Karen Healy profoundly challenges, in the context of the postmodernity of late capitalism, many of the assumptions upon which the critical tradition in socia

Contemporary practice theories assume that social workers have the capacity to enact their work as a thoughtful, analytic and creative activity, and that these capacities are, or should be, recognized and supported in human services organizations. However, emerging evidence from the front line of social services practice suggests that, despite public policy rhetoric emphasizing service quality, the practice environment is characterized by a lack of support for, if not outright hostility towards, professional social work. In this paper we will consider how the social work profession can collectively improve the recognition of their work as professional activity. We discuss the deprofessionalization of social services work and analyse collaborative strategies for achieving recognition, specifically the formation of professional associations and trade unions. We will focus our discussion on emerging convergences between new professionalism and the new political unionism. Finally, we consider how these new developments can enhance the industrial and cultural recognition of human services work.

Social welfare professions have been highly exposed to the corrosive effects of New Public Management (NPM) on professional identity and influence. In this article, I argue that ambivalence from within the social welfare professions, and in society more generally, towards professional recognition of these occupations enables NPM to enact an agenda of de-professionalization. Further, gendered assumptions about professional identity, and particularly about the caring professions in which there is a high concentration of women workers, are pivotal to the destabilization of the professional social welfare workforce. I draw on examples from the Queensland Department of Child Safety workforce reforms to illustrate how NPM discourse intersects with, and is enabled by, well-established ambivalence towards professional recognition within and outside the social welfare professions. I suggest that a gender analysis can deepen our understanding of the substantial impact of NPM on social welfare professions and can enable these professions to develop effective responses to the substantial threats they now face.

Participatory action research (PAR) is widely endorsed by social workers as consistent with their commitment to social justice. This paper critically appraises the applicability of PAR to the diverse organizational and cultural contexts of social welfare work. The author interrogates participatory researchers’ assertions about power, method and action. Questions are raised about the use of PAR in the Asia-Pacific region where a cultural aversion to the public expression of dissent is frequently encountered. The author argues that some of the limitations of PAR can be overcome by radically opening it to insights from practice and from postmodern theories.