Responding to a Crisis: Social Work Profession, Policy, and Practice

This editorial was intended to focus on the trans-Tasman relationships in social work but the terrible bush fires of January in Australia quickly became a more compelling matter to address. As the days unrolled, we became in turns shocked, sad, angry, and hopeful. Rain might come. The wind might turn. For those of us watching from Aotearoa, our thoughts were with friends and loved ones. For a few days our own skies turned yellow, orange, grey, and there was a pervasive smell of ash. For all the 2000 kilometres of Tasman Sea between us, we are close. The winds drifted across the waves with their cargo of ash and New Zealanders gazed up and sniffed the air, sharing photos of the eerie yellow skies. We checked in with family and friends.

For those of us, on both sides of the Tasman, who were social workers our thoughts turned to what needed to be done. Several statements were made in the first few days of 2020, followed by some blog posts. The focus of the Australian Association of Social Workers (AASW) statement on 2 January (AASW, 2020) was informational, carrying links and summaries about services and income maintenance matters. But, as always for social work, there is the visible dual focus on wider issues of structure as well as the compelling call of individual, family, and community distress and its amelioration:

In the face of this national emergency, we need to look more broadly around the larger factors that are contributing to its existence. Climate change is real and the increase in extreme weather events will continue to have devastating consequences. We need real political leadership on the issue and immediate climate action to assure the safety of individuals, groups, and communities. The AASW has and will continue to advocate for urgent policy action.

The International Federation of Social Workers (IFSW) made a statement on 5 January 2020:

On behalf of the global Federation, President Silvana Martinez and Secretary-General Rory Truell have sent a message of solidarity to the AASW noting that social workers will have a key role in organizing emergency social services and supporting communities to develop systems of informal care during this crisis and its aftermath. … IFSW and its partners through the Global Agenda for Social Work and Social Development has taken a strong position on climate justice which has resulted in social workers throughout the world integrating environmental rights equally with human rights in their professional practice. This includes social work facilitating community action promoting awareness and responsibility as well as ground-up advocacy for the elimination of fossil fuels.

In Aotearoa an email from a colleague with family in Australia spurred the Reimagining Social Work Collective (RSW, 2020) to publish our first of two blog posts on the fires, Australia is burning for change, on 2 January:

Other more complex social patterns are also revealed by the bushfire crisis. The first is the disconnection of politicians from the people and the subordination of their needs to the interests of economic elites. Prime Minister Scott Morrison ignored the warnings.

The second disconnect is “that of the people from the land. An issue that has troubled Australia's First People for generations. Bushfires are not a new phenomenon and fires have a deep spiritual significance featuring in Indigenous art and culture” (RSW, 2020).

In a second blog post for RSW, Michele Jarldorn wrote of the rhetoric of Australian resilience being promoted by the political leadership:

I can tell you that the people around me are not feeling proud or resilient but are collectively overwhelmed with a sense of powerlessness and despair. … A humanitarian disaster is happening right now, people are without food and drinking water. Animals are dying, millions of hectares have burned already and there are more than two months of the fire season yet to come. Thoughts and prayers just don't cut it. … Politicians have worked hard to convince Australia that people arriving by boat and terrorism are serious threats to our wellbeing, while the climate emergency has been downplayed and minimised. As parents we were told that our children should stay in school rather than demand climate action.

I have focused on these four early social work responses to the New Year's fires because they capture elements that are the essence of social work: firstly, our immediate response to observed need for safety, shelter, food, support, and protection for individuals and families. Secondly, at community level, social work contributes to advocacy and action in order to challenge policy. Finally, social work is also a profession that applies critical analysis to major events, their causes, and consequences. As Jarldorn (2020) pointed out, government policies contribute to disastrous outcomes when they choose to minimise a human rights response to such phenomena as climate change and the movement of peoples fleeing disasters, wars, and oppressive regimes.

