Last week, BASW Cymru celebrated World Social Work Week by hosting a national BASW Cymru Annual Conference examining a Tomorrow’s World for Social Work in Wales. With over 80 practitioners in attendance, the conference heard from Professor Fiona Verity on why social work should return to its roots of community development.
Whilst many social workers have been trained in this approach, recent training has focused on the process and procedures of care management and to some degree this reflects the historical roots of social work – community development known as the ‘settlement movement’ focusing on poverty and community orientated approaches and case management through what was then the Charitable Organisation Society.
Professor Verity invited us to think about community development as a green shoots’ moment - an opportunity for emerging green shoots in terms of our day-to-day practice. She asked us to consider what is community social work, how do we support and balance between ‘private pains and public troubles’ and invited social workers to be pioneers and pattern makers.
Pioneers in that we pioneer a community based social work service and all that this entails and simultaneously, asked us to be pattern makers from our everyday practices. I was struck by this term ‘pattern makers’ and what this means for social work practice. I have long been an advocate of practice knowledge, that it is our practitioners who are at the forefront of knowledge, working with and for people, observing behaviour, challenges and the structural consequences of legislation and government policy. How do we harness this knowledge to improve services and improve practice and to challenge the orthodoxy of managerialism leading to policy and procedure led practice?
Professor Verity reminded us how Clement Atlee focused on the 4 R’s:
- Radical;
- Relational;
- Reciprocal'
- and, Realistic... (in relation to practice)
and how much this still resonates today. Contrasted with markets, managers and mixed economies of care, it seems the 4 R;s are a mechanism to return to our roots of community connectedness.
And green shoots may just be our starting point.
The Social Services and Well-Being (Wales) Act 2015 has an explicit focus on preventative social care, inclusive of community development, for example, support for place‐based community programmes and community‐owned initiatives and enterprises. The Act, closely aligned to social work ethics and values enables us to reflect and connect to people, to communities and to enable people to produce their own solutions, all from within our communities.
And whilst Clement Atlee’s call for a ‘national mobilisation for the good of all’ our conference call was for social work to return to its core values of working with people and for people, within communities. Overwhelmingly, social workers who attended our conference, want our profession to be practice led and for social workers to be positioned and located within communities. Our collective call for action is for:
- Social work to be at the heart of early intervention and prevention and this should be community based
- Decentralise teams and become co located in and with communities, accessible to those seeking help and support
- Promote generic community social work as a solution to increasing demands and waiting lists
- Investment in community based preventative services ensuring support is easily accessible
- Inter-generational support which can be accessed in one place
Long term funding commitment which includes communities, the Third Sector and for greater integration between public services
BASW Cymru will be working with our members to develop our call for action to influence key stakeholders to commit to a long-term plan for community based social work.
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Professor Verity’s PowerPoint slides from the BASW Cymru Annual Conference can be found here online.
Preventative Social Care and Community Development in Wales: “New” Legislation, “Old” Tensions? Simon Read, Fiona Verity, Mark Llewellyn, Gideon Calder Social Inclusion, Volume 12
