Introduction

The aim of this chapter is to explore the relationship between social movements and social policy with a particular focus on social work activist engagement within the mental health and welfare systems. The primary argument is that while social movements are rarely directly responsible for determining the exact nature and content of particular welfare policies, forms of grassroots mobilisation and intervention can nonetheless play an important role in shaping welfare settlements (Barker & Lavalette, 2015). The first section outlines the theoretical warrant for this perspective on social policy development. We then provide an empirical illustration of this process by offering an account of the Social Work Action Network (SWAN), a social movement organisation (SMO) within the social work field in the UK. This involves a brief history of the emergence of this network and an analysis of its organising methodology. We argue the latter combines ideological, agitational and campaigning elements underpinned by an orientation to cross-sectional alliance building. We then describe the application of these modes of political activity within campaigns to challenge neoliberal mental health and welfare policy reforms. We conclude by acknowledging some limitations of these campaigning interventions but argue nonetheless for their potential to both articulate and embody alternative progressive and democratic welfare futures.

The politics of welfare policy development

Mainstream accounts of social policy formation tend to adopt a pluralist or neo-corporatist approach, which constructs state welfare policy as evolving in an institutional context characterised by interest group competition and/or negotiation (Annetts et al, 2009). The literature commonly treats welfare developments as ‘cumulative’ and as reflecting the work of resourceful and thoughtful political leaders or civil servants (Fraser, 1984), or, more broadly, as the outcome of political party commitments and interventions (Stephens, 1979). Alternatively ‘welfare regimes’ may be perceived as the outcome of particular class coalitions within specific cultures (Esping-Anderson, 1990) or as reflections of the economic drives and ‘needs’ of capitalism (Gough, 1979) or of globalisation (Pierson, 1991).

While such approaches have their strengths, they underplay the significance of protest, collective action and social struggle from below in processes of reproduction and reform of state welfare (Fox- Piven & Cloward, 1979).