SOCIAL WORK’S CHANGING IDENTITIES

Malcolm Payne
Professor of Applied Community Studies, Manchester Metropolitan University,
799, Wilmslow Road, Didsbury, Manchester, UK, M20 2RR.
Telephone: 0161-247 2098. fax 0161-247 6844. Email: m.payne@mmu.ac.uk

Social work’s identities are changing, because all identities are changing, because our
ideas about what identity is are changing. These social changes may be a problem because
traditionally we have thought that identity gives us security and certainty. However, the
world is changing very fast, and old certainties not longer protect and offer security. My
approach, therefore, is that we should welcome and try to understand changing identities
because they offer an opportunity to deal with the changing world in a new and different way.
Changes in the meaning of identity offer us the challenge to redesign our own identities and
help our clients redesign theirs.
This paper is divided into three parts. In the first part, I discuss how changes in
society have created changes in the way in which people understand and deal with identities,
calling on some of the current sociological debate. The argument is that globalisation in post-
industrial societies is changing the way we understand ourselves and other people both as
individuals and collectively.
The second section applies some of these ideas to understanding the changing
identities of social work. Social work is a shared collective identity, and there are features of
it mean that it has been particularly affected by social changes in identity.
The third section identifies some developments in thinking about social work. My
argument here is that, for reasons that I shall explain, we have to go out actively and develop
a new representation of social work’s identity: a ‘redesign’ for social work. I will outline
something of what I think the redesign might look would like. However, I’m not going to say
too much about that, because you are bringing to your conference during these two days your
own experiences of social work and developments in it. In a very real sense, therefore, you
are beginning the redesign with the innovations you are making in your work. What I seek to
persuade you of is the need to use your creativity in social work to set out explicitly to change
social work’s identities, how you see it and how others outside social work see it.

1 Changing identities
What is identity and is it important? There are broadly two different kinds of identity:
personal identity and social, collective or group identity. They are connected, because
identity is relational, that is, people can only understand an individual or group identity by
referring to its relationships with other identities. A collective or group such as the social
work profession may have an identity, but it will depend on how other groups construct their
identities and whether it is accepted by outsiders as well as insiders.

Personal identity
There are two aspects of personal identity: one aspect is inside us, a personal
consciousness of ourselves as a human being, our ‘self’. The second aspect is how we build
this up through relationships with others. Babies start with biological needs and capacities,
 Social Work’s Changing Identities - 2

including a capacity to learn. Learning requires continuity, so that people may keep the same
picture of the world and of themselves in relationship to it (Archer, 1995).
This continuous self is the beginnings of an identity, which develops through more
reflexive relationships with the world. Reflexive relationships are a cycle in which we are
affected by our perceptions of the world and it changes as we have an impact on things
outside ourselves. An important origin of these ideas is George Herbert Mead, who described
personal identity as a continuous conversation between our internal conception of ourselves,
which he called ‘I’, and our perception of others views of us, which he called ‘me’. Our ‘self’
emerged and continuously adapted itself from this interaction between in the internal and
external (Craib, 1992: 84).

Social, collective or group identity

The second aspect of our personal identity, then, is social, and it is also reflexive
(Archer, 1995). It is also, like the self, continuous because networks of relationships form
into patterns, and become groups and collectivities; that is, collections of people that have
some kind of continuing relationship with each other. These collectivities might include
families, local communities, schools, employment, profession or nation. We have a stake in
these collectivities and they partly form our view of ourselves by giving opportunities for
social activity and by constraining how we take up our social roles. Sometimes, we call on
resources from them in dealing with the world. Personal identity represents the collectivity or
group and affects the collectivity (Archer, 1995).
For example, in one hospital social work team that I was involved with, one social
worker left and was replaced by another. The first social worker was efficient at making
arrangements for the quick discharge of patients back to their homes and sorting out practical
problems. The new social worker was more concerned with helping patients work out their
family relationships and personal responses to their illness. She did the practical things as
well, but the doctors and nurses gained a rather different view of social work. The new social
worker’s professional identity was slightly different, and the identity of social work in that
hospital team changed as a result. However, her supervisor did not agree with the approach
that she took, because it took up too much time, and the objective of getting patients
discharged quickly was not achieved so well. As a result, the collectivity that she represented
and that gave her the social role of social worker and resources, in the form of the job, official
position and professional support forced her to change to some extent the way she did her
social work and give a higher priority to discharge work.

