The “Undeserving” Narrative in Child and Family Social Work and How It Is Perpetuated by “Progressive Neoliberalism”: Ideas for Social Work Education

Jane Fenton

doi:10.3390/soc11040123

Abstract

“Progressive neoliberalism” is the current hegemonic approach to understanding social justice in Western liberal democracies. “Progressive neoliberalism” also resurrects the “deserving” vs. “undeserving” narrative that can lead to punitive and pathologising approaches to poor and unemployed people—the demographic comprising the majority of child and family social work service users. Indeed, research suggests that social workers’ attitudes towards families in poverty are strikingly congruent with “progressive neoliberalism.” This article suggests that generational changes and the particular form of group-based identity, postmodern social justice ideology often taught in social work education have unwittingly conspired to create this concerning picture. This article suggests that the resurrection of radical social work, with attention to economic inequality, is one way to counteract this trend.

Highlights

This article traces a relationship between the current Western, hegemonic worldview of social justice [1], the translation of that within child and family social work and the unwitting contribution made by the newer generation of social workers, students and social work education
As Krumer-Nevo states: This is a call for social workers to utilise the endless opportunities they have to side with poor people in their Sisyphean struggles with social institutions in cases that are not extreme, and to strive to maintain this position as much as possible in more extreme and challenging cases [51]
To facilitate Krumer-Nevo’s “call”, social work education must face head-on the very significant challenge of helping students, who may well have internalised the current socio-political hegemony of “progressive neoliberalism”, to understand how neoliberalism, working as intended, creates poverty, inequality and hardship. This must involve learning about economics, understanding how poverty itself contributes to more concrete risk factors and, is a priority site for social work activity

Summary

Introduction

This article traces a relationship between the current Western, hegemonic worldview of social justice [1], the translation of that within child and family social work and the unwitting contribution made by the newer generation of social workers, students and social work education. Since at least the mid-twentieth century in the United States and Europe, capitalist hegemony has been forged by combining two different aspects of right and justice—one focused on distribution, the other on recognition. Fraser’s two-dimensional model of social (in)justice encompasses attention to misrecognition, or discrimination based on identity features, and to economic maldistribution which can lead to poverty and inequality [3]. Using this foundational framework, the article will explore the current hegemony in the UK, and in the west more generally, and consider how it impacts on social institutions including social work with children and families. The article will consider how social work education should consider its curriculum content in order to avoid exacerbating this type of individualised and blaming approach to practice

Progressive Neoliberalism

Background Influences

Generational Changes

Social Work Education

Child and Family Social Work

Return to Fraser’s Two-Dimensional Model of Social Justice

Findings

Conclusions