British Journal of Social Work (2021) 51, 772–789

doi: 10.1093/bjsw/bcaa203
Advance Access Publication December 3, 2020

The end of social work

Chris Maylea *

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Social and Global Studies Centre, RMIT University, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia

*Correspondence to Chris Maylea, Social and Global Studies Centre, Building 8, Level 10,
RMIT University, GPO 2476, Melbourne 3001, Victoria, Australia. E-mail:
[Link]@[Link]

Abstract
Social work literature is saturated with calls to reform social work in diverse and con-
tradictory ways. This article argues that the profession of social work cannot be re-
formed and must be abolished. Specifically, the master narrative of Anglophone social
work must be abandoned along with the institutions which maintain it; the profes-
sional bodies, the academic discipline and the formal title. Four reasons for this are
presented: social work’s lack of coherent theory base, the problem of professionalism,
social work’s historical abuses and the profession’s inability to rise to contemporary
challenges. The fundamental theoretical tensions in social work theory are identified
as preventing the profession from reconciling its aims of assuaging individual suffer-
ing and achieving social justice. This has also hindered social work’s aspiration to pro-
fessionalism, which is both distracting and actively prevents social workers from
working with people and communities. While these issues may have once been resolv-
able, the historical and contemporary contexts prevent resolution. Social work’s uncer-
tain theoretical foundations, desire for professional legitimacy, past abuses and
contemporary failures put the profession beyond recovery. No solutions or resolutions
are suggested. What pieces are to be salvaged from the wreck of social work must be
determined by the post-social work world.

Keywords: contemporary challenges, end of social work, professionalism, social work,

social work history, social work theory

Accepted: October 2020

Introduction
Across the globe, social movements are forcing a re-accounting of set-
tled assumptions. The #metoo movement has led to seismic shifts in

# The Author(s) 2020. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf

[Link] of The British Association of Social Workers. All rights reserved.
 The end of social work 773

diverse industries and professions, and Black Lives Matter protesters

have pushed statues of slavers into the sea. Calls to ‘defund the police’
and replace them with social workers are growing louder (Kristof, 2020;
Navratil, 2020). The crisis initiated by the coronavirus disease has added
an enormous stress to communities while also proving that societies can
actually respond effectively to social challenges. The crisis posed by cli-
mate change proves, conversely, that sometimes they do not. This point

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in time provides an opportune time to realistically assess what is work-
ing and what is not, to actively reshape both society and the tools we
use to shape it.
Social work, meanwhile, has been characteristically quiet on the global
stage and hardly more vocal in local fora. Rather than grapple with the
deficiencies of its own historical and contemporary realities, the profes-
sion of social work has continued to focus on parochial issues of the last
century and avoiding the reckoning demanded by this one. Reisch (2013,
p. 73) points out that social work’s ‘master narrative has been dominated
largely by perspective derived from modern liberalism, which reinforces
the image of the profession as a benign instrument of social progress
and human amelioration’. This benign image is a façade which must be
demolished.
We, as social workers, must take stock of our current reality and con-
tend with both our contribution to both the past and the future. We, as
social workers, must ask ourselves if social work is an effective model
for achieving social work’s goals. This article continues a long tradition
of social work academics, practitioners and activists arguing that it is
not, but rather than arguing for repair and reform, as many others have
done, this article argues that social work is beyond repair and must in-
stead be pushed into the sea.
The basis of this argument is not new. Clarke (1996, p. 43) notes that
‘from its nineteenth-century origins, social work has been viewed ambig-
uously and sceptically by both its beneficiaries and commenters’. This
article re-treads well-rehearsed critiques of social work to reiterate their
circular nature. If, after decades of calls for reform, reform has not been
forthcoming, something else must be done.
This is not an accounting, nor an attempt to suggest that the ‘bad’ out-
weighs the ‘good’. This article argues that the core of social work is be-
yond saving and unfit for purpose, irrespective of any past successes it
might claim. Social workers have achieved great things, individually and
collectively, but social work as a profession cannot take credit for indi-
vidual passion, compassion and effort. Passionate and compassionate
people, some of them social workers, have always done vital work for
societies’ most disadvantaged. This work still needs to be done, but
social work, as a profession, is not well-positioned to do it. This article
focuses on the profession of social work; the professional bodies, the aca-
demic discipline and the title, calling for their abolition. This, admittedly,
774 Chris Maylea

creates something of a straw man, a bronzed statue of social work rather

than ‘real’ social work. These institutions of professionalism, academia
and titular status are exactly the false idols which we must topple. These
institutions are the straw effigy which we must torch. Only social work-
ers can embark on the project of dismantling social work.
Do not misconstrue this as an attack on the people, the ‘social work-
ers’, who have attempted to make the profession of social work some-

