Social Work and the Making of Social Policy provides critical theoretical and empirical insights into the heightened role of social work in the formulation of social policy. The book exploits three stages of the policy cycle as a primary analytical framework for integrating the chapters’ recurring themes: problem definition and agenda-setting, policy formulation and decision making, and social work and implementation. The curated chapters covered a wide range of case studies on how social work influences the dynamics of social policy making in seven welfare state nations, allowing the findings to be easily generalized and applied to other welfare state country scenarios. The case study materials are extensive, including a wide range of topics involving social policy issues such as anti-poverty measures, trafficking, labor market activation and child protection programs, all of which are examined through the combined lenses of social work and social policy theories.
The first section discusses the concerns and the broader policy agenda bridging social work and social policy. The chapters provide insights on how social work is becoming increasingly relevant in influencing and defining social policy as a result of perceived societal problems and social workers’ growing responsibilities. Structural poverty is highlighted as one of the difficulties encountered not only by clients, but also, to some extent, by social workers, despite their tendency to downplay it. This austerity constraints make it difficult for social workers to properly perform their duties and restricts their ability to participate in policy reforms. The chapters argue for the need for social workers to participate in policymaking and policy evaluation through legislative improvements and key political office positions in order to better define the problems and achieve the political reform agenda.
The second section deals with various sorts of actors in the field of social work to enhance policy formulation and decision-making processes, and is probably the most engaging part of the book. The chapters present empirical evidence of social work engagement in political actions, such as how the cash transfer programs were reformed in response to social worker feedback. The considerable roles of social worker academic were also recognized, since their relatively secure employment and well-connected standing with politicians give them influential voices in policy arenas. Other issues were raised in the case of a labor market activation program in which the placement officers in charge were borderline functioning as social workers due to the required assessment of their clients’ livelihood problems. This is a difficult scenario because they are not trained as professional social workers, thus they must rely on their own intuition to cope with such issues. It also relates to the contestation that social workers are frequently required to strictly comply to the intentions of legislators and employers, limiting their ability to influence policy. The chapters acknowledge that social movement and social worker organizations have made significant standing in public discourse.
The third section demonstrates how social works are implemented in the context of relevant social policies. The chapters emphasize the key sources of limitation and limits faced by social workers via the perspectives of “implementers” of social policy such as the conflict between professional responsibility and personal intuition. Several case works are reviewed, ranging from child protection and labor market activation reforms to anti-poverty measures. A case study discussed the failure of well-intentioned child protection reform because social workers are unable to translate policy into practice, whereas another study was successful in transforming ineffective welfare programs into active social policy through the use of cognitive, normative, and emotional approaches by the case workers. The importance of professional certification and sufficient training, leadership and organizational culture, and professional supervision and guidance are all lessons learned from the ambivalent findings. Furthermore, access to external resources is necessary for social workers to fill the institutional gaps when problems to policy implementation arise.
The finest element of this book is the editors’ expertise and in-depth understanding of integrating the subject matters and common themes in the introduction and conclusion parts, which bring together the progressing and hindering features of social work for playing instrumental roles in policy arenas. The different tasks and responsibilities of social workers were studied, ranging from “policy innovators” to “policy implementers” to grassroot social movement players, with unique perspectives and critical lessons learned. Nevertheless, feedback and varied degrees of appraisal from multiscale stakeholders, including end-users and involved political actors would be critical to be incorporated in the intricate process of social policy making, which was a topic that the book barely touched on. Despite the paucity of end-user perspectives and representation in policymaking, as well as the limited range of evaluation instruments (the majority of case studies used qualitative methodology), this book is exemplary in bridging the gap between the fields of social work and social policy.