Summary – personal and social identity

To summarise, personal identity comprising a continuous sense of self interacting
with responses to others’ perceptions, leads to two different sorts of social interactions.
People become part of collective interests, and also carry out social roles. The roles are
moulded by both the personal identity and collective interests (Parker, 2000: 84). People have
a stake in their collectivities and their collectivities have a stake in both the personal identity
and the social roles that their stakeholders carry out. Castells (1997: 22) summarises it,
neatly: ‘…identity is the process by which a social actor recognizes itself and constructs
meaning primarily on the basis of a given cultural attribute or set of attributes, to the
exclusion of a broader reference to other social structures.’ This quotation emphasises two
further points. The first is that identity is about the meanings that people accord to themselves
and their social relations. The second emphasises that in selecting some cultural or social
interests for the most important groups that they identify with, they will, of course, exclude
other alternative reference points and interests. For example, social workers who focus
strongly on professional identity may exclude other professions’ views or client perspectives
 Social Work’s Changing Identities - 3

on their professional actions. They may say, or act as though, that doctors or lawyers do not
understand what social work is all about, or that clients should accept the value of their
professional knowledge and skill, and not question too much.

Problems with the idea of identity

There are at least three problems with this account of personal identity. First, there is
a dispute about whether this single, continuous self exists (Hollinger, 1994). Some
psychologists and postmodern thinkers propose that the self is variable, unfixed and has many
different characteristics and possibilities within it. These possibilities interact with each other,
and come out in different ways, depending on what happens to the person. In that way, our
identity is changeable. The problem is how to regard this. Modernist thinkers tend to argue
that without the security of a clear identity our character becomes fragmented, confused and
disordered. Postmodernist writers dwell on the possibilities for change, both for individuals
and groups, deriving from multiple elements in personal identity. We can see this at work by
looking at the second difficulty.

Legitimising identity
The second problem is that because of changes in society, the process by which
identities, particularly social identities, are created has been changing in recent years. In the
past, dominant organisations and interests in society had the most influence in establishing
identities; Castells (1997: 8) calls this legitimising identity. They did this as part of the
process of maintaining authority and control in an organised society. The structure of society,
traditionally, had a strong influence on our social roles and our identity. Identities were given
or, the sociological term, ascribed, because of the social roles occupied. A woman who
married became a wife and later usually a mother, and there were common assumptions about
how they should behave.
In recent years, social relations have changed and identities are no longer so strongly
controlled and ascribed, but they are patterned by how we understand the whole set of
relationships in which people participate. So, to continue with the same example, a woman
has a much wider range of choices of gender behaviours than the traditional wife and mother
models. Even if she takes these on, she has opportunities to live through a range of different
kinds of wife and mother roles. She works these out for herself, participating in debates
within society about these roles and social interactions with people around her. These debates
and interactions form a discourse, in which she continuously modifies her identity as she
experiences her life, other people’s reactions to her way of living, and the debates and
discussion that she hears about. This freedom is constrained by the requirement to have
identities in the first place, because this helps people to deal with a complex world (Hovland,
1996).

Resistance identity
However, in recent years, important identities have been established as part of a
process of resistance to legitimising identities: to Castells (1997: 8), resistance identities. So
women have struggled against patriarchy, ethnic groups have tried to establish their cultures
in countries where there has been immigration, especially where they are in a minority,
disabled people have tried to establish their own culture and power, gay and lesbian people
come out; there are many examples. In all these cases, creating a distinctive identity is part of
the process of resisting control and domination by powerful groups.
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Project identity and identity politics

