All the responses are erudite, knowledgeable and generous. All of the respondents are progressive thinkers with detailed understanding of developments relating to social work with children and families beyond my own base in the Republic of Ireland: England (Smith), Northern Ireland (Houston), Scotland (Woodward), Wales (Drakeford and Butler), elsewhere in Europe (Kessl, and Roets and Roose) and North America (Baines). It is, of course, impossible, to address all the issues raised in this short rejoinder, so the aim here is simply to address a handful of key points.

‘Battlefield’ notes

Some respondents imply that my perspective is rather gloomy, with Houston maintaining that there is a ‘heavy sense of pessimism’ emanating from my essay. More theoretically, according to Drakeford and Butler, my comprehension of hegemony may be too static and ‘overdeterministic’. Moreover, serving to dilute my deployment of the Bourdieusian idea that the state is a ‘battlefield’, I seem to argue that the ‘battle has already been concluded in favour of neoliberalisation’ .

My focus was on England and the Republic of Ireland, and in these locations, social workers seeking to create more progressive possibilities face considerable obstacles. Following Stuart Hall (2011, pp 727–8), it is clear that no:

Despite, the ‘recurrent trope of collective pain’ (Clarke and Newman, 2012, p 303), it is apparent that the ruling class has embarked on an offensive against the working class. In these circumstances, it seems important to try and arrive at an accurate assessment of the possibilities afforded for resistance and fightback.

A survey by the European Trade Union Institute has illuminated that there is considerable variation in the so-called financial ‘adjustment’ or ‘austerity’ packages across European countries (Theodoropoulou and Watt, 2011). To some extent, administrations in France and Iceland reveal that there are alternative and somewhat more socially benign ways to respond to the current crisis.