Occupy movements and critical social work

A tweet from James picks me out but asks anyone about the connections between the occupy London, Sydney and elsewhere movements and critical social work.

james_scwk James

How to mix radical or critical #socialwork with #occupyLondon #ows #occupySydney? @MalcolmPayne? Anyone? thoughts? yfrog.com/hwplfscj

This is James’s profile: he is based in Sydney.

James @james_scwk Sydney

A tweeter who tweets about social working without tweeting on behalf of my employer. Seeking a balance of social, work & existential...ness.

Twitter doesn’t give me the space for a full answer, hence this more extended post.

I think the occupy movement (which aims to draw attention to the responsibility of financial institutions for the austerity programmes of many Western governments and the damage this is doing to the well-being of many people across the world, especially people  inn poverty or vulnerable to economic and political pressure) connects with critical social work in three main ways.

First, it draws our attention, as critical social workers, to an important, taken-for-granted aspect of our capitalist societies: the role of financial institutions. They are self-important and politically important because of the money they make in taxes for the exchequers. As usual, the issue is not a simple one; there are tensions here. The UK, which is particularly dependent on the finance industry for the success of our economy, replies significantly on taxes from this source, and this has helped to pay for a lot of social improvements over the past few years. But any sector that pays for public services is liable to gain too much political power; its interests become too important in the political reckoning. Their taxes are only an instrument for public betterment; they’re not entitled to special consideration; if they become corrupt, if their use of power is overweening, they should be slapped down just like anyone else who becomes too big for their boots. Nicely, courteously but surely. We should all know that if our expectations step over the boundary of reasonable reward for our contribution that our true value will be asserted by the people around us.

Second, radical, rather than critical, social work places a special focus on alliance with mass movements that truly represent submerged strands in the power structures of our societies. We usually can’t do this as part of our social work jobs, because these are usually for governments and the people that elect governments are entitled to a reasonable degree of personal neutrality in how we pursue our jobs. But we can as part of our personal lives and as part of other allegiances, such trade unions and community groups.

Third, critical social work values public movements that help to make our clients aware of issues hidden in the taken-for-granted aspects of our society. If we can find the space to talk about the occupy movements with clients, we can engage them in understanding a bit better what is happening to them and helping them make appropriate decisions about how to react. We might do this is young people in care, with women coping with family stresses, unemployed people, especially those who are disabled or recovering from mental illness, with older people coping with reduced flexibility in their incomes, all as a result of the global economic crisis. This might help them make decisions about how to act, how to manage their money, to see whether they need to change their life strategies. Awareness of what might be happening in a world that is a bit distant from their everyday struggles can help them to make sense of what is happening to them, and ‘making sense’ is a really important aspect of the personal help that social workers can offer people who struggle with the everyday. Movements such as ‘occupy’ can dramatise and focus answers to a feeling of ‘not-understanding’ that excludes many clients from living their lives satisfactorily.