and reclaiming community and formulate the tasks of a modern welfare state in the age of globalisation.

Organisation

 

The organisation (of services) produced in crisis is not adequate response for what people need. The managerialist paradigm has put to sleep many good practices and prolonged some of the even stigmatising (and costly solutions on behalf of securing profit of providers) and installed social work in a role of watchdog (Case & Yates, 2016). Common denominator of such organisation is the lack of participation of users.

Organisation of the emerging, future services must be based on common ethico-political projects and on the community ethics instead regulatory discipline (Stubbs, 2016). It must make it common that people are ethical beings and not object to be ruled by Pleiades of obscure and often senseless rules. Practitioners, academics, users are to be working together to champion an ethical approach in resolving knotted issue of people and risk (Mali, 2014). Organisational ethics of actively seeking participation, new relationships and establishing common grounds (e.g. new forms of intergenerational solidarity) must be boosted (Mali, 2016).

Many of new or not used enough forms of organisation were proposed to further people’s cooperation and conviviality: assemblies and cooperatives – also social work; intergenerational cooperation, cooperatives of long-term care; users’ research, ICT for old age, self-sustaining, grass rooted, entrepreneurial eco-communities, independent life in the community; organisations to work for the best interests of the child, to secure children’s participation, children’s (and other minorities) ombudsman; direct & community funding, peer support workers (Ramon et al., 2015), seamless, capillary services, community justice, women’s justice (Case & Yates, 2016), etc.

These organisation should have a deep seated base in users’ movements, autonomy and in a politics of intersectionality, with trans-sectional and international transfer that would go beyond mere innovation and create development of safe (local) sustainable communities and communitarian identity and possibilities to escape from the appointed guardians of a compulsory organisation, prevailing today.

References

Case, S. & Yates, J. (2016) ‘Examining social work with children in conflict with the law: Trajectories and possibilities’, Dialogue in Praxis (Ethics of Inclusion – special issue), vol. 5, no. 1­­. (forthcoming).

Flaker, V., (2011) Long-term care – a challenge to the crisis and a new paradigm of care. Dialogue in Praxis: A Social Work International Journal, vol. 0 (13), no. 0 (21), pp 57-66. http://www.dialogueinpraxis.net/index.php?id=5&a=article&aid=8

Flaker, V. (2012) ‘Welfare matrix: who generates and owns the resources in social care', Dialogue in praxis, vol. 1(14), no. 1/2 (22-23), pp. 89–109. Available at: http://dialogueinpraxis.fsd.uni-lj.si/index.php?id=5&a=article&aid=16

Jordan B. (2012) Individualisation, liberal freedom, and social work in Europe, Dialogue in Praxis: A Social Work International Journal, Volume 1 (14) Issue 1-2 (22-23), 2012, pp. 7-25, [On line] Available at: http://dialogueinpraxis.fsd.uni-lj.si/index.php?id=5&a=article&aid=10

Mali, J. (2013) 'Social work with older people: The neglected field of social work', Dialogue in Praxis, vol. 2, no. 1–2, pp. 23–40. [Online] Available at: http://dialogueinpraxis.fsd.uni-lj.si/index.php?id=5&a=article&aid=26

Mali, (2014) 'Cooperative for social work: minutes of an assembly on Lopud 13th June 2013', Dialogue in Praxis, vol. 3 (16), no. 1–2, [Online] Available at: http://dialogueinpraxis.fsd.uni-lj.si/index.php?id=5&lang=en&ed=5

Napan, K. & Oak, E. (2016) ‘Inquiring into the Spirit of Social Work’, Dialogue in Praxis (Ethics of Inclusion – special issue), vol. 5, no. 1­­. (forthcoming).  

Stubbs, P. (2016) ‘Resistance in Austerity Times: Social policy, social work and social movements in crisis conditions’, Dialogue in Praxis (Ethics of Inclusion – special issue), vol. 5, no. 1­­. (forthcoming).