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thing more than it is, or those who do essential, excellent, difficult work.
This is an attack on our institutionalisation, a rejection of our profes-
sionalisation. The destruction of the institution, of the profession, is an
act of our own liberation. It is not a coincidence that the majority of so-
cial workers identify as women in a world where so many problems can
be traced to toxic masculinity, but that a disproportionate number of
men occupy leadership positions in the social work profession and the
academy (McPhail, 2004). It is the very masculine notions of profession-
alism and institutionalism that we must dismantle.
This must not be construed as progressing the conservative agenda to
depoliticise or abolish social work. Social work has already been success-
fully depoliticised. It has, as a political force, already been abolished.
Social work has always been criticised from a range of perspectives, and
criticism of social work is not automatically conservative. Clarke (1996,
pp. 48–49) writes that ‘bureau-professional regimes of welfare face an as-
tonishingly diverse range of critiques – from a variety of left and liberal
democratic positions, from feminists, from minority ethnic groups, and
from alliances mobilising or speaking for service users as well as . . .
think tanks of the right’. The reality is that a toothless, depoliticised so-
cial work serves the agenda of the right, providing an ineffective cover
for inequality while failing to address it. Only by clearing the field of
battle can other, stronger forces progress the struggle against inequality.
This article focuses on professional social work in the Anglophone
world, primarily the UK, USA and Australia, as representing both the
largest population of professional social workers and the profession of
social work’s geographical home. This is the social work described by
Morley and Ablett (2016, p. 3) as ‘a project of Western capitalist moder-
nity and consequently complicit in perpetuating many of its oppressive
features’. Other social works exist in a diversity of countries and
amongst colonised peoples which are not included in the contentions of
this analysis (see, e.g. Truell, 2019). Even within the domain of the
Anglophone world, such as in Scotland (Cree and Smith, 2018) and
Wales (Williams, 2011), there is some evidence of social work diverging
from the Anglophone master narrative. There are, and have been for
decades, counter-narratives of critical and radical social work which
push against the dominant hegemony (Morley and Ablett, 2016). Free
from the stranglehold of conservative mainstream social work, we might
 The end of social work 775

progress these social works into something fundamentally different from

the progenitor.

The end of social work

There have been several premature announcements of the death of so-
cial work, with publications titled ‘the end of social work’ published reg-

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ularly in the preceding three decades (Kreuger, 1997; Bhui, 2001;
Powell, 2001; Schram and Silverman, 2012). These are not critiques of
social work itself but responses to technology, managerialism, neoliberal-
ism, postmodernism, marketisation or other external toxins. Other cri-
tiques recognise the ailment as being of internal origin. Williams and
Briskman (2015, p. 3), for example, note ‘a growing sense of unease
within the profession at its inability to reconcile its social justice ambi-
tions with the realities of practice’. Marston and McDonald (2012, p.
1023) argue that fundamental reform is required if social work ‘seeks to
remain relevant to the material needs of citizens and the goals of old
and new social movements that seek to redress injustices’.
Various solutions to this malaise have been presented, with Jones’
(2014) appeal for social workers to commit to professional organisations,
van Ewijk’s (2010) bid for re-professionalisation, Ferguson’s (2007) call
to reclaim a radical tradition, Dominelli’s (2010, p. 608) proposal to
indigenise, Beresford and Croft (2004) entreaty to ally with service users
and Reisch’s (2013) attempt to redefine professionalism being but a few.
Garrett (2015, p. 1207) memorably calls for ‘a radical rupture with the
dominant social theory frameworks monopolising the academic literature
of social work’. Even Stoez et al.’s (2011, p. 197) dismal accounting ends
in a ‘call to action’.
These divergent perspectives might be viewed as dynamism, as robust
debate, if only anything useful emerged from this ‘debate’. Instead, with-
out exception, each call to reform social work is unheeded before being
repeated ad nauseam. Social work is unmatched at self-diagnosis but un-
willing to accept the terminal nature of its disease.
There are many contributions to the fall of social work. Internally, so-
cial work is weak and divided, riven with internal disagreement.
Externally, capitalism marches on, entrenching inequality, while power-
ful institutions outmanoeuvre social justice. In the UK, at least, social
work from the 1970s onwards came to be determined by government
funding and legislation, at which point it ‘lost its autonomy and its abil-
ity to define itself’ (Jones, 2014, p. 487). Clarke (1996, p. 52) writes that
‘divergent models for social work [were] embedded in the major pieces
of legislation affecting its function’. In the USA, the mortal wounds
seem to be somewhat self-inflicted, as many social workers focused on
‘devoting their energies and talents to careers in psychotherapy’ (Specht
776 Chris Maylea

