Dual ideals and single responsibilities – a critical analysis of social workers’ responsibility for the ideal of promoting justice at the individual and the societal level

Abstract

This article is addressing what is considered to be the unique claim and ideal of the profession of social work; to promote change at both the individual and the societal level. However, research has shown that despite the commitment to this ideal of dual responsibility; social work interventions only address the individual’s problems by offering service provision at the individual level. We will explore social work textbooks looking for articulations of the social worker’s responsibility for promoting change at both the individual and the societal level. The analysis is based on Roger Fowler’s syntax analysis. Fowler’s syntax analysis is helpful in order to analyse the level of responsibility associated with becoming a client, as well as to explore to whom responsibility is attributed. According to our findings, the textbooks examined emphasise the ideal of addressing both the individual and the societal conditions as part of the social worker’s responsibility. Simultaneously, the books deconstruct this dual mandate and social work in terms of professional responsibility becomes synonymous with working on the individual’s characteristics.

Keywords:

• social work
• ideals
• responsibility
• text books
• textual analysis