She practiced what Ferguson (Citation2018) has called suspended self-preservation, where social workers consciously suppress reflection on and acknowledgement of the depths of their feelings to help them get through the work they have to do and protect themselves and colleagues from their suffering. All the parents we interviewed who were involuntary clients felt social workers crossed the professional line and were punitive and persecuting. She hums a bit while she reads through things, and writes things down on her own pad of paper. The perceived risk lay in the mothers dangerousness and explosive nature. My mentioning society as a evolutionary changing historical phenomenon is intended to point out that society is at root a dynamic field of power-relations wherein some kinds of social practices are done not because someone is forcing us, but because an action is 'always done this way'. Roberta is cooking. Whats in a name: Client, Patient, Customer, Consumer, Expert by Experience, Service UserWhats Next? Power has been described according to: (a) who has formal authority to make decisions and who controls the resources; and (b) who has less tangible aspects of symbolic power or the ability to control ideas and meaning [ 17 ]. They seem very aggressive, and very argumentative and sometimes patronizing From our point of view it seems like they are trying to pull the whole family apart. Ron barely acknowledges the conversation initially, although its largely aimed at him. (p.117) Subjectivity and power are caught in the web of temporal practices. The net result was an entire workforce fleeing from painful feelings. As Fairclough explains, this kind of power is the "policing of conventions, they way they are enforced, both in the negative sense of what sanctions are taken against those who infringe them and in the positive sense of what affirmations there are for those who abide by them" (1989, p.61). All Rights Reserved. The view, for example, that subjectivity is open-ness and contingent within a field of temporal relations as expressed by phenomenological thinkers, suggests that there are as many forms of subjective being as there are forms of time (see Mensch, 1996). After a period of involvement, things got so bad that having let the social workers into the home the parents walked out and hovered around the front door. Otherwise she remains largely still while they talk. If because social worker A has written down in official files that Mr Jones is unpleasant, and B, C and D read it, (and because it is an official report it has authority and thus likely to be believed), then B, C and D social workers will be suspicious of Mr Jones and prone to exercise their professional powers in a tougher way than they might have done if he had been described as friendly. The atmosphere of the visit was extremely tense, as typified in this scene: Olivia mentions the assessment document and goes through the different columns of the assessment and acknowledges it was filled in without having met Roberta. This involves the researcher staying close to participants experience and writing in ways that intertwine events and emotions as they were experienced in real time, ensuring accounts of practice maintain their aliveness (Holway, Citation2015, p. 123). This lack of acknowledgment deepens one's despair. They have a regular form which has been inherited from the past, and the latter constrains us from doing the action differently. In talking about it, it is notable how she brought up other times when Roberta was really aggressive towards her and others. This study suggests that given the power imbalance parents perceive between themselves and workers, an equitable partnership may not be possible in child protection casework. The maintaining of one's ability to convert a capacity into an exercise of power in the presence of others depends on how one uses one's power, e.g. Such assessments can legitimately only take place in "social work space", they cannot take place in a bar or restaurant. However, some relationships in social work are not like that but are transacted through mistrust, fear, hostility and even hate. As Thompson (2000) highlights, to assess the That speech or an action aims to bring about material changes, i.e. So, yeah, its hard and theres, you know, a limit to how much you can get involved in the in-depth of one case when you know youve got another 60 to, to make sure get covered and so on too, really. Given the inherent power imbalance between social workers and their clients, social workers maintain She disputes that she has harmed her children. This short article is entitled 'The Politics of Social Work' and some may anticipate that I am going to look at how central and local government affects social work and social services departments, and sometimes visa versa. "Thus, 'power' is immediately equated with 'abuse of power', with a condition that must be overcome as quickly as possible" (Stiels - Glenn 1996, p. 16). Take for instance an interview between a social worker and client, in which the social worker is constantly interrupting the client whilst s/he is trying to explain the circumstances under which a child was left unattended over a long period of time. The aggressive use of power may work in the short tem but not in the long term. However, it must be recognized that power is not just about change in the above sense, but is often about maintaining the status quo in the face of a threat of change. This was averted in part by Roberta agreeing to the intensive family support service working with