Dilemmas in social work practice

Social work is a practice-based profession and an academic discipline that promotes social change and development, social cohesion, and the empowerment and liberation of people. Principles of social justice, human rights, collective responsibility and respect for diversities are central to social work. Underpinned by theories of social work, social sciences, humanities and indigenous knowledge, social work engages people and structures to address life challenges and enhance wellbeing. (IFSW 2014)

The quote above is the global definition of social work from 2014, underlining the core assignment to promote social change, social cohesion and liberation of people on values such as social justice. This is indeed a challenging assignment that raises a number of recurring dilemmas concerning how this is to be carried out in practice. In this issue of Nordic Social Work Research the authors explore and reflect a plethora of questions that social workers meet in their professional practice, whether it relates to the organization of practice, the power influences from political agendas and competing values such as austerity and marketization, or how to build a relationship with the individual service user.

Starting out with the overarching questions of how to organize social work, Elin Hultman, Torbjörn Forkby and Staffan Höjer describe differences and commonalities in how the Nordic countries organize decision-making in child protection. In the article Professionalized, hybrid and layperson models in Nordic child protection- actors in decision-making in out of home placements, they describe how the practice of decisions in out of home placement has changed and define the current varying models for decision-making. From the article the question can be raised whose voices and perspectives are to be heard and who are to be in power over decisions on placing children in out of home care. The profession of social workers does not exercise jurisdiction over the decisions, other ‘experts’ are increasingly involved. Simultaneously, the influence of lay persons representing the citizen perspective has in most countries decreased. These changes in who are involved in decision-making was partly due to secure the right for the child to participate in the decision, hence the authors return at the end of the article to the important question what are the consequences of these organizing models for the child?

Another aspect of social work practice concerns the relationship between public social service and the social work performed by voluntary organizations. Magnus Jegermalm, Monika Wilinska, Marie Ernsth Bravell, Pia Bülow, Per Bülow and Christina Joy Torgé discuss the lack of public social service for a group with multi-faceted needs; older persons with severe mental illness. Could voluntary organizations complement public service, they ask. In Filling the gaps? The role of voluntary organizations in supporting older people with severe mental illness they find that voluntary organizations focusing on mental health do not want to specifically define older people as a target group, but rather people of all ages. Meanwhile, organizations representing older people do not relate to mental illness. As a consequence, the needs of older people with severe mental illness are still quite invisible in both public and voluntary organizations.

Social work in the Nordic countries is not only an academic profession but can also described as a welfare profession closely connected to the welfare system (Brante, Svensson, and Svensson 2019). Social workers are required to carry out social politics and to administer welfare support. Therefore, social workers must assess who is a deserving client (Marston 2008). In order to be able to decide on who might be considered a client, eligible for support, social workers need to prioritize among applicants through categorization (Hasenfeld 2010). Ida Merete Solvang explores the strategies used by social workers in an activation programme of long-term unemployed. In her article Contextualizing social workers´ problem-solving strategies: Fostering personal emancipation and enhancing employability in clients´ activation trajectories, she analyses discourses existing in social workers’ practice of asserting service needs, in motivation for work and in reviewing performance. The discourses identified highlight that the practice of social workers in this context rely on a variety of rationales, that the author finds in part to be coherent with the values of social work but then also diverging rationales of incentive reinforcement with disciplinary elements in social workers’ assessment of the client, related to activation requirements.

Also Stina Fernqvist examines the categorization of clients in her article Street-level bureaucracy and categorization processes in social workers´ encounters with parent who have financial and cognitive difficulties. She finds that clients with multifaceted needs meet a compartmentalized social service organization that categorizes according to their organizational assignment. Fernqvist discusses the compartmentalized organization of social services, which leads to the consequence that one of the person´s needs may be addressed but not another, in this case socio-economic hardship becomes invisible.

A further dilemma for social workers facing multifaceted problems are to decide what problem are to be acted on? How are the problems to be understood and whose needs are focused? Investigating social workers’ practice in child protection Albert Gümüscü, Lennart Nygren and Evelyn Khoo discuss in their article Social work and the management of complexity in Swedish child welfare services, the issue of social workers to offer support for problems of a wicked nature (Törnberg 2017) that do not have definitive or obvious solutions. They show that social workers oscillate between immediate child focus in protection of the child and also a focus on problems and needs within the family that are to be viewed with a long-term lens.

Returning to the global definition it further states the value of empowerment and engaging people to address life changes. How this is expressed and put in to practice is discussed by Magdalena Elmersjö with the example of the principle of help to self-help among older people. She explores in her article The principle of help to self-help in Sweden A study of representations and norms regarding old age and care needs and their moral and ethical implications for care work, the interpretation of the principle as a strategy to engage care receivers in everyday tasks and as a systematic training. Furthermore, she connects the principle to normative values of obligations for old persons to stay independent and healthy.

The challenge to implement empowerment in practice is also explored by Maja Lundemark Andersen in her article Involvement or empowerment- assumptions and differences in social work practice. She builds her discussion on observations of communication between professionals and citizens at job centres. Although she states that a major challenge for citizens and professionals alike, is to understand and apply a mindset of empowerment she does present examples of communicative strategies used that support empowerment for citizens.

To sum up, this issue paints a picture of social work as a profession that constantly is challenged in its core assignment on how to organize social work practice and on how to prioritize among citizens’ needs because of lack of resources and competing values. Still, this issue also presents research about social workers who implement practice on empowerment. Returning to the global definition of social work the editorial of Nordic Social Work Research has repeatedly mirrored research published through the lens of the definition. The journal will continue its scope to shed light on social work practice, its conditions and policy development referring to the definition as a mutual aim for the global community of social work.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.