Communication and Study Skills – Essay Writing

‘Examine the claim that recent changes to the nature, structure and function of the Social Work profession reflect broader shifts in government attitudes to the Welfare State.’

Evidence of a close relationship between politics and the delivery of social services can easily be revealed by studying and contrasting recent changes that have occurred on both sides. Since the establishment of the structure of modern social services in the sixties, they have seemed to evolve in synchronisation with the different parties which have passed at the head of the government. From the Thatcherite ideology of market liberalism to the pseudo non-ideological philosophy of the “Third Way”, the alterations of policies have always provoked a chain-reaction which has not spared the profession of social work. This examination of the nature, the structure and the function of social work and its development aside from rotations in government throughout the last few decades will demonstrate the veracity of Manning’s claim: “Social Policy is inextricably bound up with governments and politics.”

The Seebohm committee was created in 1965 and drew together different elements of social services under the control of one organisation run by local authorities. The Welfare and the Children departments became the basis of the Personal Social Services Department which gained more importance after the establishment of two acts in 1969 and 1970 (the Children Act and the Chronically Sick and Disabled Persons Act). This represented the development of the structure of social services as we know them today. Since then, daily practice of social work in the field has been influenced by the successive political contexts as Kilty and Meenhagan suggest (1995: 446) and the level and the nature of services delivered has been affected by changing policies and redistribution of funding which reflects the interests and perspectives of those in charge of