and Courtney, 1995, p. 4). These are not recent problems, as Clarke
(1996, p. 49) notes that social work has been ‘in crisis almost from the
point of its creation’.
Gender has certainly played a role, as the patriarchal hegemony over
policy has instinctively oppressed female-dominated professions such as
social work, although this characterisation is disputed (McPhail, 2004).
Social work’s underdeveloped research culture and our inability to show-

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case our successes is undoubtedly a contributing factor (Stoesz et al.,
2011; Brough et al., 2013).
The causes of the terminal decline are complex and interrelated, but
why and how social work has entered its final stage can be left to the
post-social work world to determine. It is not necessary to analyse the
contribution of each of these elements, only to show that any one of
them has undermined the whole project. This article details four key
reasons which the fundamental flaws of social work cannot be resolved.
First, theoretical tensions within the profession mean that there can
never be a coherent response to the issues social work attempts to ad-
dress. Secondly, professionalisation actively hinders us in our work.
Thirdly, we have not, and cannot, atone for the historical abuses com-
mitted by social work, including but not limited to attempted genocide,
slavery and support of fascist and authoritarian regimes. Finally, social
work has proved incapable of responding to contemporary challenges.
We can no longer ignore the reality that social work is an ineffective
model for achieving its goals.

Irreconcilable theoretical tension

Leung (2012, p. 348) suggests that Anglophone social work is ‘baffled by
a basic dissonance, in its intention to help people accommodate to the
status quo whilst challenging the status quo by attempting to bring about
social change’. The origin myth of social work, the two ‘mothers’ of the
profession and their different approaches, is taught to social work stu-
dents to help make sense of the fundamental divide in the profession
(McPhail, 2004). Mary Richmond represents the professional, clinical,
counselling, individual side of social work, while Jane Addams’ settle-
ment house movement is portrayed as the social work of community de-
velopment, empowerment and social change (Stuart, 2013). In the
century since, we have consistently failed to reconcile these two
approaches, borrowing models from the sciences such as systems theory
(Healy, 2014), or the project of critical social work (Allan et al., 2003).
These attempts have done little to defuse this inherent tension, unable
to satisfactorily address radical and Marxist critiques dating back half a
century (Pemberton and Locke, 1971). As late as 2020, Cox et al. (2020,
p. 20) concluded their review of theoretical frameworks for social work
 The end of social work 777

education with the wishful hope for ‘more solid foundations for social
work practice into the future’. Social work is a church so broad that it
has no walls and no foundations.
We have no clear response to the practice reality that helping people
exist within an unfair system only perpetuates that unfair system. The
central tenants of social work; social justice and human rights (IFSW,
2014); cannot be achieved in an unfair system. This central problem of