her. Some models of power, by focusing upon two central actors in a relationship of power, e.g. Roberta showed her feelings as soon as the two social workers arrived and were parking up, by standing on the doorstep and then forcefully slamming the door to her house. But in the 12months of casework we observed where hostile relationships persisted professionals and parents remained deeply mutually suspicious of one another. Senior manager supervisor: I was thinking wed spoken about it earlier in the week and she had got upset then and Id heard the story, you know. Register a free Taylor & Francis Online account today to boost your research and gain these benefits: Psychotherapeutic Approaches in Health, Welfare and the Community, Hostile relationships in social work practice: anxiety, hate and conflict in long-term work with involuntary service users, a Department of Social Work and Social Care, University of Birmingham, Birmingham, UK, b Department of Social Work, Education & Community Wellbeing, C115, Coach Lane Campus, Northumbria University, Newcastle upon Tyne, UK, c B6 Law and Social Sciences, University of Nottingham, Nottingham, UK, d Department of Sociology, Lancaster University, Lancaster UK, e School of Counselling, Human Services and Social Work, Te Kura Tauwhiro Tangata, Faculty of Education and Social Work, University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand. P!ZgKRZ>f?"P0G. To remove a child from someone you have got to say that this child is at significant harm, the child is not at significant harm and she hasnt been throughout this whole process, and they thought it was appropriate to lie [When SWs visited] they were like standing up in the middle of the room and you know sort of like this whole squaring off with me sort of thing. The longest home visit to Roberta Dixon lasted 45minutes and was the very first, as Roberta angrily sought explanations for why social care needed to be involved. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons CC BY license, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. This analytical approach also sensitised the research to how not only individuals defend the self from unbearable feelings, but entire organisations erect defences that impede thinking and reflective practice (Cooper & Lousada, Citation2005; Whittaker, Citation2011). So, bringing it full circle, don't believe for a minute that your therapist has more power in the relationship than you. Civil servants obey Prime Ministers, not because of anything the Prime Minister will do to them but because of the constitutional powers vested in her or him - the legitimate 'potential' power s/he has been afforded. That struggle is at the heart of this paper. Nevertheless, I would like to start with a more general understanding of power as it can be found in the Brockhaus Encyclopedia. The consequences for parents and children could be huge. Power thus pre-figures our relationships with clients, at both an inter-personal and structural level. Postmodern feminist social work theories reject the notion of egalitarian power relations as a fantasy that does not engage with the power dynamics that always exist between social workers and clients, a point also made in earlier work ( Wise, 1990 ). They constitute some of the most important forms of regulatory power and means by which society maintains itself. Most of this work was done in the second half of the year. Roberta was now pregnant and described in the referral as having a history of violent and abusive relationships where she was at times suspected to be the perpetrator. This was on top of their many other duties. In particular, power is found in the person of the social worker himself. Such pressures made giving children and families the full attention they needed and maintaining a capacity to think clearly about them and the dynamics of the relationship enormously difficult. 2.1 Definition of power and conceptual explanations Now we can begin to recognize that social workers enter into an elaborate field of power relations and use many different types of power to achieve their ends. The initial couple of home visits by Olivia after mother and baby went home were quite harmonious, as the following typical scene illustrates: Roberta talks about how she has changed as a person she was only 16 when she had [first child]. In Months 5 and 6, a pre-birth Parenting Assessment was completed by an independent social worker that involved four home visits and over the same period two home visits were undertaken by the family social worker. When such splitting occurs, relationships and the work suffers because sound assessments and decision-making require practitioners and the whole system to be in touch with as many dimensions of the emotional dynamics as possible and connected to the complexity of being human the good and the bad in us all (Cooper, Citation2018, p. 32). You only need to say one sentence . Mood is either an expansion or contraction of one's scope for action in relation to others. Furthermore, reflexivity involves an observation of the power imbalance between researcher and participant. The research on which this paper is based was funded by the Economic and Social Research Council [Grant Number ES/N012453/2]. Children in residential homes had been badly mistreated by social workers who used crude behavioral methods, namely tight negative reinforcement regimes, to control them and make them behave 'properly'. Simple ways to not sweat the minor irritants. It is not intended to be a substitute for help from a qualified health