A Contemporary History of Social Work

This contemporary history of social work is for its author a lived history. He was there often in the thick of it (as when, as a part of a British Association of Social Workers (BASW) delegation, he met with Mrs Thatcher in the 1980s), watching but also contributing. And, in this book, he uses an essential skill of social workers—an ability to reflect and to make sense and meaning out of what can be confusing and chaotic events and experiences—because, as for social workers, the task is to build a picture, an understanding and an assessment, from often partial and incomplete information. But history can sometimes be neglected and rejected as it is about yesterday—a past with little relevance for today. This is rarely so, and Bamford uses his well-told tale of social work over the past 100 years, and especially the past fifty years, to inform and illuminate current debates within and for social work. Whether it is the current attention and intentions about child protection and the control and containment focus of social work with children and families; the political colonisation of the personalisation agenda with its roots in the disability movement of the 1980s but now captured as a means to ration care and promote a commercial market place; or the government’s preference for the voluntary (and private) sectors rather than the public sector as a vehicle for social work delivery—Bamford provides a rich discourse based on the past to inform the contemporary conversations and indeed to note the continuities over time.

Government (linguistics) · Political science · Politics · Public relations · Relevance (law) · Sociology · Yesterday · Healthcare innovation and challenges · Law · Research in Social Sciences · Social Work Education and Practice · Social Work