Social Control of Deviance and Knowledge in Social Work from an Anti-oppressive Perspective

ABSTRACT

This paper will examine the relationship between social control of deviance, ethical principles and social work. I will address this issue by adopting a specific social work theoretical perspective, that of “critical social work”. In this article a specific phase of social workers’ control of deviance in social work will be examined: the phase in which they collect information through specific fact-finding modalities, in order to decide whether, and in what way, social services will intervene. I chose a specific aspect of social work with involuntary clients to develop my analysis: child protection. I will organize my analysis in two parts.

In the first part I will tackle the issue of social control in social work. I will subsequently analyze two theoretical paradigms (Positivism and Constructionism) within which child neglect and abuse are conceptualized and operationalized. In the second part, I will examine a case study, the story of a drug-addicted mother who had one of her children removed, with the aim of highlighting how the paradigm that guides fact-finding activity on a given phenomenon can influence the forms in which social control is exercised, favoring or hindering anti-oppressive practices. The analysis of mother’s story shows how the positivist framework applied by the social workers in the decision to remove her child, affected the form in which power and social control was exercised, favoring the transition from protective power to oppressive power. The categorization of clients, aimed at the identification of the risks children run in their family contexts, may reduce social workers’ activity to pure control of family life in an “antagonistic role” to their clients.

KEYWORDS:

• Child neglect
• constructivism social work
• power social control

Notes

¹ “The term ‘code of ethics’ is used to cover quite a broad range of different types of codes of conduct or behavior. (…) In social work such codes generally include a statement of the fundamental values of the profession – usually recognizable variations on the themes of respect for persons and user self-determination and frequently some statement of commitment to the promotion of social justice and to professional integrity. This is usually followed by short statements of ethical principles” (Banks, 2012, pp. 69–70).

² On June 1^st, 2020 the new code of ethics for Italian social workers came into force. Since the code is based on the principles and values recognized by the Italian Constitution, the social worker in the exercise of her/his profession must recognize the value, intrinsic dignity and uniqueness of all persons and must promote their civil, political, economic, social, cultural and environmental rights as established in the international regulations and Conventions.

³ For a deeper understanding of Foucault’s theoretical contribution in social work, see Chambon et al. (1999).

⁴ I chose this story because it represents a paradigm from a social and treatment point of view (I will explain later what the typicality of this case consists of).

⁵ This is the definition cited by the Italian program to prevent parental negligence P.I.P.P.I. (Intervention Program for the Prevention of Institutionalization).

⁶ I do not mean to state that all research on abuse and neglect employing a positivist paradigm uses the same definition of the phenomenon and operationalizes its definition in the same terms. In the context of each study, however, a definition of the phenomenon is given as if it were an “objective” rather than a “political” reality. In positivist logic, this plurality of definitions is considered a sign of the current “immaturity” of the human sciences, since the objective of achieving a shared definition of the phenomenon in the future is not considered impossible (Mcdonald, 2001, p. 19).

⁷ I would like to respond to an objection that readers might make: ‘They lied to you. How do you know that things went just as they told you? You have only collected one version of the story, you should have also interviewed the social workers.’ The purpose of the interview was to grasp the meaning parents give to their relationship with the Social Services by highlighting their definitions of the situation. I would point out that the version of social workers – as Howitt (1992) states in his book on mistakes made by child protection services workers – is not the reconstruction of the ‘truth’, but their definition of the situation.

⁸ I contacted interviewees via NGOs and associations of foster parents who manage self-help groups for parents whose children have been taken into care, lawyers, staff of cooperatives running day care centers for adolescents, etc.

⁹ Eight respondents reside in Piedmont, two in Lombardy. The average age of the sample is around forty. Their socio-economic status is low.

¹⁰ The medicalization of substance abuse is very widespread in social workers’ professional practice: an analysis of academic articles, books, manuals for teaching, etc. published by Italian social workers between 1990 (the year in which the legislation on drug addiction which is still in force in Italy today was approved) and 2016 pointed out that, in their references to drug consumption, the ‘addiction’ phenomenon is explained (almost) completely by reference to DSM diagnostic categories (Cogo, 2016).

¹¹ She made it clear that from her perspective her freedom was limited.

¹² In this case, this includes the ‘scientific’ categories of DSM: is the phenomenon of addiction described by DSM a “brute fact” or is it a social construction?