This understanding of the importance of social capital – building stronger social networks to improve service users’ lives – is key to the social work role. Martin’s concern today is that social workers are being appointed on their ability to carry out interventions rather than solving such social problems. Numerous mental health practitioners
have told him that interviews focus on the evidence-based interventions they can deliver, such as cognitive behavioural therapy or behavioural therapy. ‘My question is: “what is social work’s role in developing that evidence base and whose evidence base is it?”’ The longstanding problem
Social workers are scared of
for social work is that it has drawn on theories and evidence across a range of disciplines for many years. Although Martin sees this as one of its strengths, ‘it leaves us a bit impoverished in the sense of what can be claimed to be owned by the profession’. The NHS and Community Care Act 1990
brought further complications by introducing the purchaser-provider split, commissioning and the care manager role to adults’ services. As a hybrid social work role, the latter can be done by any member of the multi-disciplinary team and has added to confusion, he says. This has all had a profound impact on
Martin’s career, as he felt forced to leave life as a practitioner if he were to bring about change. “I loved being a practitioner but I decided that an academic career would help make a diff erence to the profession, which will consequently make a diff erence to people,” he says. As yet there are no academic-practice roles in social work as there are in health, where psychologists and psychiatrists can become clinical academics working part-time as both practitioner and academic under one contract. ‘I would welcome the opportunity to blend the two roles in social work,’ he says. ‘Research is grounded in practice and it would help to square the circle. It would give academics more credibility with practitioners because they could see that what we do is relevant to practice.’
10 SOCIALWORKMATTERS MAR12
scientifi c methodology being applied to social work practice; it seems distant from the lived reality of people