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social work is not new (see, e.g. Wootton, 1959). The problems of social
work predate neoliberalism, managerialism, technology or postmoder-
nity, and are inherent to social work itself. The reality belied by the ori-
gin myth of social work’s two mothers is that they are enlisted to a
common purpose, which is to create a ‘profession’ out of helping (al-
though Addams would later critique the trend towards professionalisa-
tion so often undertaken in her name (Daynes, 2004)). That they were
both white cannot be immaterial to later transgressions undertaken by
the profession.
This split is tearing the profession apart. Herz and Johansson (2012, p.
528) point out that social work is ‘stuck between upholding societal
norms and practices and needing to confront and change some of these
structures’. Social work is stuck. We cannot achieve the recognition and
respect of clinical professions nor the social change agenda we have laid
out. Social work has no coherent evidence base of its own, drawing on
other professions and disciplines in an eclectic and disordered fashion,
and has failed to assuage individual suffering. Social work has also
achieved no great social change, universal human rights or social justice.
Despite our rhetoric, social work is ‘not a term that most people associ-
ate with movements for social justice, human rights, environmental sus-
tainability or significant social reforms’ (Morley and Ablett, 2016, p. 3).
Social work has not held back the flood of oppression, inequality, neo-
liberalism or managerialism. Social work is stuck and it has failed.
Social work cannot, of course, be expected to solve all the problems
of the world unaided, but we must be able to demonstrate some measure
of progress. Despite championing significant reforms in the first half of
the twentieth century (Gal and Weiss-Gal, 2013), in the last quarter-
century, the profession cannot claim responsibility for any major victo-
ries in the fight for social justice or attainment of human rights in
Australia, UK or USA. There is evidence of influence, of contributions,
of campaigns and publications, but no substantial successes. It is cer-
tainly possible to point directly to social work’s substantial successes in
achieving social justice reforms in the 1930s in the USA, the 1950s and
1960s in the UK and the 1960s and 1970s in Australia (Stoesz et al.,
2011; Gal and Weiss-Gal, 2013). The completest list of social work’s
achievements in the UK, by Jones (2020), effectively peters out around
1997. In the intervening years, Jones (2014) can only point to increasing
professionalisation, as if this in itself is something to celebrate.
778 Chris Maylea

Demonstrating success in the last quarter-century may be difficult, but it

should not be impossible.
This duality of social work, often touted as its key strength (Pease and
Nipperess, 2016), makes it unsuited to the tasks it has appointed itself.
Jones (2014, p. 487) writes that ‘conflict and confusion over role have led
to uncertainty, which has weakened social work and its potential contribu-
tion’. This is not the dynamism of fruitful debate, it is confusion sown

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from divergent ontologies. With a divided focus, we are less grounded in
evidence-based interpersonal interventions than psychology, less rigorous
and sophisticated than sociology, less nimble and agile than genuine com-
munity movements, and less efficient than the algorithms that have come
to dominate welfare bureaucracies. This issue has lain unresolved for over
a century (Stoesz et al., 2011). Without a coherent theory base, we risk
becoming atheoretical pawns of their professional environment. Social
work leadership, which might once have saved the profession, is based on
‘theory derived from military leadership principles adjusted for application
in corporate entities’ (Peters, 2018, p. 31) and is fundamentally inappro-
priate and maladjusted for social work values and approaches.

Professional problems

Professional power has tainted social workers in multiple ways, both in

the ‘professional’ status social work strives for, and the way social work-
ers hold power over people they work with. The desire to be recognised
as a ‘profession’ is as old as social work itself. Wenocur and Reisch
(2001, p. 261) write that as early as the 1930s ‘a persistent undercurrent
of professional self-interest tempered their social activism, limited their
vision, and eventually became an overriding preoccupation’. The radical
potential of social work was subsumed, as ultimately ‘social work would
conform to market dictates on professional development’ (Stoesz et al.,
2011, p. 28). This continues today, as the Australian Association of
Social Workers (AASW, 2019) dedicates decades to a largely unsuccess-
ful campaign to include social workers in the list of ‘registered profes-
sions’ and maintaining eligibility for lucrative government-funded
counselling programs (Papadopoulos and Maylea, 2020). In the USA,
the situation is even more pronounced, with all five of the pieces of leg-
islation supported by the National Association of Social Worker’s
(NASW, 2020) in 2020 pertaining to the pay or working conditions of
social workers. In the UK, the British Association of Social Workers
(BASW, 2020) has more social change on the agenda, but still places the
working conditions of social workers as one of its top four priorities.
Social workers in the Anglophone world have better pay and conditions
than virtually every person seeking social work support. It is not clear
 The end of social work 779

why we should be entitled a higher standard of living than the communi-

ties we serve.
The notion of professional power over ‘clients’ is well explored in so-
cial work literature, with students and practitioners promised that this
imbalance can be mitigated through reflection, reflexivity and supervi-
sion (Pease et al., 2016). This lie ignores the way we are perceived in the
community, as ‘stealing or removing kids’, ‘do-gooders’, ‘interfering/busy

