Abstract
One measure of the change in social work is that nobody can now embark on a general discussion of it, however brief, without at least a token acceptance of the role of social workers as agents of social control. