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).
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