professional. All of the experiences so far have been very bad and they keep coming round and saying, well, we are here to help. Many social workers struggle with feelings of power and powerlessness, as do the clients they are seeking to assist ( Bundy-Fazioli, 2004; Pitcher, 2008 ). Bar-On (2002) advocated for the social work profession to master the discourse of power and use it effectively (p. 998). Olivia still seems nervous, she talks quietly. It is the place where influencing judgements are held. However, ultimately for Roberta it was the professionals who had the power, and she felt strongly that they misused it: they have disrupted my family life and they tried to remove the child from me. To care about someone and be helpful requires a capacity to become emotionally attuned to their experience, to think about why they present in the ways that they do and to not retaliate when they are angry and upset. When Is It OK to 'Fake It Till You Make It'? During Month 7 another social worker co-worked with the family with Olivia because Susan was unavailable, and this is a scene from their first/introductory visit: Roberta leads the social worker into the sitting-room. (1985) Michel Foucault: The Freedom of Philosophy Columbia University Press, New York. Fifty-four staff supervisions were observed and 54 interviews took place with families, some of which involved up to three interviews with the same families over the course of the year. April 26, 2002 in Child safeguarding, Workforce. As time passed, Roberta became more cooperative with professionals and was seen in a very positive light by the independent social worker. WebBoundaries are a defining feature of the social worker-client relationship. The nature and depth of organisational defences employed was particularly evident after Roberta exploded and attacked Olivia. For example, therapists need to learn about the peoples cultures they will be counselling. Here the social worker starts out from a position of power over the client because s/he has prior 'knowledge' of what the client is like. There is nothing surprising about families who do not want social work involvement using such tactics to keep them at a distance or drive them out. Angela obviously does not see the problem with having Ron in the home. Yet they also feel obliged to treat clients sensitively and as persons to try and cancel out the indignity of treating them as mere assessment objects. Within the sub-sample of cases where service users did not want a service there were different degrees of resistance and discontent. Copyright 2015 Clifford N. Lazarus, Ph.D. A visit that Susan and Olivia made together later in Month 6 was more typical of the pattern of relating that became established: Susan took the lead, knocked on the door and Roberta led us into the kitchen. Fifteen months of fieldwork were spent with social workers, the first three months of which were used to identify a sample of 30 cases that were then shadowed for as long as they were open for up to a year (Ferguson et al., Citation2019). Faking it till you make it can be very powerful in behavioral health treatment. Social workers have had roles in perpetuating these harmful social systems, and this history cannot be ignored. The National Association of Social Workers (NASW), in Washington, DC, is the largest membership organization of professional social workers. As we have seen, however, mood and affect as temporal subjective forms are always caught up within networks of contingent power relations. If this summed up my view of power, I could be accused of 'atomism' - the idea that persons are at all moments asocial independent beings unshaped by forces of the collective, historical/evolutionary entity we call society. Translated across to practice, the moral ideal of such a view of subjectivity would be that of the "fullness of being" which is maximized by the possibilities of the subject's open-ness to being and time. The approach to participant observation that was adopted enabled attention to be given to the senses, emotions and lived experience of face to face practice and organisational life over time (Ferguson, Citation2016; Pink, Citation2015). The latter, drawn from many sources, is given a refined professional expression through the trained persona of the social worker. ibid.). Involuntary clients and hostile relationships have a very powerful presence in statutory social work. Power is rarely discussed; it is pushed away. On the one hand, in order to transform the dependence of the other person into independence in a goal-oriented way and with the right means, but also in order not to let the relationship become a one-sided relationship of domination, which no longer corresponds to a basic partnership intention (cf. As has been shown, on most occasions interactions between social care and families went on in the home. Child protection workers, supervision, management and organisational responses to parental violence, The production of space in childrens social work: Insights from Henri Lefebvres spatial dialectics, Place and the uncanny in child protection social work: Exploring findings from an ethnographic study, Limiting relationships through sousveillance video based digital advocacy: Multi-modal analysis of The Nervous CPS Worker, Disguised compliance or undisguised nonsense: A critical discourse analysis of compliance and resistance in social work practice, Revealing the hidden performances of social work practice: The ethnographic process of gaining access, getting into place and impression management, The