What are the current challenges that confront social workers in heterogenic societies and how can the evolving theories of social justice and human rights contribute to the development of knowledge for practical application within social work? The realities of migration societies and the accompanying issues of equality, rights, and ethics have recently resulted in an intense level of critical public discourse within journalistic, educational, political and academic circles. Fundamental questions that have arisen from these debates formed the basis of the international ERIS conference on Social Justice and Diversity that took place from the 8th to the 10th October 2018 in the University of Applied Sciences in Dornbirn, Austria.
This issue of the European Research Institute for Social Work (ERIS) journal explores the themes of the conference, presenting papers which focus on issues of diversity and the nature of the social work response. The papers examine issues of aging, gender, class and migration. Each paper involves a different focus, with authors retaining diverse perspectives and conceptual frameworks for their analysis. However, a common theme is the extent to which social work can be an engaged, politicised profession which is active in seeking social justice or if statutory regulation restricts social work’s capacity to be a human rights profession.
Andrea Fleckinger’s contribution, Child Protection and Gender-Based Violence: How to Prevent the Risk of Secondary Victimization takes as its starting point the prevalence of genderbased violence across European countries. 22% of European women have experienced intimate partner violence and the lives of one in five children are affected by the issue. These figures pose a conundrum, as the role of the child protection social worker requires that the needs of the child are maintained as paramount however the dynamics which result in practice can lead to victim-blaming as workers perceive women as inadequate carers and protectors of their children. Fleckinger uses the concepts and theories of secondary victimisation to uncover the unconscious biases and professional conflicts which the work engenders. She explores the deep-seated concept of the ‘good mother’ and ‘good victim’ as the common conventions of womanhood into which social workers can fall if daily working practices are conceived narrowly.
Miroslava Tokovska, Michal Kozubik, Peter Jusko’s paper How Can Suicidal Behaviour in the Elderly Be Prevented? A Scoping Review of the Visegrad Group Countries addresses an underresearched area facing social workers and social care workers working with older people. Scoping the ethical, moral and legal issues impinging upon suicide in older people in Slovakia, Poland, Czech Republic and Hungary the paper provides new information concerning prevalence and some early indications of possible good practice. Dealing with older people facing crises of health, mental health and changing identity requires new knowledge and training. The paper recognizes this and places this in the context of core social work skills of sensitivity and empathy to address “a tragedy affecting families and communities”. The paper addresses suicide in the V4 countries specifically although the issues affect social workers in a much wider spread of nations.
Anna Suppa, Isabelle Steiner, Peter Streckeisen’s article is titled: Energy Transition and Environmental Justice: Effects on Vulnerable Groups and Implications for Social Work. In tackling climate change, Switzerland is investing in the refurbishment and improved energy efficiency of old housing stock. The paper points out the unintended consequence of this agenda in placing such housing beyond the financial reach of existing, poor tenants. Energy efficient retrofits serve to exacerbate existing multiple oppressions among poor people: poverty, poor health, and stigma. Despite this, poor households have significant practical knowledge and expertise concerning energy-efficient behaviour and planning. This expertise is ignored by the middle-class voices which colonise energy debates. The authors argue that social work action – if the profession accepted a ‘green mandate’ – could reduce the distance between these groups, help develop improved services and add key expertise to the environmental discourse.
Of all the papers in this issue, it is perhaps Katja Neuhoff who addresses the issue of the extent to which contemporary social workers are instruments of state control most directly. Her paper, “Participation in Deportations – Red Line for Social Work”? Learning to ‘walk the talk’ on Social Work as a Human Rights Profession, sees social work as occupying fractured terrain in relation to government responses to refugees in Europe. Echoing Fleckinger’s stance that there is no position of neutrality in relation to activities which serve to oppress minority groups, she sees the process of sensitisation to human rights issues as beginning in social work education. Starting at this stage and informed by the will of existing professionals new entrants to the field can be fitted to challenge the “restrictive administrative action” of daily practice and law.
The value of experts by experience is echoed in Gunther Graßhoff ’s review of Participatory Social Work: Research, Practice, Education (Granosik, Gulczyńska, Kostrzyńska, Littlechild (Eds.), 2019) where the reviewer poses the question “how can coproduced knowledge be disseminated for wider groups” so that so that social work practice and government policy can be informed by people who are currently excluded from the system. Individually, these articles offer a fresh perspective on topics which are of themselves interesting to contemporary social work. Taken together, they confront academic and professional social workers with themselves: what is the role and function of modern social work and how do we perform that function while remining true to the core values of the profession. By encouraging a reflective and critical approach to existing well-meaning social work interventions contemporary practitioners are invited to explore the dynamics of discrimination, neutrality and compliance in modern societies of migration. In particular social workers operating in the fields of gender, older people and refugee work are presented with challenging questions concerning expertise, education, hidden oppression and client ethics.
Doris Böhler & Karen Mills
FH Vorarlberg, University of Applied Sciences & The University of Hertfordshire