Creating a strong identity as part of a resistance can only take a group so far. It can
become exclusionary. Therefore, the next step is to try to incorporate these new resistance
identities into projects for social change. These are project identities: created to achieve
social purposes (Castells, 1997: 8; Turner, 1996: 7). In doing this, groups are trying to
exercise power through these new identities to interrogate and criticise uses of power by
dominant groups. Because these activities involve the use of power, they have a political
content, and these debates have become known as ‘identity politics’, through which groups
excluded from mainstream political action try to have an impact on society by constructing an
identity around which their political activism is established.
One of the important things about identity politics is that the personal identity of the
people involved is closely associated with their political actions; as feminist writers would
say ‘the personal is political’. Moreover, these identities are ‘natural’, in the sense that they
draw on personal characteristics of the people involved, their female gender, their ethnic
state, the disabled body. In this, they contrast with the rather artificial character of many of
the legitimising identities, which are constructed, ideas such as identities that come from
nationhood, from language and from culture, or identity associated with social groups
(Wagner, 1996).

Identity and globalisation

The third problem with the account of identity that I have been describing is that
social changes arising from globalisation in the past twenty years has changed our view of the
world; it makes the world seem smaller. It puts us all in touch with a myriad of different
cultures and lifestyles and it makes some cultures seem dominant, with everything else less
important. Through the internet, we can find all sorts of information, but much of it comes
from the USA and is provided in (American) English. Local or national economies seem to
be buffeted by worldwide changes, so our countries join ‘regional’ economic groupings like
the European Union or worldwide groupings like the World Trade Organisation. Being
involved in bodies such as these, we seem to lose the freedom to make decisions on our own,
based on our own information and on our own culture. Many people cannot identify with
these organisations, or with their decisions, or, perhaps, with their aims or methods.
A useful definition of globalisation refers to ‘…the compression of the world and the
intensification of consciousness of the world as a whole.’ (Robertson, 1992: 8). Globalisation
changes the relationships between time and space. Through television and the internet, events
on the other side of the world are as close to people as what happens in the next street.
This is very important because place-identity is a crucial part of sustaining personal
identity. Place gives ‘secure moorings in a shifting world’ (Harvey, 1990: 302). A distinctive
organisation of space creates a framework within which identities gain security. A map or
aerial view of a town will show railway lines, major roads or waterways, which divide up the
town and create different experiences in different communities for people who live in
different parts of the town. However, people who have quicker and more frequent contacts
with people on the other side of the world than in their own town have an identity that is less
clear, both to others and to themselves.
In a globalised world, people and social experiences lose their personalised
characteristics because people have ‘contacts’ rather than relationships with each other and
share some personal experiences, but generally not the kind of personal experiences that form
identities. Many internet contacts, for example, are work contacts with people who are rarely,
if at all, met, and so may not form our central identity.
How, then, can people build and maintain an identity in these kinds of relationships.
To understand this, we can compare many relationships with manufactured products. Farmers
 Social Work’s Changing Identities - 5

grow the plants or care for the animals that provide their food. They can see the connection
between the plant and the food or the animal and the joint. However, city-dwellers buy most
of their food in packaged or manufactured form. They cannot transform its identity by putting
something of themselves into it. In markets, relationships are not personal and are not
reflexive. Therefore, products have to be given something to make it special. This may be the
sense that it is traditional, or trendy or good value. However, this is not necessarily an
identifiable characteristic, it is rather a surface image that has been created. In markets, image
establishes identity (Harvey, 1990: 288). As personal relationships become more generalised
and more distant, people have come to rely on image rather than on personal identity. The
British prime minister, Tony Blair, wears informal clothes, speaks informally and carries his
guitar in part to give us an image that is different from his predecessor who wore formal suits
and seemed rather pompous and boring. Images, however, can be very ephemeral, they
change quickly, they are inconstant, unlike identities. In recent years, people have got used to
dealing in images, rather than identities.
All these changes mean that identities are less clear and continuous, more flickering
images on the screen. They no longer offer the certainty and security of the traditional,
socially developed forms of personal identity interacting with group and social identities,
ascribed by established social roles and dominant, controlling social structures in societies.
Social identities have become less substantial and clear as a cultural basis for personal
identity, groups have resisted traditional ascription of identity as a form of social control and
have they have begun projects to create alternative forms of identity. Identities have become
attenuated, fragmented and less at the centre of people’s lives.

