Participation in social policy and social work learning Introduction 27; The policy background 27; The new context of involvement 28; Awareness: a pre-requirement for involvement 29; Engaging whom? 31; Challenging exclusion 33; Principles for

There is an important point that needs to be made early in this discussion. The focus of this book and this chapter is learning, teaching and training. But social work and social policy education and training cannot be considered in isolation from social work and social policy practice and provision. This is not only because much learning goes on in practice and in policy settings rather than in academic and training institutions – and thus learning needs to be seen as a continuing lifelong activity; it is also important because citizen engagement and involvement are important in both learning and practice settings. Social work and social policy education cannot be considered in isolation. In recent years particularly, social work and social policy have become heavily politicized areas of public activity. Social work, for example, has been dominated by political and managerialist influences. ( Jordan and Jordan, 2000; Parton and O’Byrne, 2000) A participative process of social work and social policy education and learning that culminated in non-participative social work and social policy provision and practice would be pointless. The two must be considered together and in relation to each other.