Social Policy Making in Social Work Although

Social Policy Making in Social Work

Although social agencies and social work professionals can help shape policies and practices, the nature of the services delivery system and the legitimacy of social work as a profession is established by public social policy. In many ways, the current policy is antithetical to social work values. An understanding of social policy is vital for engaging practically with social work values, dealing with political and ethical questions about responsibility and rights, as a society. Though social justice is a central goal of the social work profession, the actual involvement of social workers in social change is very limited. Moreover, training in social policy and policy practice in schools of social work is minimal. As such, practitioners lack the tools needed to analyze existing social problems and policies and to enable them to intervene in the policy process in order to better serve the needs of service users (Weiss & Katan, 2006).

Core Foundation

Many have argued that in this process social work have gradually been drained from its core foundations and turned into an administrative and managerial practice. The trend in contemporary societies is for the reinforcement of an instrumental rationality focused on competitiveness, efficiency, efficacy and result-oriented practice; this rationale is not alien for social work, which more and more is influenced by this kind of inspiration. The consequences have been diverse and topics like the de-professionalization thesis, managerialism, and evidence- based practice are definitely in social work agenda. In this sense, new influences in social policy have a strong implication in social work and, otherwise, the ways in which social workers face the mission of the profession strongly condition the horizons to which social policy can aim at. The new directions in social policy toward activation, individualization, contractualization, and so forth are key elements for the comprehension of today's social work practice.

Diverse Social Models

Given that both the United States and Canada received much of their social welfare systems from Great Britain, it is remarkable how different they are. Differences in history, culture, resources, and national governments does account for some of these variations. Many of the innovations that Canada has created would work well in the United States, but others may not be quite so good a fit. In any case, it is important to understand how Canadian social welfare policy functions (McNutt, 2010). The European social model, with the welfare system and social policy, became the hegemonic framework for social work with the necessary implications for the structure of social work practice. Hence, many purport that it is not possible to talk about social work changes without referring to present social policy trends, and to talk about transformation of the welfare systems without taking into account its implications for social work.

Conclusion