Radical Social Work in the Real World by Colin Turbett
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
Radical Social Work in the Real World By Colin Turbett INTRODUCTION Roza Salih arrived in Glasgow under the UK Government’s Asylum Seeker dispersal scheme in 2001 as a 12 year old with her family who had suffered murderous state persecution in Iraqi occupied Kurdistan. She went on to achieve fame as a school student when she banded together with other girls from Drumchapel High to highlight the plight of a close school friend detained in a dawn raid and facing immediate deportation – the ‘Glasgow Girls’. Their actions brought the plight of asylum seekers to national attention, ending the practice of detaining children in Scotland and changing attitudes at government level and within communities. In an interview as a 27-year-old adult (Mitchell, 2017) Roza recalled their early time in a city housing scheme speaking little English. One of the family’s first contacts was with a social worker from Glasgow City Council, who helped in practical terms but also demonstrated an interest, kindness and support that gave the family hope and aided their integration, leaving a permanent and very positive mark. This inspired Roza to help others and seek change as she grew into the political activist she remains today. Whilst detail is scant in Roza’s recorded recollections there is no doubt that the interventions of this social worker made a significant impact. It seems doubtful, given the restraints on the time social workers are allotted for non- statutory cases in settings like Glasgow, that such outcomes were part of any agreed strategy and rather that they were a tribute to the commitment and attitude of the worker concerned and perhaps the team of which she was a member. That is the very kernel of the radical social work that will be described in this chapter. This is suggested as a necessary approach to work with those who end up in the UK as a consequence of the upheavals that are now the experience of millions from the areas of the world at the cutting edge of climate change and proxy-conflict between global powers over the world’s dwindling resources. The focus in this paper is intentionally on social workers who are located in statutory local authority settings – they are the majority, they are on the front line, and they are the ones tasked with interpreting and implementing locally and nationally determined government policy – a hard task in a period of austerity and its reaction in terms of Brexit and the rise of popular right-wing nationalism. In the wake of Covid-19, the Grenfell Tower fire in London seems almost a distant memory: a large number of people who mostly came to Britain as refugees and migrants, were killed in an avoidable disaster. This was characterised by poverty in the midst of great wealth, with a local authority who, according to contemporary press reports, prided itself on spending as little as possible; this to the extent that its actions may have contributed to the fire’s causes, and in the aftermath, its lack of any resilience or infrastructure for coping with displaced and traumatised people. There is no doubt that working for such employers whilst maintaining the values of social work learned as a student, is challenging, but that should not mean that good social work (which is radical because it defies their neoliberal driven outlook) is not possible. Since Grenfell the Covid-19 pandemic has again thrown up inequalities in sharp relief – the communities that have suffered (outside older vulnerable people in residential social care - which is typically staffed by migrant labour) are those where overcrowding and poverty are endemic – communities with large ethnic minority populations. In Glasgow, host to 10% of Britain’s asylum seekers, those housed by the Mears Group (who took over from the discredited Serco operation), were forced to move out of their housing and into sub-standard hotel accommodation where pressures reached boiling point over the Summer of 2020. The commitment of the Conservative Government elected on a wave of popular anti-immigration reaction, to harden borders, remains unwavered. Services continue to be outsourced to profit-making enterprises whose links with the ruling party confirm in whose interests they are governing (Guardian 2020); this includes some social work training under the “Frontline” scheme. This paper is written from a perspective stemming from the author’s working life as a social worker, children and family team manager, and trade union activist in the West of Scotland; it is based on self-experience and the observations of good practice by others. It is hoped that it will help the reader find opportunities in everyday work settings. It is an attempt to find forms of practice and underlying theory that fit with humanitarian and progressive values, and that enable survival in an environment that is far from friendly to either service users or the people who strive to meet their needs in Social Services settings. As detailed elsewhere (Turbett 2014) such forms of practice protect workers from burnout