nature and effects of violence against child protection social workers: Providing effective support. That recording and links to helpful resources are available on NASW's Facebook page. Starting from the observation that power can firstly be exchanged with each other, secondly instrumentalized and thirdly structuralized, he leads over to the consideration that social work is thus constantly confronted with the questions of superior power, of power distribution and power control (cf. Schlter 1995, p. 116). While recognition that some service users do not want social work involvement has grown in recent years, little research has explored what relationships between social workers and involuntary clients look and feel like in practice and how they are conducted in real time. The oppressive collateral consequences resulting from mass incarceration, the War on Drugs, and the school-to-prison pipeline have exacerbated economic inequalities in Black, Brown, and Indigenous communities. I also indicate in the last section of the article that the politics of social work is caught up in our definitions and constitution of subjectivity and what counts as valid subjective experience. Mensch, J.R. (1996) After Modernity, State University of New York Press, Albany, NY. Behavior therapy was a reaction to the idea of the unconscious mind being the singular target for therapeutic intervention. The decision was that it was highly unlikely that she would be allowed to keep her baby and Roberta stormed out before the end of the meeting. As a Lundy (2004), basing her views on the work of Moreau (1989), highlights the A total of 271 practice encounters between social care staff and service users were observed, 146 of which were home visits. In this sort of example we can say that power in discourse is to do with the ability of the social worker to control and constrain the contributions of a non-powerful participant, in this case a client suspected of neglecting a child. Social work teaches us to recognize the continuity, the indivision of experiences where each moment of a clients life is caught up with all others in the same propulsion of time, and, simultaneously, to recognize the movement that prevents the fixing of meaning, and makes arise indefinately, beyond the present given, the latent content of a clients life-world. DQ v{ ;P In so far as social work is about making changes to the conditions of human life, social work is fundamentally about the use of various kinds of power. WebThe dynamics of power in counselling and psychotherapy refer to the fact that helping professionals naturally have more power and influence over the people they assist. Power operates as a dynamic force that leaves no area of life untouched, influencing individuals, families, communities, and institutions. The home visit in child protection social work: Emotion as resource and risk for professional judgement and practice, Isnt it funny the children that are further away we dont think about as much?: Using GPS to explore the mobilities and geographies of social work and child protection practice, Researching social work practice close up: Using ethnographic and mobile methods to understand encounters between social workers, children and families, How children become invisible in child protection work: Evidence from day-to-day social work practice, How social workers reflect in action and when and why they dont: The possibilities and limits to reflective practice in social work, From snapshots of practice to a movie: Researching long-term social work and Child protection by getting as close as possible to practice and organisational life, The nature and culture of social work with children and families in long-term casework: Findings from a qualitative longitudinal study, Difficult conversations on the frontline: Observations of home visits to talk about neglect, If I feel like this, how does the child feel? Power tempts to abuse power in the everyday work of social workers. Power and social work (not) a contradiction by poverty, by living in an unfurnished house and so forth. but "It says here ?." It involves using empathic skills and self-knowledge on the part of the social worker (Trevithick, 2003 ). Therefore, it was necessary to investigate this issue. Still, the relationship is not neutral but can be infused with These skirmishes, the anger, threats and walk outs, all delivered in highly personalised ways, show how incredibly emotionally and intellectually demanding these hostile relationships are for everyone concerned. The latter two powers are drawn on by the social worker in interactions dependent upon whether the other person is prepared to show (3) or (4). It promotes, develops, and protects the practice of social work and social workers. client and social worker, fail to understand the importance of a broader social context to the creation of a relationship of power. This paper draws from research that observed long-term social work practice in child protection and shows how relationships based on mutual suspicion and even hate were sustained over the course of a year, or broke down. The requirement of an open-ness for social work is a political one in the sense that we must consider what to do about the configurations of power and subjectivity as they emerge within the social world. A bad object is created into whom unbearable feelings are projected and a good object becomes the recipient of positive evaluations, respectful loving feelings and is idealised. To give a fairly obvious example, Hitler and the Nazi Party portrayed the Jewish