Social work regimes

Chapter 3 established the significance of statutory duties in sanctioning women social workers’ intervention in what are identified by the state as those socially problematic areas of women service users’ lives that are seen as warranting intervention. Women social workers do not, however, function as atomised individual practitioners, directly connected to the legislation they implement. The statutory mandate of state social work is implemented through organisations. Although women social workers’ power and authority is ultimately derived from, and exists to implement, a framework of statutory duties that defines their tasks and functions (Sheppard 1995: 53), they undertake those duties from their employment position within Social Services Departments1 (Hugman 1991b: 62). This inextricable intertwining of policy, organisation and practice is clearly emphasised in Payne’s comment that social work practice can only be understood in the context of policy and organisation, and policy and organisation can only be understood as they are expressed through practice (Payne 1995: xiii). Thus, Social Services Departments are the sites through which central government legislation is mediated through policy and implemented through organisation (Cooper 1991), before being turned by women social workers into concrete practices:

Social workers emerged from a close relationship with state authority . . . into a typically professional position from which they mediate state power and regulation in indirect ways . . . The internal organisation of the social work profession . . . ensures some minimum of conformity of social workers to the requirements of the state.