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bodies’ (Staniforth et al., 2016, p. 18). The very presence of a social
worker is likely to be threatening for communities with historical trauma
caused or abetted by social workers. As professionals, irrespective of our
espoused intentions or reflective skills, we represent a real threat to peo-
ple by virtue of our professional role and association with the apparatus
of the state. Even when not directly threatening, social workers are
viewed ‘ambivalently’ or ‘vaguely negatively’, as ‘subordinate professio-
nals’ and ‘impersonal bureaucrats’ (Morley and Ablett, 2016, p. 3).
Even when operating as community or social activists we are tainted
by the professional role. As allies, we risk co-opting and deradicalising
community-based movements simply by participating, as elite groups
tend to prioritise and value less confrontational forms of protest
(Teixeira et al., 2020). Professionals working as activists have divergent
expectations and conflicting views with the communities they claim to
support or represent (Wharton, 2017). It is important to distinguish be-
tween the ‘professional social worker’ working as a ‘professional’ activist
from those activists who are in and from their communities and who use
the profession as a means achieve their own ends. Our passion and com-
mitment cannot be claimed by the profession.
Social work has for decades attempted to address the taint of power
and violence that accompanies professionalism (Langan et al., 1989).
Reisch (2013, p. 74) points out that the master narrative of social work as
a profession ‘requires experts establish control’ and devalues the ‘private
wisdom of clients and constituents’. Reisch argues that an alternate form
of professionalisation may address the issues presented by professionalisa-
tion; however, we have objectively not taken the actions suggested by
Reisch and seem unlikely to do so in the future. Similarly, Dominelli
(1996) proposed deprofessionalising social work through anti-oppressive
practice a quarter of a century ago. Since then, social work has consis-
tently manoeuvred towards professionalisation, making no obvious steps
to deprofessionalise. Increased professionalisation and protection of the
social work ‘brand’ is generally lauded (see, e.g. Jones, 2014).
Meanwhile, the social work academy, ensconced in the corporation of
the university, sells itself to each new generation of hopeful students as
‘the profession to choose if you want to make a big impact on the world’
(Coffey, 2016). Social work occupies the place of a profession in which
one can make a difference, on a comfortable salary, to achieve social
justice and human rights. Then, the practice reality forces us to become
780 Chris Maylea

complicit in maintaining the status quo and in human rights abuses,

compromising potential activists. In doing so, social work consumes po-
tential activists, subsuming us into a dying profession and denying us to
a more effective calling.
If this were a new phenomenon, resurrection may have been possible.
It may have been possible to salvage something from social work’s aban-
doned social justice goals, to expel those who resist radical social change

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and who perpetrate human rights abuses. The reality is that professional
social work has resisted change with reactionary zeal, refusing to atone
for past wrongs while perpetuating fresh abuses.

Historical stains
Social workers have been responsible for or complicit in ethnic cleansing
or racial oppression of First Nations communities in Australia (AASW,
2004), New Zealand (Gray, 2019), Canada (Czyzewski and Tester, 2014),
USA (Jacobs, 2009) and Apartheid-era South Africa (Smith, 2014).
Social workers have also played a key role in fascist and authoritarian
regimes including Nazi Germany (Kunstreich, 2003), Greece
(Ioakimidis, 2011), Franco-era Spain and Argentina (Ferguson et al.,
2018), acting as ‘soft police’ and taking the children of political dissi-
dents from their families. Social workers facilitated the internment of
Americans of Japanese ancestry during World War II (Park, 2008).
Contemporary China is using the profession of social work as ‘a social
mechanism assigned by the state through public recognition and regula-
tion’ (Gao and Yan, 2015, p. 93), although there, as everywhere, there
are some signs of resistance (Leung, 2012). Even outside discrete atroci-
ties, social work has ‘a legacy of paternalism which had veered towards
being patronising’ (Jones, 2014, p. 487).
Another profession, which did not adopt the rhetoric of social justice
and human rights, might be able to move on from past atrocities. Social
work, anchored to this rhetoric, is simply exposed as hypocritical.
Despite decades of endless rumination, we have neither properly
addressed these issues, nor refrained from perpetrating fresh abuses on
those same communities. As a case in point, the next section briefly
rehearses key aspects of the relationship between social workers in
Australia and the First Nations communities on whose lands we work.

