In this chapter, I come to a key issue for both social workers and those who work alongside them: identity. I have already suggested that I see identity or identities as something that social workers (and those in related occupations, such as social pedagogues) construct with others, especially as they become socialised into their profession. In earlier chapters, we saw that both Jenkins (2014) and Chandler (2017) characterise identity as something that can be both collective and individual. As the following social work interviewee said to me, there are issues with defining the collective form of social work identity, which will have implications for individual practitioners:

As we saw in Chapter 5, this standardisation can involve increasing controls over social work education as well as practice, though some have suggested that, where possible, social workers need to learn how to balance accountability with creativity. There have been recent attempts to put in place specific forms of post-qualification accreditation (for example, for social workers working in child protection in England), though the outcome of that particular attempt is still uncertain at the time of writing.

Some informants also said to me that they thought the social work role was becoming narrower, or distributed to other professions or occupations:

Introduction

Why do people become social workers? What motivates them to take up this occupation? Furthermore, who should be accepted by others as a social worker? As we have already seen in Chapter 3, the legislative and policy contexts that provide a background to social work in the UK (England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland), as well as in a few selected European countries, are very complex. We have already seen that in Europe, other occupations such as social pedagogy are closely linked to social work; in some ways, as this book progresses, I feel that I am considering a complex set of welfare/caring occupations and not just one profession (see also Lyons, 20181; Pawlas-Czyz et al, 20172). These occupations all seem to be tied into the ethical and practical underpinnings related to compassion and social justice that we have already identified.

Chapter 3 also raised the whole issue of the interdependence of social work with the state and within changing policy contexts. The UK is relatively unusual in having a specific protected title of ‘social worker’, while those in similar occupations elsewhere, including social pedagogues, may carry out similar tasks. Furthermore, as we have already seen, social work tasks are extended in some parts of Europe, for example, to include responsibility for financial benefits. However, underpinning all of this variety is the need to somehow educate people into these welfare roles, and to allow them to (collaboratively) construct their professional identities (see Chapters 5 and 6; see also Bell et al, 2017).

Clark (2006: 87–8) is very clear that ‘It is right … to attend to the [moral] character, as well as the technical skill, of individuals who wish to work as professionals in the human services.’ This immediately raises issues of ethics and responsibility, which, as we noted in Chapter 1, means that for most social workers, social work cannot be just a job; it is likely to be something that underpins their sense of identity. Ethical underpinnings to social work education, involving reflection about personal motivation and positive use of life experiences (including ‘turning bad experiences into good’ [see Dillon, 2011]), have therefore been clearly identified as relevant by social workers themselves (see, for example, Hafford-Letchfield and Dillon, 2015).

Through this journey, I have tried to examine social work in both its broad manifestations as a practice-based profession and as an academic discipline. In doing so, I have: focused on what social work informants discussed and explored with me; included what social workers, including students, revealed as participants during some of my earlier research projects, including my work with colleagues; and presented some of my own reactions to all of these responses and dialogues.

I have also drawn upon published research and policy literature to provide readers with some wider understanding of how social work and social workers, as well as those working in related occupations (such as social pedagogy), are said to operate in England and other UK countries, as well as in selected countries in Europe. Inevitably, by focusing to a large extent on how social workers have explained their own views of themselves, my resulting view of social work is a selective and partial one. However, as a counterpart to this, I have tried to use my anthropological background to discuss and explore my own involvement with social work since the early 1990s, while continuing to reflect on and ask what (I hope) are relevant questions when exploring social work.

I expect that all this material still raises issues about what social work is, and who it is for: is social work, for example, essentially a political project that challenges orthodox thoughts on behalf of those who are perceived to be economically disadvantaged (in all kinds of societies)? Is it aiming to bring about (absolute) equality, or fairness, for all citizens? Do social workers try to ‘help those who help themselves’? Social workers have sometimes seemed to favour a more universalistic approach to their work (in line with the International Federation of Social Workers [IFSW] definition), even while policy intentions (as well as state and other funding) in some countries seem to expect social work to become ever narrower and more targeted on certain sections of society. Even if, as an anthropologist, I try to reject the idea of an overarching and globalised form of social work culture, there are clearly some key threads running through this narrative.