Tjelflaat, T. (2016) ‘How to Safeguard Marginalised Children’s Rights and Welfare: A Challenge for Social Work’, Dialogue in Praxis (Ethics of Inclusion – special issue), vol. 5, no. 1­­. (forthcoming).

Common knowledge and culture of integrity

The neo-liberal economic thought, which heralded the crisis, persist in its hegemony (Stubbs, 2016). Economic gain and technological advancement rule over human relationships (Napan & Oak, 2016). The simplistic paradigm of cause and effect (gain and loss, normal and deviant) – binary thinking (by its simplicity) nourish cultural hegemony of neo-liberalism. Post-modern dissolution of grand narratives of social justice, human progress has paired well with the hegemonies of the numbers.

Hence, in social work and other socially engaged disciplines we are dealing in the crisis of today with enormously unsuitable knowledge – produced in a different epoch of welfare state (Flaker, 2016). Social work (and social action) is still dominated by sociological and psychological theories of twentieth century. In in encounters with the people those support the dominance of professional discourses and continuation of the notion that ‘professionals know best’. Further on, social work has been disassociated from development work (which has been left to self-styled developers, managers, politicians and NGOs and firms) and remained a concept of ‘a personal profession’ (Grebenc & Žganec, 2016). 

Cultural changes have through individualism, westernisation and globalisation corroded connections between people. It has produced arrogance to numerous indigenous and inclusive paradigms and not only these changes are physically depleting the planet, also the world is becoming soulless (Napan & Oak, 2016). Feeble are becoming threat – by myths of demographic changes, scapegoating the refuges, producing the folk devils out of people with mental distress, drug users etc. Culture of fear has become walls of the institutionalised regimes in community or in the institutions without walls (Case & Yates, 2016; Mali, 2016; Flaker & Ramon, 2016).

New ethico-political projects can be an antidote to such translations and to what is basically post-colonial mentality (Stubbs, 2016). They must be based on new knowledge production arising from the pragmatic but ethically bound solutions – dignity of humanity that may serve people. They need not rely just on the imperative of non-exclusion, also on ethics and aesthetics of old age, disability, deviance. Old age as one of the central issues of the epoch does on one hand assert the value of life, but also the value of death and life’s finality (Mali, 2016). 

Programme for the future of social work knowledge must therefore involve synergies of theory, research and movements – Dialogues in praxis to transform the Knowledge. It has to employ inquiry approach with hope, participation and must acknowledge the importance of people’s indigenous, and sometimes hidden knowledge (Napan & Oak, 2016). Social work has access to the knowledge seldom expressed publicly and is responsible for the minor cultural heritage preservations and representation – e.g. old age. In this was it can contribute to creation of new humanity, one that goes beyond race, nationality, class and gender but also affirms uniqueness of cultures, beliefs, orientations, contexts.

In this attempt, social work must address the dialectics of individual and collective responsibility, deconstruct actively the problematics of individual and devise ways of creating a collective responsibility, respect for diversity of life that would make a sublime community possible. Social work has a legitimate and indispensable duty to shape, within this context, its own taxonomy and syntax of action and become a real science of change and human emancipation (Flaker, 2016). 

References

Case, S. & Yates, J. (2016) ‘Examining social work with children in conflict with the law: Trajectories and possibilities’, Dialogue in Praxis (Ethics of Inclusion – special issue), vol. 5, no. 1­­. (forthcoming).

Flaker, V. (2016) ' Social work is the art of remaining human in the inhuman conditions’, Dialogue in Praxis (Ethics of Inclusion – special issue), vol. 5, no. 1­­. (forthcoming).

Napan, K. & Oak, E. (2016) ‘Inquiring into the Spirit of Social Work’, Dialogue in Praxis (Ethics of Inclusion – special issue), vol. 5, no. 1­­. (forthcoming).

Stubbs, P. (2016) ‘Resistance in Austerity Times: Social policy, social work and social movements in crisis conditions’, Dialogue in Praxis (Ethics of Inclusion – special issue), vol. 5, no. 1­­. (forthcoming).