people as vermin who were destroying German life and culture. The following discussion applies to adults in therapeutic relationships with qualified therapists. Some were cooperative from the start, and therapeutic, or became that way having begun with the service users not wishing to have social work involvement (see, Ferguson, Warwick,Disney,etal.,Citation2020). A better way to explain this might be to characterize power in relation to discourse. The parents attempted to take charge by interrupting, shouting and making accusations that social workers are untruthful, inconsistent, hypocritical and in cahoots with other professionals. Another example of power behind discourse might be the assessment procedures of children who are considered at risk of sexual abuse. In other cases parents were extremely unhappy, often hostile and remained that way. Social work is helping, is supporting. destroying things in her home, or the changes wrought on a client by her environment, e.g. It may frighten a parent into adequate parenting and thus the social worker may feel s/he has been successful in this use of power. People often have sex when they're tired, meaning the sex is more likely to be short, perfunctory, goal-oriented, and mechanical. Once again, suspended self-preservation was regarded as the safest course, but it only really works as a healthy long-term strategy if the attention to the emotional impact of the work that is being postponed is provided as soon as possible. Hurts that wont healare rarely discussed openly and are frequentlydenied. The Relational social work method supports the practical development of participation, collaboration, and reciprocity. There is a remarkable contrast between Rebecca, who sits rigidly and tensely upright on the sofa, and Ron and Angela who give off an air of not caring. Trying to sustain these torturous hostile relationships is incredibly emotionally demanding. They had been on child protection plans due to concerns about physical abuse. Creating supervisory practices and cultures where these deep feelings, unconscious processes and states of mind can be accessed is very difficult. But ? They were seen 24 times by social care over the course of the year they too prevented/avoided more visits and we observed 15 of these encounters. Help advocate for antiracist policies and meaningful social change across the country by signing up for NASW Advocacy Alerts. Lundy (2004), basing her views on the work of Moreau (1989), highlights The counselors choice to withhold or share information can have ethical implications for the client and potentially cause the client harm (Barnett, 2011). Service user: Regressive or liberatory terminology? In the case of a relationship that constantly feels like it needs fixing,true satisfaction will always feel just out of reach. But like any emotion, it gives us information. On the one hand they feel obliged to treat clients in a disengaged and technical way, in order to establish that their interest is purely professional when discussing personal and sensitive issues such as sexuality. Get the help you need from a therapist near youa FREE service from Psychology Today. This paper examines the sources of power of workers and clients, and, by using a power-dependence perspective, it explores the consequences of power on social work practice. Social and professional status confers power, but it is primarily the knowledge, experience, and tools with which a social worker acts that empower him or her. Unfortunately, because some people suffer from issues related to excessive dependency and have deep-seated rejection and abandonment anxiety, they are ripe for exploitation if they end up under the care of unethical (if not criminal) clinicians. Many of the parents in the study began by disliking, fearing and even hating social workers. Therefore, it is necessary to establish what the term power means, what associations it evokes. the chair of a case conference), position (e.g. Well, no, youre not because youre just causing problems and making everything a lot worse and worrying people and stressing people out rather than actually doing anything to help anyone. Power differences based on unequal professional status are an example of the latter. Case managers previously defined advocacy as occurring at individual, organizational, and community levels. The social worker and manager both used this supervision to offload anxiety and fears about Roberta, which served to cement her identity as dangerous. It is very possible that the nature and style of the social work surveillance contributed to the worsening of Robertas well-being and it certainly contributed to her reactions to professionals. This often results in the perception of a power differential in the relationship such that the therapist is seen as having more psychological strength, control, and leverage than they do. the social service department, to language skills, technical vocabulary, skills of persuasion and so forth, to language in the form of assessment reports and the recording process, to legal powers, to social work knowledge, and, most profoundly, to the culture of power and our willingness to enter into the restless spirit of this addictive yet corrupting culture. The same cannot be said of social work however, which urgently needs to face the harsh realities of hostile relationships, the risks of abuses of power they contain, and the enormously difficult feelings they bring up for service users, social workers and their effects on the emotional life of whole organisational systems.