2 Changing identities in social work

What, then, does this mean for social work? The first question is whether these issues
are relevant to social work at all. Insecurity and fragmentation of identity has always been an
issue for social work and similar occupations. In many countries, social work has not become
established strongly as an accepted profession, there have been many debates about its nature,
and many waves of change in its character. Moreover, social work’s clients have always been
marginalised, battered by events and insecure in the hold on mental health and social
competence. However, the social changes affecting the creation of identity are still important
and indeed have particular implications for social work.

Social work as insecure and ineffectual

The insecure history of social work as a profession places it in a special position, and
so does the position of its clients. The need for personal identity is a crucial matter in
people’s social surroundings. However, this is heightened by the increasing social need in a
fragmented society to establish a strong personal identity. So pressure is applied to complete
a personal sense of oneself. Giddens (1990) argues that where people cannot create a strong,
shared social identity in postmodern society they become seriously isolated; so they search
for identity. There is such a wide range of social experience from many different cultures to
choose from that people strive for greater individuality, greater intimacy and understanding in
relationships. For example, previously, people accepted the official message that adoption
was the creation of a complete, separate new identity. Now, many adoptees see this as a
dislocation in her identity and needs to repair it.
Social work is often presented in this way makes a point about social work itself. It is
presented as pursuing its own official aims, without responding to the client, who invites
engagement, but does not achieve it. Why is social work seen in this ineffectual, disengaged
way, when it is supposed to be a personal service profession?
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Resistance, oppression and reservation

The answer to this question lies in the shift way from and resistance to the ascription
of identities by dominant groups in society. We sometimes think that social work is not a
very powerful profession, but it is, at least in most European countries an established part of
the welfare state, with most social workers being employed as part of the state apparatus.
Moreover, social work is expressly about social control on behalf of the powerful. Therefore,
the more marginalised people are, the more likely they are to be distanced from social work
and resistant to participation. In the film, not only the social worker, but also the applicant
creates the distance. The applicant is from an ethnic minority, applying to the state for a
favour that may not be granted. Both of them recognise this, and the distance arises from it.
The changes in society mean that now traditional roles and prescriptions for behaviour are
less powerful, and people have to make their own choices. The young woman must decide
whether she seeks to complete her identity; previously the law would have denied her this
choice. However, at the same time expert knowledge from someone in a position of authority
is less acceptable as a form of guidance. If the social worker tried to persuade her that she
would be unwise to go on, both know that this would be unacceptable, and so the interaction
between them is uneasy; both the identity of the social worker and the engagement of both is
reserved.

Engaging with resistance and project identities

It seems, then, that we need a changed social work that responds to some of these
trends of resistance and fragmentation in society. We have to work out how to engage with
resistance and project identities in a new way. An identity as a profession, as a part of the
state, as part of an organised agency no longer makes contact with people in isolated and
fragmented social relations and marginalized and excluded groups. Resistance to dominant
definitions of identity is an important feature of how people react to present cultural
experiences, but it is difficult to participate in such resistance as part of the official provision
of the welfare state. This was, of course, always so, as enthusiasts for community work and
the radical social work of the 1970s discovered. We have become the enemy, not the ally.
What within social work’s identity, therefore, offers an alternative approach? Is the
answer to move towards the therapeutic social work of some of the elite American agencies,
or the more authoritarian social and family structures of eastern cultures? How would we
make such moves, in any case, since in Europe, we are an integral part of the welfare state,
and this brings many benefits, both for social workers and for their clients?

A social construction view of social work

To answer these questions, we can apply some social construction ideas to
understanding how social work creates its identity and might change it. There are three major
points, which need to be examined in greater detail:

Social work is not a given and unchanging construction, it constantly shifts
its nature in response to social changes and changes in related professions.

Social work is not one thing, but a discourse, that is, a collection of
practices and ideas that is constantly in debate.

The debates about social work do not just take place in one social
institution, but in many, and they interact.