In countries such as Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand colonisation has led to entrenched inequalities and we know that disasters often exacerbate deep-seated health and wellbeing disparities. Beck (1992) introduced us to the idea of the risk society, extended for social work by Webb (2006) by emphasising that risk has become a pervasive factor in the distribution of social services, rather than need. The postwar social contract for a more equal society has been almost obliterated by service targeting and privatisation. The demands of the former highlight how the “risk society” embodies a contradictory drive for smaller government, while accompanied by unprecedented intrusion into the private lives of the poor. Austerity politics demands more and more data about citizens’ lives and has deepened inequalities (Eubanks, 2017). Seeking public assistance creates stress in itself, as noted in several articles in this Issue, and in some part this is due to demands of more and more personal information, to satisfy the bureaucratic demands of targeted welfare. In reality what this means is that individuals, families, and communities who were already in fragile social circumstances before disasters (e.g., poor health, insecure or inadequate housing) and those who face oppressive discrimination and stigma, are at risk of having their poor circumstances intensified and being further marginalised: “the emergence of the risk society and its associated distribution of bads will render income and wealth differentials associated with class relations an even more central factor in individuals’ life-chances” (Curran, 2013, p. 45).

The themes identified in the social work responses to the immediate crisis of the bushfires over the early days of January 2020 demonstrate that, even in crisis mode, social workers are mindful of policy and practice responses. We understand the need to lobby for policy change to better meet population needs while recognising the emotional and psychological sequelae of disasters at micro level. We begin the 2020s with a very painful reminder of the fragility of our ecosystem and the impact of political inaction. For Australia, Aotearoa, and our Pacific neighbours the environmental crisis demands a unified response. This problem is not going to go away. The 2020s must be the decade of social work action on climate change and sustainability. With this focus in mind, we cannot avoid addressing the painful legacies of colonisation and extractive capitalism. Through the broad lens of sustainability, we need to consider how our professional approaches and the services they are embedded within reflect the challenges of environmental change and the social crisis that we face.

The articles in this Issue of Australian Social Work fall under a theme: “A new decade: Professional, policy, and practice challenges for social work in 2020.” Most of the articles do not directly address environmental concerns; however, there are some common issues. While focusing on different topics and indeed populations they can be considered under the profession, policy, and practice framework. Indeed, while the articles assess diverse needs they have in common a drive for collaborative and respectful engagements of individuals, communities, and groups in civil society in order to effectively respond to problems. Five articles examine topics related to the professional workforce and the provision of services. Papadopoulos and Maylea (2020) discussed the consequences of social workers gaining funding via the Better Access scheme. This scheme, they argued, puts prescriptive power in the hands of GPs and unduly limits the kinds of mental health interventions to individual therapies, thus marginalising family and community interventions. They make a strong argument for a robust evaluation of the impact of Better Access and the social justice implications for social work in its participation. This article is an excellent reminder of the complex dynamics that stem from privatisation. In the 2020s we can expect to see more changes in the delivery of health and social services as the growth of privatisation and the contracting environment show little signs of abating.

Services also change in relation to new approaches with an impact on roles and responsibilities in service provision. Such change is found internationally through the creation of roles such as cultural support (Goh, 2019), and championing the contributions of people who have used service and peer support workers (Rebeiro Gruhl, LaCarte, & Calixte, 2016). Drawing on an action research study of peer advisers in a homeless service, Tseris (2020) explored the opportunities and challenges for social work stemming from the growth of the peer advisor workforce. Tseris concluded that the skills and knowledge of peer advisors form a significant and largely untapped resource in the homelessness sphere. However, there are challenges to be faced in terms of power, recognition, and rewards. Lynch, Forde, and Lathouras (2020) explored the role of community development against a backdrop of the Third Global Agenda for Social Work (IASSW, ICSW & IFSW, 2018). They highlighted the “deep connections between people and place” and the potentially new terrain for social work of contribution to local governance where environmental sustainability and livelihoods are inescapably linked. Illustrating their argument with case studies from Queensland and Ireland, these authors call for social work to engage with civil society and drive social change through collaborative action. Crisp and Dinham (2020) presented the findings of an analysis of the inclusion of content about religion and belief in social work codes of ethics of 16 countries. Ethical codes can promote greater awareness of the need for social workers to develop religious literacy, essential for working with diverse and changing populations. Such literacy becomes more critical when we face increased movement of peoples in response to climate change.