Social workers frequently articulate the significance of their values to their professional identity/ies, collective and individual, as we saw in previous chapters. There have been many recent examinations of values and how these are (said to) underpin social workers’ and other health-and social-care professionals’ practice (see, for example, Hugman, 2005; Banks, 2012; Bell and Hafford-Letchfield, 2015). As we have already seen in earlier chapters, some commentators (for example, Clark, 2006) suggest that social work should be defined as a ‘moral’ activity, at least partly dependent on social workers’ own character(s) (see also Bisman, 2004; Holmstrom, 2014). Frequently mentioned values include commitments to taking action (often with other professionals) on behalf of disadvantaged or vulnerable people; for social workers specifically, professional commitments towards social justice (including equality and fairness) and human rights are significant (see, for example, O’Brien, 2011; Higgs, 2015). Some of my interviewees suggested, for example, that being non-judgemental was also important; an example given to me recently was of a social worker being inappropriately judgemental of a service user who was living in poverty and asking for a crisis loan by responding with the suggestion that she should first ‘turn off her television’ (presumably to save money).

I have identified a number of publications, for example, setting out the challenges of working effectively with communities in a globalised context (see, for example, Gray et al, 2008; Healey, 2008; Healey and Link, 2011). However, it seems to me that it is often difficult to pin down how social work values in support of social justice are translated into actual professional practice (see O’Brien, 2011; see also Chapter 8). Similarly, as we have already identified in Chapter 5, for example, there is a wider debate among social workers about how to link professional theory with practice, which is equally difficult to pin down.

Several of my recently interviewed informants were keen to discuss social work values, and all of these informants linked these to issues of social justice.

In this chapter, I want to explore some ideas relating to symbols and what we might term ‘cultural representation’ in social work; in doing this, I will be reflecting on various narratives and experiences gleaned from my informants and/or that I have experienced myself, including material already discussed in previous chapters. Such reflection brings us back to the purpose I expressed in Chapter 2, which was to construct ‘a dialogue between those under the scrutiny of anthropologists on the one hand, and anthropologists themselves on the other’ (Barnard, 2000: 177).

There is a long tradition in anthropology of the study of symbolising (semiology) (for a review, see, for example, Turner, 1975). These ideas have developed across anthropology, with anthropologists such as Victor Turner (1969) and Mary Douglas (1986; 1999) becoming well known for their explorations into the analysis of symbols, including those used in ritual and in classification systems; these focused mainly on cognitive understandings from all kinds of societies. Douglas (1986), in particular, applied ideas such as her developing grid and group classification(s) to various settings, including organisations in Westernised societies. Interestingly, she has also spoken of the ways in which some anthropologists have used exemplars ‘in order to avoid a distinction between real and symbolic’ (Douglas, 1999: 292, emphasis added). The anthropologist Byron Good, whose work with doctors I have already discussed, says that he eschews reality prior to interpretation, and suggests that, for example, medical knowledge in various contexts is ‘knowledge of distinctive aspects of reality mediated by symbolic forms and interpretive practices. Each depends upon a form of correspondence between language and the empirical world … [that is,] that which is found within human experience’ (Good, 1994: 176, emphasis added).

Being inevitably concerned with diversity and difference (similarly to social workers, in fact), anthropologists such as Good try to use what they identify as symbolic forms to understand and interpret what is going on in another culture. In order to do so, they are therefore dependent on the idea that there is a cultural explanation to be found, and perhaps this can also be seen as distinct from actual reality. As already discussed in Chapter 2, I am aware of the limitations of the notion of ‘culture’, especially if we were to use this as a broad category in relation to social work overall (see Kuper, 2000).

To the complex mixture of ideas and questions about social work coming from social workers and others that I identified in Chapter 1, I wanted to add some of my own experiences and reflections as anthropological and auto-ethnographic elements throughout the book; these will include material from specific research projects that I have conducted myself or with colleagues. I hope that these more personal aspects will inject some sense of trajectory (As well as indicating frustration and, on occasions, humour!) as I have gradually worked towards trying to understand social work and social workers. I hope that, in doing so, this may engage others who have tried to do the same. These initial ideas set me thinking about my own journey into the world of social work, which goes back more than 25 years. In the following, I describe what first happened to me in the early 1990s.