Social work’s construction in networks

Rather than see social work as having an essence, an identity that defines its basic
core and creates a filed of activity, it is helpful to see social work as part of a range of
networks. Six networks have an impact on how we see social work (Payne, 2002):
 Social Work’s Changing Identities - 7

Demographic factors affecting its clientele. Social work changes, as its

clientele alters. Clearly, we focus more on children when the number of
children rise, on elders when the proportion of elderly people in the
population rises, on disability when medicine preserves life better, but in
impaired bodies or when new conditions such as HIV-AIDS emerge.

Policy and law. In countries such as ours, where government is an
important player in social provision, service development and social
work’s roles change and progress, as policy and legal changes are made.

Education, training, knowledge and research. Social work’s character
changes as education and training for it develop and as views of the
organisation of knowledge and research change. For example, more
competence-based qualifications using evidence-based practice imply a
more technical and less discretionary form of practice.

Professional organisation. How the occupational group is organised
affects its identity. For example, the character of a group with organised
trade unionism would be different from that of a group where trade union
and professional functions are divided.

Values and political aims. The values represented in a profession have
important consequences for its. For example, individualistic values would
produce a different form of practice from social justice values.

Organisational structure and strategy. The structure of agencies, large and
comprehensive or small and specialised for example, have consequences
for the service.
Obviously, all these different factors interact with each other, but an analysis of these
factors in relation to a particular situation helpfully identifies the major factors affecting a
profession at present. In Britain, for example, almost no changes have taken place in the
structure of education or of agencies for many years, but recently shifts towards alliances
between social care for adults and health care and between child care and education services
are constructing different forms and specialisms of social work. These factors also interact
therefore with the impact of similar factors in related professions. For example, social values
may come to see an issue as a nursing or legal issue, rather than as a social problem, and this
will shift the relative involvement and influence of the occupational groups involved.

Social work’s discourse

Rather than try to see social work as one thing, it is more reasonably represented as
constantly reconstructing itself by rebalancing three elements within its purposes:

Maintaining social order and providing services within the welfare state;

Helping people attain personal fulfilment and power over their lives; and

Stimulating social change (Payne, 1996; 2000).
Focusing on each of these objectives brings a different form of social work. All social
work contains these purposes to some extent. Services lean towards one or the other: local
government social services give priority to providing and improving services, while offering
a certain amount of empowerment and personal growth to clients, and with an eye to
supporting changes in provision in the long-term. A women’s counselling service, might
mainly aim for empowering developments in clients’ control of their lives. A community
work organisation might mainly aim to change housing policy. However, in carrying out their
function, they inevitably include elements of the others. A classic case in Britain is the child
Poverty Action Group, whose main purpose is campaigning for changes in social security
policy which will relieve child poverty, but it also provides welfare rights advice drawing on
its legal expertise and using the experience of its service in its campaigning.
 Social Work’s Changing Identities - 8

These different balances of aim operate at different levels. For example, at the
national or regional level, services may focus on one rather than another objective; particular
agencies within a national system may have a particular priority, and within an agency, every
social work act, while containing elements of all three, will lean towards a particular priority.
For example, if a hospital social worker works with a mentally ill woman to help her re-
establish her life in the community, her main professional purpose may be empowering and
strengthening the woman’s capacities for independent living. In different arenas, her agency
may primarily see this as delivering a service and government policy may be that, delivered
widely, this service may change social perceptions about people who are recovering from
mental illness. Elements of these other purposes will be present in how the worker acts as a
social worker, even though they are not at the forefront of her mind.
By thinking about social work in this way, we are recognising the complexity of what
it contains, trying to use its alternatives, but also creating a clear conception and analysis by
which we can control and explain what we are doing. This account of a constantly changing
social work, rather than a defined and single social work, proposes an identity that is
complex. However, represents what goes on as we act and think in practice more accurately
than trying to designate an identity for social work. Instead of saying: ‘we have defined social
work as…’ we are saying: ‘by our actions, social work is becoming like this…’.