Social work registration is discussed by Hallahan and Wendt (2020). The potential impact of formal statutory registration continues to be contested within social work. In Aotearoa New Zealand it was shepherded into reality by a political process (Hunt, Staniforth, & Beddoe, 2020, forthcoming) but continues to be debated within the profession. In this article, Hallahan and Wendt focused on the fitness to practice considerations that are central to registration: convictions and competence. They rightly argued for careful consideration of the ramifications of regulation and an examination of ongoing debates in jurisdictions that have regulation (Worsley, Beddoe, McLaughlin, & Teater, 2019). Key considerations in the need to strengthen the domestic and family violence workforce are explored by Wendt, Natalier, Seymour, King, and Macaitis (2020). The growing demands of the workforce have not been accompanied by an examination of the nature of the workforce and how best to address its development, keeping the dynamics of gender and indigeneity at the forefront.

In matters of policy and practice, another article considers family violence, again critically examining current policies. Kuskoff and Parsell (2020) also focused on gender and domestic violence in their article, which calls for structural change to assess inequality. They critically assessed the current policy that includes cultural change to disrupt norms that facilitate men's violence against women, for example, campaigns that reinforce ideas of masculinity such as “real men don't hit women”. This article provides a good overview of current Australian policy on domestic violence and its limitations. The authors argued for greater attention on the structural inequalities that reinforce women's oppression, including patriarchal attitudes to women and the gender pay gap, unpaid labour, and poor housing.

The first of two articles that address support for people living with a disability has a specific focus on the needs of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians. Fitts and Soldatic (2020) drew on qualitative research findings to assert the need for social workers to be easily accessible via Centrelink (Australian government social security and income support service, https://www.humanservices.gov.au/individuals/centrelink) to ensure that severe disadvantage is addressed. Their research provides further evidence of how policy changes have intensified poverty and extreme hardship for those caught up in Newstart Allowance (income support payment for unemployed people looking for work, https://www.humanservices.gov.au/individuals/services/centrelink/newstart-allowance) due to illness and disability. The barriers of remoteness and transportation impact unequally on those most vulnerable leading to stalled or abandoned claims for the Disability Support Pension, further intensifying poverty and stress. The authors argued that a much more visible and engaged social work presence at Centrelink might help alleviate delays and remove barriers for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples with disabilities. Houston, Foster, Borg, Nolan, and Seymour-Jones (2020) used a quantitative analysis of administrative data to discuss the pathways of people leaving hospital with support needs further to spinal cord injury or acquired brain injury. The background to this study was the implementation of the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS). The authors found critical points across the NDIS pathway where interface problems between hospital and community services led to delays. The authors provide a snapshot of implementation challenges and suggest areas for further research and service development.

Food insecurity in a regional town in rural Australia is the topic of the article by Mungai, Priestley, and Pawar (2020). Drawing on a cross-sectional qualitative study, the authors found food insecurity to be a product of complex social and environmental factors including chronic poverty, ill health, and sudden changes in personal circumstances such as employment and housing. They noted the impact of environmental changes on the agricultural sector on employment. Food is a human right and yet governments in developed countries have largely abdicated their responsibility to the charity sector while severely limiting funds. This article provides another example of advocacy for social work to play a stronger role in promoting better responses to social inequalities through participation in local, state, and federal mandates for action.

Returning to the starting point of this editorial, my overview of the contents of this Issue has provided a snapshot of social work concerns at the beginning of the new decade. Commitment to human rights and a strong belief that social workers can contribute to social justice feature to some extent in all of the articles. In addition, the authors have demonstrated the depth of the contribution social work analysis of the “policy into practice” dimension can make. Many of the complex social problems discussed in this Issue (domestic violence, abuse of older adults, mental health needs, food insecurity, and income support for people with disabilities) will likely be intensified in communities fractured and changed by the New Year fires. Social workers will be there providing support and advocacy at the local level but also taking a role in advocacy for regional, state, and federal action. We all face the 2020s with trepidation as extreme climate events and fires remind us of our human interdependence for survival. We face the realities of disasters’ intensification where inequalities exist:

The positional or relational distribution of environmental bads is one in which not only are there inequalities in environmental risk, but that these inequalities are relational such that relative differences in economic resources are the causal factor that decrease the risks of the advantaged and intensify the risks of the least advantaged. (Curran, 2018, p. 299)

Maybe the 2030 editorial can look back and see how the social work profession responded?