The stolen generations

Attempts by colonial authorities to remove First Nations families in

what is now called Australia can be dated to 1814, twenty-six years after
colonisation began, with explicit policies ending only in 1969 (Wilkie,
 The end of social work 781

1997). Many children were placed into industrial or domestic roles, with
their ‘wages’ never paid (Anthony, 2013). This practice is referred to as
‘stolen wages’, but is increasingly recognised as more appropriately de-
scribed as ‘slavery’ (Gray, 2007). The exact number of children removed
is unknown, but is estimated to be between one in three and one in ten
of all First Nations children in Australia, with some communities having
much higher rates (Wilkie, 1997). Just in the state of Queensland, repre-

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senting around a quarter of First Nations people in Australia, the esti-
mated dollar value of the stolen wages for both adults and children is
AUD$500 million (Senate Standing Committees on Legal and
Constitutional Affairs, 2006).
It is not disputed that social workers were fundamental to the project
of the Stolen Generations. The AASW (2004) has acknowledged (al-
though not apologised for) the role of ‘non-Indigenous social workers as
government agents and instruments of government policy, regarding jus-
tice, welfare and health, have contributed to the destabilisation and dis-
empowerment of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander families and
communities’. This acknowledgement is not inaccurate, but it would be
more accurate to acknowledge simply that social workers perpetrated
cultural genocide and enslaved First Nations children.
Social work has not reckoned with this. Yu (2019) found that
Australian Social Work, the journal of the AASW, barely mentioned
the practice of removing First Nations children from their families dur-
ing the years between 1948 and 1970. There have been valiant attempts
to bring this reckoning about, such as Bennett and Green (2019) and
Briskman (2014). Without denigrating the important work undertaken
by these and other authors, it is clear that social work has not taken
these messages on board. In 2020, First Nations children in Australia are
6.5 times more likely to be involved in the child protection system than
mainstream families and are 11.4 times more likely to be removed from
their families (AIFS, 2020). These rates are not declining and are in
some cases increasing (Nietz, 2019).
This specific history of the Stolen Generations is unique to Australia,
but the ‘problem of brown babies’ (Williams and Bernard, 2018, p. 3) is
reflected in social work around the world (Jacobs, 2009; Czyzewski and
Tester, 2014; Bywaters et al., 2017; Gray, 2019). Given the shadow cast
by social work’s role in the Stolen Generations, it seems strange that
progress has not been made, almost as if social work is not capable of
change. There is guidance available, such as a call for decolonisation
from Gray et al. (2008) and Walter et al.’s (2011) courageous denuncia-
tion of the whiteness inherent in Australian social work. Nietz (2019, p.
2038), for example, proposes a restorative practice approach to help so-
cial workers ‘understand why their professional expertise continues to
witnesses the over-representation of Aboriginal children in the child-
protection system’. Despite this, change has not been forthcoming.
782 Chris Maylea

Failure to rise to contemporary challenges

If social work’s only great shame were in perpetuating colonial oppres-

sion, it might be able to escape scrutiny in colonial societies. Indeed, it
has largely managed to do just this, largely by staying very still and mov-
ing very slowly. Contemporary social work has been described as
‘slouching into the twenty-first century’ (Stoesz et al., 2011, p. 1), strug-