Arenas for discourse

Social work is, thus, formed in complex networks of interaction, balancing different
perspectives on its purposes. Although this analysis represents the complexity and
fragmentation of identity in our globalised world, it does not help us to see how people take
action to have an impact in the formation of identity. To examine this, the analysis needs to
pick up, from the preceding discussion the third aspect of social work’s identity: that it is
formed by reflexive cycles of discourse in different arenas, which interact with one another:

A political-social-ideological cycle;

An agency-professional cycle; and

A client-worker-agency cycle.
These are reflexive cycles, because they involve stakeholders in a constant interaction
influencing each other, they are discourses because they involve both debate and actions,
which also affect each other, and they are arenas, because they represent centres of action and
debate, rather than mutually exclusive cycles. They overlap: for example, the agency
provides the context for and directs clients’ and workers’ interactions, but agencies are also
crucial in professional and academic debate. The form a larger cycle of mutual influence,
which may work in different directions. Services may change because clients make demands
and respond in new ways, because professionals or agencies decide on new forms of practice
or organisation, or because public opinion or political impetus creates changes. For example,
developments in project identity may affect how politicians and public view the role of social
services. The disability movement has campaigned successfully in Britain for a legal change
giving disabled people control of the individual budgets for their personal help. This forces a
change on agencies and professionals. The disability movement has also influenced how
professionals think about disability, giving greater importance to a social model, and
resistance identity stimulated by the disability movement have caused disabled people to
demand to be treated differently by social workers. The impact of each of these participations
in the discourse has influenced the others. The legal change works better where professionals
are committed and where clients demand the service to be delivered in this particular way.
 Social Work’s Changing Identities - 9

Summary – the impact of changing identity in social work

In summary, recent changes in how identities are formed have had an impact on the
lives of social workers’ clients, and consequently on social work. Moreover, it has become
necessary to recognise the complexity of the discourse that forms social work: the networks
within which it is formed, the shifting balance between different objectives and the mutual
influence of the arenas in which our daily actions and wider debates have an impact on the
identity of social work.

3 Redesigning Social Work

That is not all.
Section 2 discussed an analysis of the complex formation of identity and how people
participate as stakeholders in that formation. However, in the present-day world, identity is
no longer a given, but needs to be taken. Unless social work accepts the legitimising identity
constructed by dominant forces in society, it must develop its own resistance identity and
project identity. There is considerable evidence (Hindmarsh, 1992) that social workers come
into this work as part of resistance, to seek change in the status quo. Unlike some other
professions, social work practice is inherently about change, at both individual and collective
levels. To find social work’s project identity, we need to construct a new practice to meet this
change objective. The analysis so far suggests that we are doing this all the time, as we
practice, think and debate about our work. However, much of our talk, inevitably, is
concerned with description; we say: ‘this is what we do…this is what works.’ My purpose in
Part 3 is to place much of the work that seems to be going on into a structure of analysis
which reflects social work’s own identities and begins to build upon these.

Constructing a redesigned social work

Examining table 1, therefore, the left-hand column starts with the three purposes that,
in Part 2, I suggested are balanced within all social work, all social work agencies and all acts
of social work. In the second column, I have set out five perspectives on practice that inform
all social work. These move from activities that emphasise service delivery, through those
that emphasise empowerment and personal fulfilment to those that emphasise transformation;
none of these activities exclude any those purposes - it is a question of emphasis. The third
column indicates something of the social work approach, which would follow from taking up
this perspective. The fourth column indicates some examples of the kind of service that social
work would seek to provide as a result.
How can we see these perspectives as forming the identity of social work? They
constitute claims about the fundamental and distinctive nature of what social workers do.
The welfare rights perspective emphasises that social work sees welfare benefits and
services as a right, as an essential part of a civilised society, and sees it as a professional
responsibility to pursue those rights on behalf of clients. Making provision for this is integral
to social work services, rather than a desirable extra, and services are planned to include this
element of seeking people’s rights. Most other personal services, such as counselling,
medicine, nursing or psychology focus on the practitioner’s own treatment or related services.
If they want to have a general check on whether someone is receiving all the benefits that
they should be getting, they will usually refer them to a social worker. Thus, the welfare
rights role is a recognised and valued service. It is also important for social work, because it
is the basis of much else that social work does. For one thing, as a practical provision that
concentrates on rights rather than an indistinct form of personal help, it encourages people to
make contact with social work, when they might otherwise be cautious about doing so. It
means that, in a fragmented and isolating society, people can keep their distance if they want
to, but still engage in valid social work. National systems that integrate social security
 Social Work’s Changing Identities - 10

