Implementing Community Social Work from a Social Services Department

Abstract

Malcolm Payne is Chief Executive to the Liverpool Council for Voluntary Service, having previously worked in the Probation and After-care Service and various social services departments and as Lecturer in Social Work at Bristol University. He is the author of two books: Power, authority and responsibility in social services and Working in teams. SUMMARY The proposal in the Barclay Report on the role and tasks of social workers for 'community social work' as a strategy for social services departments is assessed. The writer argues that the voluntary sector has significant roles and priorities outside the social services, that government priorities for encouraging the voluntary sector emphasise other areas of work and that involving voluntary groups in official initiatives may be seen as going against the independence of some groups. The motivation of groups and individuals in the voluntary sector will be important, but various research and practice shows that individuals, informal groups and mutual aid groups may be difficult to involve in a substantial programme. The climate of opinion in the field of volunteering and the social background of clients' neighbours may provoke hostility. Experience of community work suggests that official initiatives may lead to resistance and conflict rather than involvement, and there may be ethical problems with compulsion.

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 1 citations exist upstream.

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.