ABSTRACT
Radical approaches, like feminist approaches, are concerned with changing society, not fitting individuals into society, or, as Bailey and Brake write in their classic text, ‘our task is not to understand the world but to change it’ (1980: 13). When I was a social worker, this meant bringing together the single parents with whom I was working to form a group, and, later, working with them to create a community-based resource for women and children. The women got far more from each other, individually and collectively, than I could ever have given them as ‘my clients’. A great deal has been written from a radical perspective (sometimes called ‘critical’ or ‘structural’), as illustrated from the many recommendations for further reading. I have chosen one of the seminal texts which, when it first appeared in 1975, was in the vanguard of a new way of thinking about, and practising, social work.
From Radical Social Work and Practice, London: Edward Arnold (1980): 7–24.