payments into social welfare provision and provide social work alongside it implement this
perpsective directly. Once people gain confidence in the social worker, they may be prepared
to call for more complex personal services.
Second, the rights perspective that social work takes is crucial. At a time when
political movements favour liberal individualism, and suggest that people should look after
themselves, insure themselves for risks, take responsibility for their families and
communities, social work emphasises that this does not work for many. People with inherited
medical conditions or experiencing serious social deprivation cannot insure themselves, and
do not have the resources to care for themselves. Social work’s emphasis on welfare rights is
an integral aspect of our approach to social issues. People’s rights to a reasonable standard of
welfare are not an option, as many right-wing politicians would like to suggest they are an
essential to any civilised society.
Third, therefore, meeting welfare rights needs efficiently is a fundamental service in
any civilised country and it is part of the social work contribution to society. An example that
demonstrates this is disaster aid, or in very poor underdeveloped countries, the
acknowledgement that dealing with basic poverty, starvation and helplessness is an essential
first step in social development. This is easy to forget in European countries with a well-
established infrastructure, where social security and relief of poverty or homelessness is very
much a residual part of the state’s services, since most people are provided for by
employment in an active economy. It may be residual most of the time, but it is nevertheless
basic and remains so. For example, Britain experienced a great deal of flooding last winter,
and from time to time some disaster occurs such as an aeroplane crash. People in Western
societies expect that the services can turn out and manage the personal consequences of these
events for their citizens. Such times make clear that this role is basic to civilisation, even
though it is fortunately rare to have to bring it into play in advanced economies.
The user participation perspective forms part of the identity of social work because
its actions are holistic, when we compare them with other professions. Other professions still
primarily focus on their expert role, providing information or expert interventions. As people
have become less deferential to professionals over the last few decades, they have become
more open and democratic. This perspective speaks directly to the sort of identity issues
discussed in this paper. People in societies where they are isolated, excluded and part of
fragmented social relations need to be integrated as stakeholders within the practice of help
that is offered to them. Identity processes in present-day society do not allow social workers
to prescribe their clients’ actions and objectives. However, this is a participation approach
because social worker must also be drawn into action with their clients if they are to be
effective. Distancing themselves from clients, being neutral about their objectives will lead to
the failure of social work.
The social model of explanation distinctively signifies social work. Even if they know
about and respond to the social origins of the problems that they deal with, other professions
focus on individual explanations and operate on a ‘cure’, therapeutic or educational model of
what they are doing. Social work typically goes out of its way to invest in social networks
and listen to explanations of the problems that we deal with which go beyond the scientific
into the interpersonal and social realms of explanation. This is a crucial contribution that
social work makes to reintegrating fragmented social relations. A definition of the client’s
problem that says: ‘You are an offender,’ or ‘You are impaired,’ takes the person as a
damaged individual. To say: ‘We are dealing with offending behaviour to help your social
integration…’ and ‘We are overcoming social factors that prevent you from leading a
satisfactory life…’ is a response to excluding and fragmenting social relations.
The family and community involvement perspective is integral to social work in a way
that is not true of related professions. Most professions, such as medicine, nursing or
 Social Work’s Changing Identities - 11

