Co-building new social work paradigms in the UK: Challenges and opportunities

Are you happy in your work? Do you ever wonder if you could do things differently you would be more effective and enjoy your work more? Read on…

Many surveys in recent years, not only in the UK but elsewhere in the world have emphasised the well-known negatives of social work practice, such as long hours, burnout, under resourced, risk of violence and many hours spent in administration.

It is time to respond to these challenges and to consider how we can do things differently. Our world is in crisis, from violence, climate change, the widening chasm between rich and poor, and geo-political polarisation. Since the shock of the COVID pandemic IFSW has been working with UNRISD and many other partners to focus on more effective patterns of working for our shared sustainable futures. Creating new ways of working has resulted in a partnership of millions of people from all regions of our world co-creating a shared vison in the People’s Charter. Now it is time for action for change.

We have a natural time frame arriving on our doorstep as we lead up to the 100th anniversary of the first global meeting of social workers in Paris in 1928. People travelled by boat, train and foot to gather and discuss the future of our profession. This resulted in the setting up of the global professional body, the International Federation of Social Workers (IFSW). Not only is this an opportunity for celebration and reflection but an opportunity to set the foundations for a new roadway to achieving the changes we have agreed are vital for our shared futures.

Our colleagues in the French association of social workers (Association Nationale des Assistants de Service Social or ANAS), have just published a special edition of their quarterly journal sharing articles about how social work has evolved in different parts of the world as a preparation for our reflections on the future of our roles in co-building well-being in social development. It provided an opportunity to reflect from an author in the UK on how social work has developed in our own backyard, starting with a comment about the diversity of evolution of social work in the UK.

“The UK is not one entity. It has four nations, three of which, Northern Ireland (NI), Wales, and Scotland, are politically dominated by England, but each country has retained different laws and organisations in which social work and its related services operate. There is often a presumption by those not intimately working within one of these three countries to assume that what happens in England happens in the other 3 nations. Whilst overall we operate currently in a northern hemisphere social welfare system there are significant differences that have existed and been shaped by political history that have steered the difference in the development of current social work practice in the UK in the 20th Century.”

The article covers some of the many current questions we ask:
- Are state welfare systems part of the solution or the problem?
- Tragedy and inquiries driving practice:
- Economic and political drivers of change:
- Practice wisdom and knowledge
- Everyone’s lived experience counts
- The growth of Independent Practice
- The growing diaspora of social workers living and working in different countries.
It concludes with a review of how the global axis is changing and why now is the time for us to be co-building new paradigms in the way we work.