ESWRA

Workforce Special Interest Group

Date: Wednesday 10th December 2025

Start time: 13:00 GMT / 14:00 CET

Registration link: https://forms.gle/RUoMjEiaC39T6Q219

General Abstract

Symposium Title: Democracy for social workers? Practising social work in neo-liberal contexts: the impact on self, service users and opportunities for resistance and change

Reflecting growing concerns about the impact of social work practice on social workers and service users, this symposium draws on four studies from Romania, the USA, Northern Ireland and an international literature review. These enable consideration of what it means and how it feels to practise social work in neo-liberal contexts, and reports on ways in which social workers, social work students and social work academics are seeking to resist and generate change. Using democracy as the key organising concept and principle, the symposium questions the extent to which democratic values and practices characterise the experience of being a social worker. It argues that an erosion of democracy within social work is manifest in how social workers are treated as individuals and as a professional group. Moreover, it interrogates the feasibility of social workers supporting service users to seek social justice from a basis of relative powerlessness, compromised autonomy and often a sense of professional despondency.

In seeking to redress this, the presentations reflect the democratic value of research with social workers and social work students, for affording primacy to their voice and recording the barriers they encounter in neo-liberal working contexts, including, unmanageable workloads, serious resource constraints, a lack of agency and power, and moral injury arising from being unable to practise in line with the core social work value of social justice, all of which manifest in high levels of stress. The discussions employ a range of theoretical framings to expand on the relationship between social work and democracy. Addressing ‘human sustainability’, the first presentation reports on the experience of Romanian social workers and provides visceral insights into the lived reality of practice in a post-communist state, one that has largely adopted the type of neo-liberal management practices that dominate the social profession internationally. The second presentation reflects on similar problems, this time facing the social work workforce in Northern Ireland. Using the concept of ‘safe staffing’, it contends that the impact of understaffed and over-stretched workforce is felt by not only by social workers but also by the older client group they suport, undermining their democratic rights to effective social care, and arguably representing a form of ageism. The third presentation draws on the history of social work in the United States and highlights how the profession was founded on a commitment to ‘social democracy’, as embodied in the settlement movement. It contrasts the collectivist and rights-based approaches that have characterised much of social work practice with the individualist and de-politicised methods propagated by neo-liberalism. In questioning the possibilities for social work practice within these contexts, it finds that social workers have and continue to find ways to resist, with resistance seen as integral to democracy within the profession. Similarly, the final presentation, which considers the concepts of ‘self-care’ and ‘workplace democracy’, addresses the serious challenges facing social workers but offers a way of conceptualising self-care that embodies values of social justice and supports anti-oppressive practice, both of which are key to social work as a practice of democracy.

1. Title: Social Workers Under Stress: Navigating structural, political, organisational and individual challenges.

Silvana (Bobarnat) Crivoi) 1,2, Florin Lazar1, Georgiana-Cristina Rentea1, Anca Mihai1, Daniela Gaba1, Lucian Alecu3, Ovidiu Pop3, Adrian Luca3, Ana-Maria Mustatea1 1University of Bucharest, Faculty of Sociology and Social Work; 2National Scientific Research Institute for Labour and Social Protection; 3University of Bucharest, The Faculty of Psychology and Education Sciences, Romania.

The social work profession requires strong vocational commitment, but the constant pressure on social workers often undermines their participation in processes that characterise democracy within organizations, including decision-making and contributing to change. Using the lens of ‘human sustainability’ proposed by Docherty et al. (2009), this research explores strategies for improving working conditions and enhancing democratic practices in both public and private social service providers.

Between December 2023 and February 2024, 22 semi-structured interviews were carried out with Romanian qualified social workers focusing on their working conditions and experiences. Our preliminary results highlight that social workers are confronting a professional crisis, characterised by structural and organisational challenges which impact significantly at the individual level. Intensive workloads, work-life imbalance, underpayment, and reduced autonomy lead to discouragement among social workers that further result in their retraction from the processes required to facilitate the organizational renewal the profession urgently requires.

Our study illustrates that when organizations and government are guided by managerialist and post-Fordist principles, the constant and multiple pressures on frontline social workers undermine their active role in the places where they work, and the quality of their working lives. The results show the necessity for organizational and structural change to develop democratic practices for social workers, these practices being one of the key dimensions of human sustainable organizations. The diversity and complexity of social work require institutional internal capabilities to carry out continuous and sustainable change. Liberating, democratic practices would allow social workers to actively contribute to this continuous change process.