psychology, focus on a selected patient or client and see their primary work as being for and
about that patient. They take into account the impact of family or community limitations on
their work and they may keep relatives informed, but they do not see it as their primary
purpose to integrate individuals with their family and community networks. Other professions
have a particular function, such as education or accountancy. In every case, other
professionals would turn to social work to have an assessment done to inform their work
about family and community matters relevant to their focus. They would also turn to social
workers to intervene in family and community situations that affected their patients or pupils.
The nearest similar role is priests and other religion and spiritual professionals. To go further,
social work calls on links with other professionals as an essential part of its work. Again, by
taking this perspective, social work seeks to extend and build links within social networks
against the fragmenting tendencies of present-day societies.
Finally, social justice is integral to social work. One outcome of this focus is the
strong leadership that social work has provided for focusing on anti-discriminatory practice.
This links back to the concern with social models of explanation, family and community as
well as individual outcomes, and the welfare rights perspective. Social work, with these
perspectives integral to its work, inevitably responds to marked injustices of this kind with
general social responses as well as individualised help and service provision. To be
concerned about justice is to be concerned with the impact of clients and services on others,
and not to focus on the needs of our clients and our service alone. Thus, a social work service
for people with severe behaviour disorders deals with the consequences for the victims of
their violence, or for their families of their destructive behaviour. Other services focus mainly
on the patient or their own skills and responsibilities.

Conclusion
Much of what is discussed here is what social work would already aspire to, at its
best. It is a resistance to many of the aspects of present-day society that are most damaging to
the people we work with. If that is so, why is our identity so much under attack? Why are we
so uncertain about what we offer to the societies in which we work?
The answer to this issue derives from the nature of identity in present-day societies: it
does not just describe social work, it gives meaning to it. Legitimising identity, from
dominant groups and social institutions, no longer gives social work a clear identity, because
their legitimation is often contested. It is particularly contested by the powerless groups that
are the focus of social work, as they construct new identities around resisting oppressive
identities that the powerful want to ascribe to them. Powerless groups have begun to
incorporate resistance identities into new forms of identity, which develop social structures to
recognise and incorporate their participation within them. Excluded groups no longer accept
the oppression of identities created by the powerful; they seek the construction and
acceptance of their own identities.
Social work is complex and incorporates many social groups and collectivities that are
part of it and that have stakes in it. A social construction approach to understanding social
work emphasises analysing the many factors in its discourse. Discourse always includes both
action and debate. In present-day society, change comes from action, but debate is required as
part of the action to define and identify what the importance and social meaning to us and to
others. To change the discourse of social work, social workers must act, and they must give
meaning to their actions.
This means working together on their project identity. It is not enough to understand
how society is complex and changing. The changes that social workers are making must be
grasped. Their project must be to put them into a new design for social work. Social work
must be actively redesigned, rather than be carried along with social change. Social work
 Social Work’s Changing Identities - 12

conferences offer the opportunity to review and develop identity from action, as participants
discuss, discover and renew their work with colleagues.
That is why it is not enough to resist the pressures towards fragmentation and
uncertainty in present-day societies, and to help our clients resist them. It is not enough to
understand the complexity of our lives, of their lives and the many factors that construct our
identities and theirs. Our identity must include a project. A project requires us not just to
understand how identities are changing, not just to act, not just to practice well and improve
practice, but to give new meaning to social work. Social work as we know it can be, should
be and will be, if we seize the opportunity for thought, for action and for a redesigned
identity.
 Social Work’s Changing Identities - 13

Table 1 Redesigning social work

Aim Social work The social work approach Service consequences

perspective
Service Welfare rights Benefits and services are a Welfare rights provision
provision right for clients, which Effective planning for
should be actively pursued services
on their behalf
User participation Clients to participate and if Choices offered, where
possible direct the services possible
they receive and the way Wishes and values
they receive them respected
Social model Medical, behavioural or Concern for social
criminal ‘problems’ may influences
produce problems in Respond to social impact of
Empower- people’s lives, or may be ‘problems’
ment influenced by social
experiences
Family and People live in families and Concern for impact on
community communities, whose interests family and community
involvement in and concerns for particular Concern for family and
individuals and need to be community influences
taken into account
Social justice Many people have Avoid labelling
‘problems’ or are ‘difficult’ Equality in service
because of the social provision
divisions and social Anti-oppressive practice
structures that have Empowerment -
Transform- constructed their life compensation for lack of
ation experience life opportunities
 Social Work’s Changing Identities - 14

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