Current challenges and emerging signposts: the future of social work education in Europe

This themed issue of the journal contains a collection of articles that were developed from presentations given at the European Association of Schools of Social Work (EASSW) conference, held in partnership with the Italian Social Work Educators Association (AIDOSS, now the Italian Society of Social Work – SocISS) and Bicocca University, Milan, from 29 June to 2 July 2015. The EASSW believed that it was timely for those involved and interested in social work education to join together to debate the direction we need to travel in the years ahead. We wanted to consider collectively how social work education could be prepared to face the many changes and challenges that will confront us in the coming decade. The conference, entitled ‘Social work education in Europee: towards 2025’, stimulated many lively and constructive debates among participants. Social work academics, students, service users and carers, practitioners, policy-makers and those concerned with and involved in social work education engaged together with ideas, experiences, plans and hopes for the future direction of social work education.

Social work and social work education have faced many fundamental challenges in recent years: the global convergence of the neoliberal discourse and the excesses of global capitalism leading to financial and economic crises; the political responses and choices made by governments and international organisations to these economic ideas and financial and banking catastrophes; conflict, war, major environmental events and disasters causing suffering, displacement and mass migration. Such forces, events and the resulting political choices and their consequences have compounded the pressures on individuals, families and communities, leading social workers and social work education to ask ‘is what we are doing now fit for purpose?’

Since the 1980s in those countries whose politics and policies have been informed by neoliberalism, services have been increasingly based upon principles of marketisation, managerialism and consumerism. These processes of change have seen a shifting of responsibility from the public to the private sector and a retrenchment in the domain of welfare policy. Critical of the ‘one size fits all’ model of state service provision, the neoliberal narrative of civil society and the third sector as ‘partners’ has become dominant in many areas of service provision. The privatisation and ‘out-sourcing’ of state services has seen the state moving from being a primary provider to a partner and from grant-giver to commissioner in areas such as social services, health and education (Sievers, 2016). The financial and economic crisis, which began in the USA in 2008, resulted in many European countries choosing or being coerced (e.g. Greece) into implementing severe austerity policies. These harsh measures have affected economic, political, ecological and social domains, compounding the effects of neoliberalism and further impacting adversely upon education and welfare policies resulting in cuts to services, benefits, provision and personnel. The gap between the wealthy and the poor has been compounded, further widened and resulted in many people being dispossessed or left behind by the current socio-economic and political landscape (Abramovitz, 2014; Zavirsek & Lawrence, 2012).

Applied to social work, neoliberal politics have given emphasis to individualism and the idea of the independent, responsible and active ‘client’ or ‘service user’ over structural theories and explanations of social need. All too often ‘conveyor belt social work’ has become prominent within the business ethos of the public sector, influenced by new public management models. Meeting targets, goal setting and seeing people quickly through the system have become the unwelcome dominant norms for social workers in the UK and elsewhere (Garrett, 2009).

Universities have not escaped fundamental changes resulting from educational policies stemming from the growing neoliberal consensus. The culture of open intellectual debate and scientific enquiry has been overtaken by managerial demands for institutional performance ratings. These require specific metrics based upon ‘evidence’ from strategic planning, performance indicators, quality assurance measures and academic audits. Universities and their place in the ‘knowledge economy’ have been recognised as key players by governments, which has resulted in closer links with the demands and requirements of industry (Olssen & Peters, 2005). Twenty-nine ministers of education signed the Bologna Declaration in 1999, although it was outside any formal statutory framework. It reformed European higher education, with the objective of creating a European Higher Education Area. This was a prime example of supranational reform, influenced by the neoliberal agenda. The Bologna process, once underway, was built upon mobility, flexibility, employability, compatibility and comparability of qualifications. Its implicit agenda was to standardise European higher education as a global commodity and further open up universities as fertile ground for marketisation and privatisation (Levidow, 2002).

The pressure to more ‘efficient’ but not necessarily ‘effective’ social work is becoming stronger because of the fundamental challenges highlighted above. The risk of a non-reflective and uncritical style of work is always imminent when organisations create preconditions. When bureaucracy and procedures become the motivation for professional action and are not tools for it, social work loses its essence and is affected by the reversal of what are the means (money, organisation and any other resources) and the objective (well-being and citizenship rights). The current neoliberal approach applied to social work replaces work ‘with’ service users with the mere accompanying of them in a sort of ‘supermarket’ where social workers would have to just present the services available and the procedures for access to them (Dominelli, 2004). In this situation the space for decision-making (being a service dispenser gives no need to choose because every choice is already pre-decided as an automatic reflex) is very reduced and reflection is useless because it is replaced by routine responses and thoughtless practice. Direct consequences of this are less time for reflection and supervision and the widespread tendency towards ‘typification’ embedded in agency procedures. ‘This tends to reduce the relationship between practitioners and service users to routine responses based on both sides of the relationship being stuck in the rigidly fixed categories of “service supplier” and “service user”’ (Dolan, Pinkerton, & Canavan, 2006, p. 18), although the reality of the situations met by social workers shows how inadequate this representation is (Sicora, 2017).

