Operation B: Guardianship – an obstacle to productive risk taking (operations 7, risk 3)

The risk avoidance rather than risk taking is the function of professionalistic paternalism assumed frequently when working with people. It is the guardian role that social work is endowed with that makes professionals preoccupied with adverse consequences of risk taking. If there is harm it is the guardian’s responsibility, the benefits are to be enjoyed by their protégé. Such division of moral labour equals a dissociation of the interests and results in inability of identification of one with another. If one is to support strivings of fellow human beings one has to assume their perspective, identify with their interest in the situation (benefits) and only then, preferably together with the user, within this perspective develop the risk reduction interventions.

The statutory guardian role of social work is pronounced in the case where people are seen as being unable to make sound decisions about their life contingencies – as it is the case with children and with people who are considered to have diminished mental capacity. In such cases, legal capacity is not acknowledged or it is removed and a legal guardian instituted. However, this is in fact a robust infringement of the essential human faculty – the free will, capacity to decide, make choice.

Upon this realisation, the trend is to do away with this inhuman operation – at least with a complete removal of legal capacity. Alternatives are seen in at least limiting the removal, i.e. not removing the capacity in its total but in a circumscribed way, which focuses on the very specific interdictions – like preventing a person from driving if there is a serious risk of an accident, or substituting the removal of legal capacities with support in decision-making. The latter resting on the logic that if a person is not fully abled to decide in sovereign fashion (who is fully?), this “disability” should be overcome with support in this activity (also eventually by statutory intervention) – everybody needs support in the decision making process – some do not have it or need more of it.

The guardianship issue is one of the classic dilemmas in social work. In one way social work is a guardian profession, substitution of the will for those who “will not”, a constituent of the profession. In the other, social work surfaces as the advocate of the oppressed, as champion of their will. Social work is caught in a perpetual dance between these two roles. More on that in one of the previous blogs.