Introduction

Social workers are individuals with agency (Jeffery, 2011). In their role as either professionals or private citizens, the decision by social workers to engage in policy change or its formulation will inevitably be influenced by their motivation to do so. After having discussed the environments that provide the context in which this decision is taken, the opportunities that affect it and the organisational culture that facilitates it, in this chapter, we move to the micro level, that is, to motivation. This includes a sense of efficacy and a wide range of individual perceptions, attitudes, knowledge, values, skills, traits, identities (for example, gender and ethnicity) and job-related characteristics that directly affect the engagement of social workers in policymaking.

As such, the final component of the PE conceptual framework discussed in this book is the motivation of individual social workers to engage in policy. Clearly, even when social workers have opportunities to participate in the policy process as professionals or as private citizens, some will choose not to do so, while others will take active steps to enter the fray. As citizens, the decision to become engaged in the policy process can vary from the most passive mode of participation – voting or contributing to a party or candidate – to much more active participation, such as volunteering to campaign for a specific candidate or running for election and holding political office. As professionals, even if they can join professional organisations that seek to recruit them or if their workplaces enable them to participate in the policy process, there are those social workers who will show an interest in this type of intervention and others who will not or will be reluctant to do so. The same will be the case for social work academics, even though they have a relatively wide degree of autonomy to engage in policy. We claim that the decision to affect policy on all these levels is ultimately very much dependent on the desire, willingness and readiness of an individual to do so.

Here, we explore diverse factors that define the motivation of individual social workers to engage in policy-related activities.