Critical reflection and reflective practice are some of the strongest antidotes to the risk of loss of social work core principles. Social workers revitalise these principles every time they fully recognise the assumptions behind the actions they, their service users and social systems take. Reflection-on-action is even richer in terms of discovery and concrete applications when it is focused on something that went wrong. Mistakes and failures are a powerful source of self-improvement if they become the object of systematic and structured reflection.

Mistakes are the inevitable and unwanted companions of any profession. They are often a taboo, because any limit and frailty creates unpleasant feelings of inadequacy and shame. But professional errors involve responsibilities in minimising the harm produced and can be the best opportunity for new discoveries and more effective interventions so as to learn how to avoid similar situations in the future.

Reflection is even more powerful when it involves more people. Any opportunity for shared reflection can lead farther than reflection made in solitude. Conferences – such as the one that took place in Milan – are precious occasions for people to share thoughts and experiences. It is important that this rich heritage can also be further shared with those who did not attend the conference. This themed issue of the journal has been created with this goal and picks up the main themes across the wide range of related discourse and debate: the future of social work education and its international dimension, the role of service users and students, innovative teaching and learning methods, plus a focus on some intersections between the latter and special topics such as lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) issues, dementia challenges and social housing.

The first three papers correspond to the keynote speeches of the Milan conference. The complementary contributions of Lorenz (Social work education in Europe: toward 2025) and Ferguson (Hope over fear: social work education toward 2025) picture the scenarios for the near future of social work education and highlight its main challenges and opportunities. Wahlström (Social work and the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction) describes a relatively new field of action for social work and examines the role that social workers may play in disaster risk reduction in the context of the Sendai Framework adopted in March 2015.

Laging, Spilgies and Waldenhof next present experiences from Esslingen in Germany in order to highlight the importance of the international dimensions in social work education and to give some suggestions on how to infuse international content into the curriculum.

Further papers reflect on learning and teaching social work more closely. Wiles describes the role of England’s Professional Capabilities Framework in developing social work students’ professional identity. Strömpl and colleagues analyse the experience developed in an Estonian university, defining social work research not only as a bridge between research and practice, but also a highly effective learning method. Nothdurfter and Nagy explain why and how to approach LGBT issues in social work education. The contribution of Laging and Heidenreich confirms the importance of service users’ involvement in social work education and describes experiences from Germany in order to highlight some implications for a wider European perspective. Then Heule, Knutagård and Kristiansen describe the ‘gapmending’ concept as an analytical tool that helps teachers and researchers to reflect upon gaps between professionals and service user groups and how to mend them, and gives a background to the development of gapmending strategies in research and education at the School of Social Work at Lund University. Bozek, Raeymaeckers and Spooren present a study on the motivations to become a master in social work.

The final section of articles is more heterogeneous and considers different special topics: dementia (Keating), social housing mediation with special regard to Italian experiences (Moretti) and the development of social work with a citizenist approach in the public system of social services in Spain (Seller).

It is our hope that the insights, experiences and research findings captured in this special issue will continue to stimulate the debates and conversations that we had the privilege to be part of in Milan in 2015 and open up further dialogue regarding some of the possible roads of travel for the future for social work education.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Alessandro Sicora, PhD, is a lecturer at the University of Calabria, Italy, where he teaches methods and techniques of social work. He also teaches theory of social work at the University Ca'Foscari in Venice, Italy. He qualified as a social worker in 1989 and has been a social work academic since 2008. Currently he is President of the Italian Society of Social Work (SocISS). His latest publication is: Sicora, A. (2017) Reflective practice and learning from mistakes in social work. Bristol: Policy Press.

Susan Lawrence is Immediate Past President of the European Association of Schools of Social Work (EASSW), Immediate Past Regional Vice President of the International Association of Schools of Social Work (IASSW) and until 2013 (when she retired from full-time employment) was Head of Social Work at London Metropolitan University. She qualified as a social worker in 1976 and has been a social work academic since 1991. E-mail: [email protected]

ORCID

Alessandro Sicora http://orcid.org/0000-0002-7944-8144