This special online issue is an important collection of articles that use different perspectives to understand the development of social work in Australia. Three papers draw on a collection of Norma Parker Addresses as historic sources to analyse the history of the Australian Association of Social Workers (AASW), and the profession (Mendes, Citation2015; Swain, Citation2015; Taylor, Vreugdenhil, & Schneiders, Citation2015). A further five articles tackle different aspects of social work’s history and represent some of the best papers in the growing Australian Social Work (ASW) archive on this topic (Crawford & Leitmann, Citation2001; Gibbons, Citation2001; Markiewicz, Citation1996; Martin & Healy, Citation1993; Parker, Citation1979). The final article is the 2014 Norma Parker Address by AASW president, Karen Healy (Healy, Citation2015). The publication of this collection coincides with the 70th anniversary of the Association and the 69th anniversary of ASW. It contributes a scholarly perspective to other standpoints the Association will consider in reflecting on its past and planning for the future, and provides an accessible collection of knowledge about the profession’s history.
This issue of ASW is a testament to some of the strong and passionate women who have led the social work profession and the AASW since its inception in 1947. A small bequest from Mary McLelland, editor of ASW from 1966 to 1975, generated the idea of collecting and analysing the Norma Parker Addresses. Instigated in 1969, a Norma Parker Address has been given by the president of the AASW at the opening of each national conference, in honour of the inaugural president. The addresses present, through the eyes of successive presidents, images of the “state of development of the profession and an analysis of issues for the future of the Association and its members” (Benjamin, Citation1975, p. 5). Embedded in the context of their time, the addresses chart the social and political landmarks of five decades, and the faltering progress of Australian policies to redress inequality, discrimination, and disadvantage.
The aims behind this special issue were to generate scholarly publications recounting perspectives on the history of the profession in Australia, and ensure that future scholars could access historic documents in danger of being lost forever amid the ad hoc archiving practices of the Association at that time. Begun in 2007, the task of gathering the addresses together into an online archive, and commissioning, reviewing, and editing the papers took much longer than anticipated.
As shows, there have been 23 Norma Parker Addresses from 1969 to 2015.They were scattered between ancient paper copies of conference proceedings in university libraries, pamphlets kept by hoarders, and the pages of ASW. Twenty-two of these important documents are now safely stored with the AASW National Office and 21 of the 23 addresses are available online at http://www.aasw.asn.au/practitionerresources/social-work-profession. The missing address is that from 1973, given at the Perth conference by President Beryl Thomas, which cannot be found. Retyped and reformatted, many are now much easier to read than the originals, which were often photocopies of poorly typed documents.
Table 1. Norma Parker addresses 1969–2015 available on line.
Several of the articles in this collection include, from different vantage points, brief descriptions of the contribution of Norma Parker, who as a practitioner, educator, academic, activist, and first president of the AASW, was a pioneer of Australian social work. The paper by Parker herself, first published in 1979 (Parker, Citation1979), is her own retrospective account of social work in Australia. Gleeson’s (Citation2008) more scholarly article is an interesting counterpoint to this paper.
Missing from these papers are recollections of Mary McLelland, one of the early and longest-serving editors of the journal (see Bigby, Citation2007). Horsburgh’s (Citation2007) personal reflection is that McLelland encouraged him to publish critical reviews of key policies, and that she retired from teaching social work at the University of Sydney in 1975, at the same time as she handed over editorship of the journal. A reading of her editorials suggests her aims for the journal were to shift the perception of the “social worker as only a simple doer in a personal-problem situation” (McLelland, Citation1967, p. 1) and generate debate about social work’s wider roles in commenting on social conditions and social policy, and taking action to bring about broader social change. As the papers in this collection illustrate, she was at the forefront of debates about the balance between taking a stance on public issues or solving private troubles that became a recurring theme in the Norma Parker Addresses.
Invitations to authors to analyse the Norma Parker Addresses from their own perspective produced three very engaging articles, each with a different theoretical lens. Swain (Citation2015), an historian and social worker, interpreted the way social work has defined itself as a unique profession, often preoccupied with status and respectability. Managerialism along with rapidly changing national and international environments, in her view, have compounded threats to professional status and shaken the foundations on which the AASW was built.