Encountering social work: a surprising discovery

One day in July 1991, I walked up the hill from the high street in a London neighbourhood to attend a job interview. I had seen a newspaper advertisement for a research post and, being a part-time PhD student in anthropology with two young children, I decided to apply, mainly in order to broaden my research experience and earn some money. The post concerned research into social work, organisations and what was termed ‘inter-professional working’.

At that time, I knew next to nothing about social work, although my anthropological research concerned families in England with young children. This might seem surprising but my (fairly narrow) PhD research focus was on family networks and social support between mothers, and the (mainly middle-class) families that I had been working with were largely involved in voluntary groups such as playgroups and nurseries run by organisations such as the Pre-School Playgroups Association (PPA). These organisations mainly had contacts with health staff, particularly health visitors and general practitioners (GPs) (what, with hindsight, we might term ‘universal services’). Nobody had ever mentioned social work or social workers to me during the earlier part of my research, which, I now realise, must have been either an omission (Because I was not looking?) or more likely the potentially stigmatising ‘elephant in the room’ that no one else wanted to talk about (this was also the reaction of a social work academic whom I interviewed much more recently).

In Chapter 4, we first examined some social workers’ motivations for embarking on a social work career; then, via an example from 1990s’ England, we also looked at how social work education is ‘constructed’ from the point of view of some of those controlling or implementing educational policy in the social work field. We noted the growing influences on social work in the 1990s of health policy, of interprofessional and multi-agency approaches, and of attempts to extend the influence of users of services and carers, in tandem with evolving political policies. Underpinning all of this discussion are the continuing issues of power and control (who decides what and how people learn and practise).

In this chapter, I want to return to the experiences of those becoming socialised into social work, and of the educators who participate in this socialising. In my recent interviews with social workers across Europe, I found that about half of them (like me) had had some involvement with social work education or training, in addition to engaging in social work practice, and that for experienced workers, this focus on education and/or training was especially significant during the latter part of their careers.

As well as teaching social work students in English higher education for several years, I also had some involvement with exploring the experiences of those who were students, fellow educators and social work practitioners during various research projects. Therefore, this chapter will draw upon some of this material, as well as on my more recent key informant interviews.

Here is a final-year undergraduate social work student in England connecting up the nature of their course and their experiences of learning with their overall understanding of social work:

Relationships are important to all of us, but what about social workers? From my discussions so far, we can see that ‘relationship’ and ‘relationships’, as well as ‘partnership(s)’, are very important concepts to social work and social workers. In this chapter, I want to explore further what some of the social workers I interviewed say about these concepts, and how they explain their significance to social work. I will also draw upon some of my own social work-based research to illustrate ‘relating’ and ‘partnering’ in practice.

In Chapter 1, I acknowledged that, in very basic terms, some kind of relationship between those who provide social work and those who receive it is surely a (complex) cornerstone of all social work discourses and practices. This also implies the involvement of emotions, however those are defined or assessed (see, for example, Howe, 2008). The relationships that social workers have with their service users or ‘clients’, their colleagues, other professionals, and any other people with whom they come into contact are surely an important part of the overall picture.

We would expect a focus on relationship(s) to apply in these professional contexts, but for those who have been motivated to train and to work in social work and related occupations, this concept may also resonate personally in ways that could be different from those who are not social workers. For example, we could ask whether social workers view emotions in particular ways? Beatty (2013) discusses the ways in which anthropologists have studied emotions in various settings; using examples mainly from what he terms ‘traditional’ social settings, he critically reviews whether researchers have been able to cross-culturally define what exactly emotions are.

We have already seen in earlier chapters that the anthropologist Byron Good suggests that doctors construct a view of the body that ‘sees’ it differently from those who have not had medical training. Do those who have been educated and trained to construct particular (culturally based) views of relationship(s) and emotions (including social workers) therefore claim to understand them differently to other people? Does constructing a ‘professional’ view of relationship(s), informed by various levels of theory, provide someone with a deeper or more complete view?