Impact of a Global Pandemic on Scope and Diversity of Social Work Research and Practice: Complexity Theory a Lens to Review Current Thinking

The contents of the July (2021) Issue of Australian Social Work (ASW) are distinguished by a range and diversity of topics, notably: intellectual impairment (Catalano & Wilson, 2021); end-of-life care (Moon & McDermott, 2021); abuse of older Australians (Blundell et al., 2021); women with a physical disability (Corona-Aguilar et al., 2021); interventions for problematic eating in out-of-home care (Savaglio et al., 2021); a focus on family transitions in the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) where there are young children (Boaden et al., 2021); and post-disaster recovery (Harms et al., 2021). An examination of social work graduate outcomes (Papadopoulos & Egan, 2021), and social work e-placements under COVID-19 (Zuchowski et al., 2021) complete this “sweep” through the range of interests and specialisations undoubtedly characteristic of contemporary social work as it is practiced across fields, with diverse populations, and from a variety of standpoints: policy, practice, education, and advocacy.

Such a range of areas of interest and of practice (and many more, of course) does, as we know, place considerable demands on social work educators to ensure that curricula and practicum experience make social work students “shovel ready” for the demands of future employment. Central to this is the need for social workers to practice in whatever field, and in whatever capacity in ways that are grounded in available evidence and knowledge. This is what the articles published in this, and in all issues of ASW and other social work peer-reviewed journals, the research outcomes described and the policy critiques advanced, aim to deliver. Importantly, they provide the basis for social workers to practice from an evidence-informed or evidence-based approach. Research is central to the social work project, to understanding the contextualised nature of human lives, and enabling practitioners to work with service users to better the biopsychosocial conditions of everyday life. In addition, it is through research that social workers discover, develop, and integrate useable theory that grounds their practice expertise in evidence.

The person-in-environment perspective and the biopsychosocial model have formed the theoretical backbone of social work education and practice for at least the last 50 years, variously amended, developed, and enhanced by critical social work, feminist, and structural social work theorisations. Perhaps it is timely to question whether these perspectives continue, in their current form, to be “fit for purpose” for 21st Century social work practice. The onset of COVID-19 and world-wide pandemic conditions have, at the very least, confronted and challenged social work. In the pages of this Journal in the last several issues, as part of a Knowledge Exchange Project, social work practitioners have provided us with brief reflective pieces, chronicling their struggles, insights, adaptive strategies, and innovations designed to continue to provide service users with a service. In this Issue, Stephanie Dragwidge has provided her reflections on psychosocial interventions in a hospital mortuary during the pandemic. Despite lockdowns, isolation, the wearing of distancing personal protective equipment, the absence of face-to-face consultations with clients, their supervisors, and colleagues, frontline practitioners have sought to remember the person-in-psychosocial context and to respond as humanly as possible. However, at the frontline they have found themselves unprepared, innovating where no existing theoretical or practical solutions were immediately apparent, not able to draw on existing social work knowledge under conditions that were generally described as “unprecedented”. In light of these tumultuous events, we might consider how the pandemic has actually highlighted and illuminated the interrelationships of phenomena that we recognise as central to human social and physical reality. A fatal disease has crossed the species barrier from animals into humans, at once of huge environmental, social, economic, and financial impact, upending taken-for-granted social life, expanding the reach of government (at least in liberal democracies), and challenging social workers to revise and review their understanding of the nature of the social realities they need to deal with.

This suggests that further theoretical understanding would be beneficial. Complexity theory (CT) offers such an approach. CT addresses the nature and organisation of systems, seeing them as characterised by four features (emergence; feedback; adaptation; and self-organisation), although these elements have been conceptualised and understood in many different ways in both the natural and social sciences. It has also begun to be considered by social workers (Green & McDermott, 2010; Long et al., 2018; McDermott, 2014; Sanger & Giddings, 2012; Wolf-Branigin, 2013), albeit in beginning ways. Jackson (2020), in a recent article demonstrating how CT might inform responses to COVID-19, identified five systemic perspectives through which a CT-informed view of the world may be captured, lenses that might illuminate and reveal the social world as a machine, an organism, a cultural or political, or a societal or environmental phenomenon, or as comprising interrelationships among phenomena. “Interrogating” a complex situation or “wicked problem” through each of these perspectives may provide insight into the nature of the complex situation and the kinds of questions that might be posed in order to find new ways of responding to new challenges. For example, Jackson (2020, p. 10) suggested that the societal or environmental lens asks practitioners to consider how interventions might identify neglected stakeholders, situations of discrimination and inequality, by posing questions such as: Have the interests of all stakeholders (including those of the marginalised and future generations) been considered, and have sustainability and environmental issues received sufficient attention?” A CT-informed approach may take practitioners beyond the micro (well-illustrated by contributors to the Knowledge Exchange Project in recent issues of ASW), and into the macro, strengthening analysis of the micro, enabling critique and the asking of questions about how to practice under these conditions of uncertainty, fluidity, and constant change.

This issue of ASW has purposefully published together 10 articles that differ markedly in their focus, methodologies, and findings because they illustrate clearly the wide-ranging scope of current social work practice and research. Importantly, they also reveal the complicatedness and complexity of the issues and questions facing contemporary practice and research, which (arguably) can be enhanced by working towards a more sophisticated and enlightening way of conceptualising the social world. This is what CT may offer, encouraging us to think and conceptualise our work in new ways that enable us to deepen our understanding and sharpen our interventions and practice strategies. The onslaught of COVID-19 has presented an immediate and unexpected scenario that is also an opportunity, demanding from us new ways of seeing and doing.