2. Title: Safe Staffing in Older People Social Work: The democratic rights of older citizens to access to social work services from a stable workforce

Professor Paula McFadden, University of Ulster, Northern Ireland.

Workforce planning models in social work are less developed than other health and social care disciplines. A research project, commissioned by the Department of Health, Northern Ireland provided baseline analysis to inform ‘safe staffing’ policy and legislation policy and legislative developments expected between 2025-2028.

This presentation focuses on analysis of 80 older people’s social work community teams in Northern Ireland. Analyses of staffing supply and service demands were conducted at individual, team, and regional levels within older people services. Mixed methods were used for scale and in-depth analysis on staffing supply and service demands. A survey collected team level data and 5 focus groups with teams and 12 interviews with front line social workers provided voice to support the analysis of staffing levels and caseload demands. The findings reveals social workers and managers frequently face overwhelming worker-to-caseload ratios, routine use of waiting lists, and team vacancies. The findings indicate that the democratic rights of older people, to a timely, safe and effective service, is likely to be severely impacted by high workloads and delays due to the need for waiting lists, as well as social worker vacancies. This raises broader questions about the priority given to older people within social services and their lack of agency and engagement in shaping service provision. The results underpin the importance of foregrounding social workers’ views when scoping workforce issues so that policy formation is a democratic, evidence-based process.

3. Reclaiming the Democratic Profession in the United States: Social Workers’ Involvement in Resistance

Jessica Toft, Associate Professor; Elin Amundson, PhD Student, and Channel Lowery, PhD Student, University of Minnesota, USA.

In response to early US industrialization, social workers founded settlement houses to facilitate ‘social democracy’ to workers (Addams 1902, 1910), enabling social activity and access to learning. These reformers also supported labor unions to challenge dangerous and exploitive work. During the Depression, social workers organized a Rank and File movement to protect their and their clients’ rights. Social work has thus long utilised collective approaches to fight for civil, political, social, and economic rights, yet, since the rise of neoliberalism in the 1980s, social work management has largely advocated individualized interventions over collective ones. Practice related to the social aspects of democratic well-being - advocacy, addressing social policy issues, collective action – are often thwarted under neoliberal administrations, and social workers experience exploitive working conditions and de-professionalizing pressures.

This presentation interrogates how social work’s mission to promote democratic principles stacks up when social workers themselves experience low wages, long hours, and poor working conditions. Do social workers follow the dictates of neoliberal individualized practice to protect their jobs? Or do they resist, and possibly threaten their pay and even employment? Do they somehow embody both? If so, how does this unfold in the workplace? The presentation provides evidence from a statewide survey and interviews regarding resistance to neoliberal managerialism. Following Strier and Bershtling’s (2016) prescription that resistance is practice, it identifies ways that social workers are resisting in real time, from hallway discussions to union actions, and in doing so offers hope for how democratic principles and practices can be supported within the profession.

4. Title: Conceptualising self-care as a form of workplace democracy for social workers and social work students

Dr Pearse McCusker1 and Dr Sarah Rose2

University of Edinburgh1; Edinburgh Napier University2

Concerns about wellbeing for social workers have grown in tandem with increasing research highlighting challenging working conditions across social work contexts and countries. ‘Self-care’ is a contested term used to describe approaches aimed at mitigating the negative impact of such conditions on social workers. Various definitions of self-care emphasise the importance of maintaining a sense of personal agency and the opportunity to ‘take ownership’ of personal wellbeing (Lee and Miller, 2013). While potentially useful, this individualised approach to self-care can characterise broader issues as personal problems, thus obscuring the impact of organisational and structural factors (Collins, 2021) and placing expectations on individuals to adapt rather than address these.

Based on the findings of a narrative literature review, undertaken as part of a funded participatory action research project with social work students, this presentation advocates for a broader conceptualisation of self-care that can be understood as a form of ‘workplace democracy’, embodying the democratic values of respect for diversity, collective action and social justice. In reference to these three key democratic values, it considers the importance of adopting a diverse understanding of the ‘self’ beyond narrowly defined social and cultural norms. It explores how self-care practice can support the wellbeing of social workers by collectively addressing the organisational factors and working conditions that precipitate stress and burnout. Moreover, it highlights the potential for self-care to support the social justice aims of the profession by enhancing social workers’ reflexivity, awareness of social inequality and capacity for anti-oppressive practice