ABSTRACT
Post-qualification, my interest in feminist social work continued, as a residential social worker in a mental health setting. The staff team in this setting consisted, in the main, of a strong group of women (and two pro-feminist men) who shared a commitment to gendering mental health social work. We were keen to develop our understanding of women’s mental health – of what were seen by male psychiatrists as women’s illnesses – in an alternative direction. We regarded the women’s ‘problems’ (always pronounced in the staff team with an ironic inflection) as a product of their experiences of societal oppression. We sought to develop an alternative stance to the medical model in an open way with women service users and this resulted in some blurring of roles between service users and staff. For example, in what now seems like a bygone age, during the residential social workers’ dispute the service users actively supported intermittent strike action by staff, by undermining senior managers’ attempts to maintain business as usual.