on the one hand, and accommodation to an unjust system on the other. Neither should such practice be seen as the preserve of committed left-wing activists: Jane Fenton (2019) demonstrates that radical practice can be made attractive for those social workers who simply want to do a good and worthwhile job: an approach to the social work task can happen through a combination of relationship building, critical thinking and moral courage. This will lead to work that does not simply collude with bad and oppressive systems and practices. It is not the purpose of the paper to go into complex legal areas and outline entitlement in respect of asylum seekers, refugees and other migrants – advice and guidance are available and easily accessible: the writer would commend Wroe et al (2019), Unison Scotland (2017), Unison (2019) and BASW (2020) for material written for social workers. Campaigning organisations like MRN (Migrant Rights Network), JCWI (Joint Council for Welfare for Immigrants) – Free Movement, Project 17, and others, host websites with excellent resources. THE STATE, OPPRESSION AND SOCIAL WORK An important pre-condition for a ‘radical’ rather than simply ‘good’ approach, is to understand the place of social work systems in the United Kingdom and indeed, other Western societies. All these societies, to a greater or lesser extent, are based on economies dominated by private markets trading in order to produce wealth at national and international levels. Naturally enough there are winners and losers, especially where such markets enjoy freedom unbridled by regulation and restriction on personal wealth. This results in inequality – with poverty and disadvantage for those at the bottom. This, in essence, is the Marxist view of capitalism developed over 150 years ago: although not always accurate in its predictions, Marx’s analysis remains remarkably cogent today (Mason 2015). Social work developed as an essential welfare state function after World War Two. As explained elsewhere (Turbett 2014) this had the dual purpose of policing the poor but also looking after them to the extent that they remained acquiescent and unlikely to rebel. Social work’s role has always been ambiguous: containing wonderful opportunities to ‘make a difference’ (for the better!) to the lives of the disadvantaged, but also having at least the potential for oppressive aspects such as those encountered in the hugely important function of child protection. Nowhere are such contradictions and dilemmas more apparent than in social work with asylum seekers and migrants: on the one hand there is Roza Salih’s experience, on the other the officially ascribed and controversial social work function of ‘age- testing’ to determine the age of those claiming, without documented proof, to be children. As Hardcastle et al (2011, p71) note: ‘Solutions to social problems contained in social policies generally reflect the construction of the social problem.’ This is certainly the case with all aspects of immigration policy and law: they reflect the popular perception that the country is ‘full up’ and that immigration requires curbing above all other considerations. Social workers therefore become a part of such systems whether they like it or not. Oppression has to be understood in order for it to be addressed. Oppression is based on difference – either its crude exploitation through the use of division and racism, or its more subtle denial through a false belief that equal rights in law equate to the eradication of inequalities – both are used to the disadvantage of marginal groups in society (Mullaly 2010). Difference of course does not necessarily lead to the oppression of one group by another – societies can promote and celebrate difference in order to make tolerance and diversity the norm – aspirations which chime with social work’s alleged commitment to social justice for its service users. Mullaly (2010 p42) suggests that a prime function of oppression is to enable society’s dominant groups to control classes and groups who might otherwise threaten their stability. Social workers should recognise his list of the myths that accompany this aim: scarcity (there’s not enough to go round); objective information (it is possible for one group – typically Anglo Saxon white bourgeois males – to observe humanity objectively and to therefore hold authoritative and truthful opinions); might is right (the majority rules even if this is to the cost of the minority), stereotyping (all members of a group are the same); blaming the victim (people, e.g. refugees, are responsible for their own situation); human nature (human beings are competitive and aggressive by nature); the supremacy of Western democracy and civilization (perpetuated by the education system); myth of class (most people are middle class and this is the aspiration of many others – thus mandating and sanctioning the presence of both dominant and subordinate classes); society as a meritocracy (as civil and political rights are equalized by law all it takes is hard work for success to be achieved and failure is the fault of the individual who should not be helped).