In this chapter, I come to a key issue for both social workers and those who work alongside them: identity. I have already suggested that I see identity or identities as something that social workers (and those in related occupations, such as social pedagogues) construct with others, especially as they become socialised into their profession. In earlier chapters, we saw that both Jenkins (2014) and Chandler (2017) characterise identity as something that can be both collective and individual. As the following social work interviewee said to me, there are issues with defining the collective form of social work identity, which will have implications for individual practitioners:

As we saw in Chapter 5, this standardisation can involve increasing controls over social work education as well as practice, though some have suggested that, where possible, social workers need to learn how to balance accountability with creativity. There have been recent attempts to put in place specific forms of post-qualification accreditation (for example, for social workers working in child protection in England), though the outcome of that particular attempt is still uncertain at the time of writing.

Some informants also said to me that they thought the social work role was becoming narrower, or distributed to other professions or occupations: