Introduction

The premise upon which this book is based is that the social work profession explicitly seeks to address the life challenges and improve the well-being of individuals, families and communities, and to promote social change and development, social cohesion, and the empowerment and liberation of people (IFSW, 2014). Social policies can, and do, have major relevance for these core aspirations of the profession because they affect those contexts in which people exist and that have a major impact upon their lives and their well-being.

Within social work discourse, engagement in policy is no longer seen as limited to a small number of exemplary social work leaders who engage primarily in policy, to community social workers who integrate policy change with organising communities or to radical social workers. Rather, efforts to impact policy are now perceived by many scholars, practitioners and social work professional organisations to be a part of what all social workers should and can do, regardless of the welfare sector they belong to, the field in which they practice, the service user group with whom they work or the practice method that dominates their professional activities. In addition to the other professional efforts that they undertake to promote well-being, to solve problems or to enhance the human rights of their service users, social workers are urged to engage in policy-related activities, either as professionals or as citizens. In other words, the current discourse takes for granted that policy formulation is not the sole domain of formal policymakers or of other professionals who set policies that social workers implement. Rather, social workers can be party to the social policy formulation process as implementers, policy practitioners, academics, active citizens or elected politicians.

Findings from diverse types of studies and rich anecdotal knowledge from across the globe, which we have presented in this book, indicate that social workers do indeed engage in social policy formulation and change. Although, overall, the engagement of social workers is apparently limited in at least some of the policy routes (for example, policy practice, holding elected office and so on), it appears to be much more common than in the past and is generating significant attention in practice and in the professional and academic arenas.