Bill Jordan and Mark Drakeford are both well-known and highly respected social policy and social work analysts and activists. Bill Jordan has been writing about these subjects for over forty years, and there are many social work educators, students and practitioners, including me, who have cause to thank him for the humane, insightful approach to understanding individuals’ troubles that he has advocated throughout this time. His message is not to blame people for their problems but to understand them in a wider context of poverty and inequality, and to find ways of intervening creatively at community and policy levels, not focusing narrowly on trying to control the behaviour of the individuals and their families. Mark Drakeford manages to combine being Professor of Social Policy at Cardiff University with being a Labour member of the National Assembly for Wales, and in March 2013 he became the Minister for Health and Social Services. He has an equally strong commitment to arguing for the bigger picture. These are truly impressive credentials, but I do not think that this book will count as one of either's finest achievements.

The book holds that the global economic crisis of 2008 onwards has created ‘an entirely new challenge to social policy, social work and the relationship between them’ (p. 1). It argues that in the wake of the crisis, a ‘new authoritarianism’ is emerging in which two vital features of social policy, income redistribution and social care, are being redeployed ‘to enforce intensified exploitation at work and welfare discipline in society’ (p. 2). It holds that social work is in danger of being incorporated into the frontline of these developments, but maintains that an alternative future is possible, in which social work rediscovers its emancipatory and community-based roots, and plays its part in creating new ways of living based on cooperation rather than competition and on ‘quality of life rather than quantity of possessions’ (p. 16).

To tackle problems of poverty, income inequality, un/under-employment and family care commitments from a collective and empowerment point of view, rather than an authoritarian one, the authors call for the introduction of a ‘basic income’ (a policy that Bill Jordan has supported in previous publications over many years). To tackle the problems of poor quality and underfunded social care services, notably for older and disabled people, the authors call for the adoption of Dilnot's proposals for funding long-term care (Commission on Funding of Care and Support, 2011) and the creation of a National Care Service (p. 181). More than that, they call for the rediscovery of compassion and care, and a new awareness of interdependence and intergenerational justice. This will entail a re-valuing of older and disabled people for their contributions to social and cultural life, not just their economic utility, and more investment to support the younger generation.

It is an inspiring vision, but unfortunately not well argued for. The book offers many tantalisingly brief examples and anecdotes, but in general there is a lack of detailed evidence, sustained analysis and coherent argument. The blurb on the back cover describes the book as ‘lively and accessible’, and that is certainly true in so far as it covers many diverse topics, jumping from one to another at great pace, but rarely slowing things down for in-depth exposition or careful referencing.

The ‘liveliness’ means that ideas are sometimes raced through skimpily, or bolted together in ways that do not really bear close examination. A striking example of the former is that we get the history of human cooperation, from hunter-gatherers to the present day, in three sides. (An exception is chapter 4, which gives detailed and useful accounts of the collapse of the Southern Cross care home business in 2011, and the Mid-Staffordshire NHS Trust care standards scandal, 2007 onwards.) As an example of the latter, the ‘Arab spring’ uprisings of 2011 are mentioned on several occasions, but to try to link them first with protest marches about public sector cuts in the UK and then to the August 2011 riots in some English cities (as on p. 63) seems to me grossly inappropriate – the social and political contexts, motivations and risks of participating are totally different. Broad comparisons can sometimes be revealing and thought-provoking, but these are misleading and insulting to exceptionally brave protesters in the middle East and north Africa.

As regards social work, the balancing of care and control has always been at its core, and I am not convinced that it has become more authoritarian in the last five years. The picture is much more ambiguous, and the usefulness of the connections and parallels drawn in the book is again a problem. One aspect is an underlying tension about how narrowly or widely to define ‘social work’. The authors discuss the role of ‘personal advisers’ on welfare-to-work schemes (Jordan has previously dubbed them ‘enforcement counsellors’), and argue that their tasks are essentially the same as those of social workers (p. 56). From this, they imply that social work is at the frontline of a new coercive approach to welfare – but the fact is, these are not social work jobs. The authors also discuss the ‘troubled families’ programme, aimed at what the government calls (controversially) the 120,000 most problematic families in the country, again holding that this shows the rise of authoritarian social work (p. 173). But actually, this is not a social work programme. The core principles resemble those of social work, and some families are helped to turn their lives round by it, but it is delivered by a different central government department, and it is quite hard to find the term ‘social work’ in the documentation. Some of the staff on the projects may be qualified social workers, but the majority are not. So – what is social work? A broad approach to helping (and controlling) people or a more tightly defined profession? The book points towards this debate, but does not engage with it.

Linked with that, there are questions to be asked about whether a more effective future for social work lies in going back to one part of its past, its roots in community activism, or whether it lies in going forward with proposals for more rigorous training and increased professional competence and confidence (as recommended by the Social Work Reform Board and the Munro Review of Child Protection). Neither is automatically more or less authoritarian than the other: communities can be judgmental and controlling, professionals can be egalitarian and empowering. It would have been good to have discussed whether and how the two routes could be held together.

The book has the hallmarks of having been written and produced in haste. No doubt the authors and publishers saw a gap in the market for an up-to-date book about current social policy, but given the unavoidable time lag between writing and publication, and the pace of policy change at the moment, the book still feels dated in some respects. I am afraid it falls awkwardly between the stools of contemporary comment and considered analysis. There are useful observations about current trends in social policy under the UK's coalition government, but overall I found the book frustrating rather than illuminating.