Is there a future for mental health social work as a distinct profession that promotes a dynamic social model of understanding mental health that is able to advocate on behalf of service users from an antioppressive perspective and challenges the social injustice that surrounds the world of mental health service users? The observations I wish to make are drawn from my own practice as a mental health social worker, from my teaching of post-qualified social workers and from listening to other practitioners at various events over the past couple of years organised by Unison or organisations such as the Social Work Action Network (SWAN). I started by attempting to write this as an academic piece, but found it difficult to find the research to support my experiences. I have chosen to write this from a grounded theory perspective.

I recently attended a picket line for the Remploy workers who were striking against the closure of their factory. The steward informed me that they had been told by the government that Remploy was “not fit for purpose” and was not the “21st-century model for employing disabled people”. This has striking familiarity with the justifications we often hear for changing the structure of our services, and for the contracting of services outside the public sector. I think it particularly true for practitioners in the statutory sector that we are made to feel that we are a self-interested conservative block to the introduction of more dynamic and responsive consumer models of service provision.

Anyone who has worked in social work for even a short period of time will probably be familiar with the terms ‘reorganisation’, ‘reconfiguration’ or ‘re-engineering’. These terms usually mean that we are going to move everyone around, change the names of the teams and create more specialised services; there will probably be less staff and a larger geographical area to cover as part of the process. Many social workers who have been around for longer will have gone through the process a number of times and, quite possibly, have returned to sitting at the same desk. The ideological justification for such changes is the need to make our services more responsive to the specific needs of service users.