ABSTRACT
Social workers often label people, families, groups or communities as ‘vulnerable’. The very idea of ‘social work assessment’ assumes that a social worker is better able to ‘assess’ a person or family than they can themselves – and this is the essence of colonialism. Social work that increases a person’s capacity within Western institutions, structures and processes can readily become colonialist, especially for a person from a different cultural background. It may well be that the person has considerable capacity to function within a particular context, but social work practice aims to impose a different context and thereby devalues the person’s capabilities and marginalises their wisdom and expertise. Evidence-based practice hardly encourages the decolonisation of social work knowledge. The professional model has ascribed primary expertise to the social worker, rather than to those with whom that social worker is working.