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gling ‘to find its space’ (Jones, 2014, p. 485), as ‘muted’ (Marston and
McDonald, 2012, p. 1022) and ‘slow to theorize’ challenges of the 21st
century (Dominelli, 2010, p. 600). Williams et al. (2019, p. 4) confess
that, as a collective, ‘we have been slow to capitalise on our vantage
points, slow to showcase our added value and, to our detriment, we have
been slow to reach out to new audiences in communicating our mission’.
Even when social work theory does progress, ‘developments in the
broader theory for social work practice literature is slow to be taken up
by social work educators’ (Cox et al., 2020).
Social work is dragging its feet on climate action and climate justice.
There are notable examples of social work discourse engaging with this
issue, such as Dominelli (2012) and Zapf (2009). As with the above
examples, the consensus is clear that we have failed to respond to calls
to integrate climate justice into the social work curriculum or social
work practice. At every turn, social work has prioritised the social over
the natural environment (Zapf, 2009), stuck in the ‘anthropocentric un-
derstanding of environments as social systems that characterised 20th
century social work’ (Papadopoulos and Hegarty, 2017, p. 363). This
cannot be attributed exclusively to the limitations of practice as it
extends to social work education (Harris and Boddy, 2017).
Social work has been accused of being ‘weak’, ‘delayed’ and ‘disap-
pointing’ in responding to the Black Lives Matter movement (Reid,
2020). Holosko et al. (2018, p. 272) ask ‘Do Black Lives Really Matter—
To Social Work?’. Documenting exposés of social work’s racism dating
back to 1970, they contend that ‘social work research and practice have
ignored these early lessons and have not adequately risen to the call to
address these inequalities and the resultant issues that affect African
Americans daily’. This is not a new problem; social work’s racism is as
well documented as social work’s inability to address it (see, e.g.
Dominelli, 1989; McMahon and Allen-Meares, 1992; Corley and Young,
2018).
Similarly, social work, despite its feminist rhetoric and being a profes-
sion largely consisting of women, is not even mentioned in key histories
of the #metoo movement (Hillstrom, 2018; Fileborn and Loney-Howes,
2019; Boyle, 2019), although the profession is not free from sexual ha-
rassment (Moylan and Wood, 2016; O’Reilly and Garrett, 2019).
Silences in abortion rights advocacy are also troubling (Beddoe et al.,
 The end of social work 783

2020). Even within its own academy, social work has proved unable to
achieve gender equity (Tower et al., 2019). Wendt and Moulding (2016,
p. 1) write that ‘social work has often been, and continues to be, com-
plicit in the state control of many women’s lives’.
Increasingly, social work is also on the wrong side of history on the is-
sue of human rights in mental health. Involuntary treatment in mental
health is generally viewed by social workers as a ‘regrettable necessity’

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and forms an unexamined part of social work practice despite being an
explicit human rights violation (Maylea, 2019, p. 233). Involuntary treat-
ment based on the ‘best interests’ of the person has begun to be under-
stood as torture by the United Nations (2020). The role of social
workers in enforcing involuntary treatment and detention is a direct vio-
lation of the profession’s commitment to human rights (Maylea, 2017),
and yet goes unchallenged by any professional social work body.

Next steps

No more ink should be pointlessly spilled calling for reform. Ideally, the
professional associations would be abolished, the scholarly disciplines
dissolved, and the title of Social Worker relinquished in exchange for a
description of the specific role. Social workers who work in roles of so-
cial control could continue to do so in the knowledge that they are
merely softening the blows of an inherently unfair and oppressive system
and in doing so are only perpetuating the system itself. Freed from the
empty rhetoric of social justice and human rights, these workers could
perform their state-sanctioned functions of care and control in the same
way other neoliberal technocrats, police, prison guards and bureaucrats
perform their functions. Former social workers doing genuinely emanci-
patory work could also continue, freed from the profession’s distractions
of earnest professionalism and endlessly pointless search for an evidence
base. Without the title of Social Worker, we would be free to serve our
communities without the limitation of professional power. Young radi-
cals would no longer flock like moths to the flame of the profession,
only to be quickly burnt out by the practice reality.
It is also possible, as Clarke (1996, p. 56) predicted a quarter of a cen-
tury ago, that the ‘practice of social work will go on even though the
name may disappear’. This perhaps provides the greatest hope, that peo-
ple working as social workers can, freed from the constraints of the pro-
fession, actually do social work. It seems much more likely, however,
that social work’s petrified strictures will prevent any substantive
change. It seems impossible that we will take any decisive action in any
direction and will almost certainly continue as we are, enabling the sta-
tus quo while railing ineffectively against it. Our inability to either
784 Chris Maylea

revitalise or euthanise social work will see it exposed in decrepit

obsolescence.
Acknowledgements
The author thanks Dr Christina David, Professor Charlotte Williams
and Associate Professor Robyn Martin who reviewed earlier drafts of
this article.

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