https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2818-1563
Paul Michael Garrett, an acclaimed author in the field, debates the impact of the neoliberal agenda on inequality and marginality, and on social work practice, with particular reference to children and families. Welfare Words examines how specific words and phrases signal the “economic and cultural patterning” (p. 2) that subordinates individuals to disadvantage within a social order shaped by business thinking, “competition and commodification” (p. 8). Garrett reminds readers that Noel Timms described social work as “a profession largely dependent on language” (p. 2), but its absorption of the language of “case files,” “clients,” and “risk assessment” puts it at a philosophical distance from its foundations and creates tension between the language of the profession’s codes of ethics and the language of the bureaucracy that largely employs social workers. Garrett reminds social workers that words are indeed sources of power that shape identity and interests.
The “welfare words” examined in this book are: welfare dependency, underclass, social exclusion, early intervention, resilience, care and adoption. In doing so, Garrett constructs “critical political semantics” (citing Fraser & Gordon, 1997, pp. 122, 208) to demonstrate how neoliberalism interprets social life and a social order that emphasises the punitive, the bureaucratic, and surveillance over support and entitlement. Garrett aims to show how the welfare state has shifted from a stated aim to be “benignly altruistic and inclusive” (p. 204) to a new state of welfare that minimises welfare provision for designated “problem families,” emphasising disentitlement and “othering,” using business models to assess merit, privatising many areas of public welfare provision and dismantling social protections (p. 205).
“Welfare dependency” has replaced “social security”; dependency is aligned with burden, or pathology—such as in alcohol and drug dependency or dysfunctional families. Individuals are dependent because of personal deficit, and public assistance is as much as possible tied to pathways to work, with productive employment seen as the solution. Social work is increasingly enmeshed in this culture that challenges its foundational discourses of empowerment and self-efficacy.
The “underclass” extends the view that productive employment is the goal for welfare intervention, and those who cannot participate in this are identified as “the poor,” “the dole bludger” and “social detritus” (p. 85). They are the socially excluded, whose behaviours and attitudes reduce their income prospects and life chances. Paid work is presented as the way to eliminate social exclusion and create social cohesion; but it is an approach that masks poverty and its structural origins and explanations.
Public policy ideology has shifted from reform and rehabilitation with a notion of “social security” to one of the safe containment of problem groups and families. Early intervention is seen as maximising prospects for social inclusion, but within the lens of productivity. Neuroscience has become the means through which this is understood, the idea of shaping behaviour, and influencing brain development, especially in young children in “problem” families. This preoccupation with neuroscience extends to “resilience” and the idea that any individual can bounce back from adversity and join the mainstream of society, despite whatever structural disadvantages or power structures might prevent individual movement. Garrett notes the impact this thinking has on mental health policy, funding, and entitlement to social security and inclusion.
It is perhaps in the construct of “care” that Garrett makes plain the power of the neoliberal discourse. It is the individualisation of social policy (p. 146) that allows inequality to flourish, along with the dismantling of public welfare reforms. Care as a notion of community and support has shifted to one of self-responsibility. A whole infrastructure of care has been constructed that commodifies care, in child care, residential care, aged care. It has become, Garrett describes, “a site for capital accumulation” (p. 169). “Good care practices” in social work are hard to hold to within an agenda of neoliberal self-responsibility. Notions of care are played out most powerfully in adoption, and Garrett insightfully explores a history of adoption practices, and the links to children in statutory care. It is a history that touches on how we as a society view childhood, children’s rights, and what we say is “good enough parenting.” Garrett refers to a re-emergence of the idealising of adoption as a response to problem families, to reducing the number of children in statutory care. This approach throws up questions about the “ownership” of a child and the commodification of children, and the class divide and social engineering associated with the dispersal of children from their “problem families” into a more neoliberal notion of the settled and productive family.
Garrett urges social workers to think critically about the contradictions that confront them in contemporary political and welfare systems and to hold to the profession’s principles of intervention within an increasingly divided society; and acknowledge how neoliberal practices demonise social problems and intensify vulnerability and marginality. Garrett’s book is an essential text for social workers seeking to understand the complexity of contemporary practice and the external forces that challenge its integrity. It is an essential addition to contemporary social work discourse.