Social Work Activism: Resistance at the Frontier

Abstract

When social and economic systems disadvantage individuals and groups, social workers have historically been amongst those who protest. The contemporary context provides particular challenges for social workers discontent with welfare service delivery influenced by neo-liberal ideology. Recent research reports on a range of barriers to activist practice, with participants identifying the negative impact of contemporary welfare ideologies, which have contributed to a dominance of technical practice models and an accompanying loss of structural, activist approaches. Participants in these studies informed that contemporary welfare organisations have led to a concealing of activist activities, for fear of reprisal should more open forms of radical practice be attempted. This thesis explores the motivations and behaviours of social workers employed in statutory workplace settings who identified that they undertook covert activist activities as a response to challenges resulting from the current service delivery model. The overarching research question was: What are the experiences of Australian statutory social workers regarding the types of covert activism they practice, and their reasons for doing so? Findings from this research are aimed at informing current discussions on the relevance of radical practice methods in challenging the contemporary welfare model and the role of social workers as agents of change. This study involved fifteen professional social workers involved in statutory work within the fields of health, mental health, child protection and income support in Australia. Qualitative interviews were conducted over a six month period via the method of Email Facilitated Reflective Dialogue. The purpose of the dialogues was to investigate how social work practitioners utilised covert resistance strategies within statutory welfare organisations to challenge organisational-professional conflict and what the experience of doing is like for them. Additionally, the dialogues also explored the identity of this group of practitioners, with the goal of understanding more about who contemporary social work activists are.