Clinical Social Work Practice in the Twenty-First Century: A Changing Landscape

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Tensions within social work as to its organizing values, its primary objectives, and the optimal ways of achieving these can be found in its very origins as a profession in the U.S.: the settlement house movement with its focus on social change on the one hand, and charity service organizations with their emphasis on individual needs on the other. The confusion and reservations surrounding clinical social work have been particularly salient (Goldstein 1996, 2007; Phillips 2000; Specht and Courtney 1995; Swenson 1998). Compounding this seminal tension have been the questions raised both within and from outside the field and answered in the negative by Abraham Flexner (2001) exactly 100 years ago as to whether social work is, indeed, a profession. As we reflect on social work’s past century of existence and efforts at professionalization in our own and others’ eyes, (Gibelman 1999; Kerson and McCoyd 2013) this historical marker seems an apt moment to examine direct social work practice and the political, economic, geographic, social, cultural and philosophical forces shaping it in the twenty first century. In this special issue of the Clinical Social Work Journal we ask leading social work practitioners, researchers, and educators to consider where we are as a field, where we are headed, what has been gained and what has been lost by current conceptualizations of clinical social work practice. In having ten eminent voices speaking from different positions within our multifarious fieldacademia (field educators, classroom educators and students), research, community-based organizations, private practice—we hope to spark a productive national dialogue among clinical practitioners; students, academics and higher education administrators; field instructors, clinical preceptors and supervisors; clinical researchers; policy makers; executive directors and senior management of treatment and human service organizations; and professional membership organizations that will stimulate rich discussion about social work’s past, present and future.