In this chapter, I explore potential alternative ethical and philosophical approaches that can be used to develop an alternative model of welfare, citizenship and social provision. The current economic crisis provides, counter-intuitively, an opportunity for social work and social workers to challenge the orthodoxy of a focus on risk management. This chapter is therefore concerned with exploring a route out of this mire. I argue that there needs to be a fundamental shift in the approach to the practice of social work, that this will lead to a reconnection with social work practice based on relational approaches.

In this area, the work of the late French philosopher Emmanuel Levinas can be used as a starting point to examine the notions of the duties we, as humans, owe each other. I have argued that the underclass discourse and the stigmatising representation of the poor and poor neighbourhoods have to be seen as a form of ‘Othering’. In addition, social work has been involved in these processes. Levinas's work is a rejoinder to these approaches and a call for humanistic values based on mutual recognition. Sayer (2005a, 2005b, 2015) makes a very persuasive argument that class, poverty and inequality have to be approached as fundamentally moral issues. As a profession, social work needs to discover new forms of community and individual engagement. This is not simply an argument for the return of a paternalistic form of casework, even if it is in a modernised form. An alternative ethical framework that combines insights from the philosophers Martha Fineman, Amartya Sen, Martha Nussbaum and Emmanuel Levinas can act as the basis for an approach that places human dignity at the heart of social work practice. This has to be seen as part of a wider process that recasts the relationship between the individual and the state. In particular, it requires that social work is less complicit in the processing of ‘Othering’.

How can social work make this shift? It might seem perverse, but it can look to the cracks that have occurred in the US penal state and a Supreme Court decision for inspiration.