Social work promoting participation: reflections on policy practice in Italy

ABSTRACT

One of the core dimensions of social work practice, identified since its establishment as a professional endeavour, is concerned with political action. Nonetheless, policy practice, which entails that social workers should connect their work with individuals, as in traditional casework, to wider political action, is often perceived as marginal in everyday practice. This paper connects views on social work policy practices to the context provided by the ways social policies are actually constructed in Italy. A research study on governance processes across Italy, addressing the main actors involved in social policy-making, reveals that in fact practitioners’ political action is differently represented within different frameworks, ranging from being seen as a near impossibility, to being perceived as a crucial factor in the policy-making processes. If context and cultures play such a relevant role, synergistic work at different levels and by all the different actors in the social work community is required if we want social workers to be able to express their potential fully in the political arena.

ASTRATTO

La partecipazione politica rappresenta una delle dimensioni centrali nella pratica di servizio sociale, identificata come cruciale fin dai primi passi del processo di professionalizzazione Tuttavia la cosiddetta ‘policy practice’, che implica una connessione tra il più tradizionale lavoro sul caso, e una più ampia azione sulle politiche pubbliche, viene spesso percepita come marginale nelle pratiche quotidiane. Questo saggio propone una riflessione sulla questione della policy practice nel contesto delle attuali politiche sociali in Italia. Una recente ricerca sui processi di partecipazione nella costruzione delle politiche sociali nelle diverse regioni italiane, mostra come l’azione a livello politico delle/degli assistenti sociali sia rappresentata in modi diversi, in connessione con differenti concezioni della partecipazione stessa: a seconda dell’area territoriale, si va da una percezione che un ruolo politico degli operatori sia impossibile ad una concezione che vede questa componente come centrale. Se il contesto e le culture hanno un impatto così importante sulle visioni di policy practice, sarà necessario un lavoro sinergico dei differenti attori nella comunità di servizio sociale affinché gli/le assistenti sociali possano esprimere pienamente il loro potenziale nella arena politica.

KEYWORDS:

• Policy practice
• participation
• social policy and social work

PAROLE CHIAVE:

• Ruolo politico del servizio sociale – Governance
• Partecipazione
• Politiche sociali e servizio sociale

Acknowledgments

The paper grew out of a project founded by the Italian Ministry for Research on ‘Politiche participate e cittadinanza attiva’. I am grateful to the members of the research team for their insights and colleagueship. I thank also the EJSW editor and anonymous reviewers for their feedback, which I found very stimulating.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Silvia Fargion is Professor of Social Work at the Free University of Bolzano/Bozen, Italy. Her research interests include social workers’ professional cultures, the relationship between theory and practice, social work methodology, and social welfare organizations. She has also developed substantial experience as a professional social worker. She is currently chairing the European Social Work Research Association.

Notes

1 The group was coordinated by Sassari University and, in the research team, there were another four universities (Free University of Bolzano, Milano Bicocca, University of Pisa, University of Trieste) and the cooperation of another three universities (Università of Bari, of Piemonte Orientale e University of Calabria)].