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A Very Damning Account

An examination of the statements behind the question—‘Can social work survive?’

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2018

David McGee
David McGee*
Affiliation:
Social Worker in Mental Health, Royal South Hants Hospital
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A very damning account of the social work profession has been written by Brewer and Lait, a profession which the authors perceive to be a ramshackle collection of idiosyncratic practitioners who clumsily bump and grind their way through the least fortunate sections of our society, doing untold harm. It would be gratifying to dismiss what they say; but social work after just over ten years in its present form is sorely in need of critical examination. We cannot ignore our critics, and it is imperative that we should put our house in order. Should social work survive is the real question being asked here—a political statement of a quite contentious nature.

Type
Research Article
Information
Bulletin of the Royal College of Psychiatrists , Volume 5 , Issue 9 , September 1981 , pp. 162 - 163
Creative Commons
Creative Common License - CCCreative Common License - BY
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Copyright
Copyright © Royal College of Psychiatrists, 1981

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