Taylor et al. (Citation2015) asked the question about how social justice had been represented in the 19 addresses. They identified it as a concept, used as a guiding principle invoking moral imperatives and connected to structural notions of power and human rights, as well as a first principle that informs practice. Tracing how discussion of the way social justice should be operationalised has changed over the four decades the addresses span, the authors draw out tensions that arise in pursuing both social justice and professionalism.
Mendes (Citation2015) brought his lens of policy activism, pinpointing the common theme in the addresses that social work should take a more structural approach to policy analysis and activist stance to social change. His article identified a growing trend of activism by the Association, and greater engagement with Indigenous rights, poverty, and inequality.
Healy’s (Citation2015) article is the 2013 Norma Parker Address. Taking as her context scandals and enquiries into the past damaging practices of human services both secular and religious, hers is a powerful paper that challenges social work not only to profess but to demonstrate its trustworthiness. She mounts the argument that to be true to the profession’s purpose, every social worker must be prepared to call out abuse of power whenever they see it, and be committed to practice excellence. It is not surprising that under her presidency past exhortations found in earlier Norma Parker Addresses that the Association engage in policy and advocacy have been heeded.
The final five articles in this special issue are reprinted from earlier editions, representing past perspectives on important issues. Martin and Healy (Citation1993) reviewed data on the gendered nature of social work, picking up on the feminist issues that Swain (Citation2015) identified as missing from the Norma Parker Addresses. Parker (Citation1979), Markiewicz (Citation1996), and Crawford and Leitmann (Citation2001) gave differing interpretations of the way social work unfolded as a profession in Australia in its early years. Gibbons (Citation2001) tracked the profession’s growing attention to research and interest in evaluating practice effectiveness. With hindsight, her optimism about research capacity was warranted, as a glance through the pages of the ASW illustrate, and clearly demonstrated by the 2015 special issue on social work research.
Since its genesis, this special issue has been a collaborative effort by ASW’s editorial team of Mark Hughes, Clare Tilbury, and myself. Particular thanks are owed to Cathy Dowden who tracked down these addresses, the authors who accepted invitations to write, Liz Morrison who laboured over the cross-referencing of obscure sources, and the late Bruce Lord, the sorely missed chair of the editorial board, who refused to give up on it.
ORCiD
Christine Bigby http://orcid.org/0000-0001-7001-8976
References
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- Bigby, C. (2007). Reflecting on 60 years of Australian Social Work. Australian Social Work, 60(4), 387–390. doi:10.1080/03124070701671115
- Crawford, F., & Leitmann, S. (2001). The midwifery of power? Reflections on the development of professional social work in Western Australia. Australian Social Work, 54(3), 43–54. doi:10.1080/03124070108414331
- Gibbons, J. (2001). Effective practice: Social work’s long history of concern about outcomes. Australian Social Work, 54(3), 3–13. doi: 10.1080/03124070108414328
- Gleeson, D. (2008). Some new perspectives on early Australian social work. Australian Social Work, 61(3), 207–225. doi:10.1080/03124070802233195
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- McLelland, M. (1967). Editorial. Australian Journal of Social Work, 20(4), 1. doi: 10.1080/03124076708549657
- Mendes, P. (2015). The social policy context of the Norma Parker Addresses. Australian Social Work. doi:10.1080/0312407X.2014.973553
- Parker, N. (1979). Early social work in retrospect. Australian Social Work, 32(4), 13–20. doi:10.1080/03124077908549615
- Swain, S. (2015). Reflections on the state of the profession: A review of the Norma Parker Addresses 1969–2008. Australian Social Work. doi:10.1080/0312407X.2014.973552
- Taylor, S., Vreugdenhil, A., & Schneiders, M. (2015). Social justice as concept and practice in Australian social work: An analysis of Norma Parker Addresses, 1969–2008. Australian Social Work. doi:10.1080/0312407X.2014.973554