Restoring Connections: Social Workers' Practice Wisdom towards Achieving Social Justice

Abstract

‘Restoring Connections’ was an action-research study that examined social work practice by focusing upon resilience and reconciliation with people who have experienced traumatic loss arising from social injustice or institutional abuse. The project examines the waysinwhichsocialworkerscanfosterlinks andrestoreconnectionsbetweentheexperiencesofpeople’sprivateexperienceofloss withpublicandstructuralissues.Thisresearch servedas a meansof understanding personal traumaarising from unjustsocialpolicyand practice, and how such affected people seek and obtain social justice. A focus group of social work practitioners met to discuss questions aimed at eliciting their practice wisdom about moving personal testimony associated with interpersonal practice towards the public sphere. The social justice insights and questions resulting from this focusgroupareexaminedusingFinnandJacobson’s‘JustPracticeFramework’andMargalit’swritingsaboutadecentsociety.Thefindingsfromthisgroupsupportpreviousstudies thatachievingsocialjusticeinsocialworkpracticeremainsadifficultbutintegralconcept in our work. This paper concludes with suggestions for strengthening socially just processes and practices in social work education and professional development through a stronger focus on the concepts of history and possibility.