Social work and community psychiatric nursing—a review

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Social work is currently in a situation of change in Britain and the resulting disturbance exercises its influence in a variety of ways. The changes include the growing recognition that some of the work social workers do at the moment will in the future be undertaken by colleagues with a different background of training and by the increased use of volunteers and voluntary services. Apart from the social workers employed in specialist services, it appears that the main area of activity which assumes priority in the social work functions of Social Service Departments is child-centred family work. Neil], Warburton and McGuiness (1976), in their study of four area offices in Southampton Social Services Department, express the preferences fieldworkers have for work with particular client groups. The mentally ill come very low in the type of work in which this group of social workers wish to employ themselves and this position was worse by 1977 compared with the first assessment in 1975. Rowlings (1979) describes the allocation of work to social workers in part of an extensive evaluation of Social Service Teams. She identifies a view generally held by her respondents that “everything comes second to working with families and children”. Little and Burkitt (1978) report on the views of psychiatrists about their experience of the social work contribution on behalf of the mentally ill since the reorganisation following the Local Authorities Social Services Act (1970). Three out of every four senior psychiatrists considered that the social work service provided by Local Authority based social workers had deteriorated. This view was not extended to hospital based social workers who were regarded as specialist workers with a contribution valued by the majority of the respondents. If these studies are representative of the social work services, they indicate a situation of concern with regard to the organisation, deployment and training of social workers. The situation is, in my view, exacerbated by the policy of providing a basic professional education for social workers which emphasises a generalist role, without providing for further specialised professional development. The needs of the mentally ill have much in common with the needs of people in general and many requirements can and should be met through services available to the population as a whole. However, a proportion of people with mental illness and those people associated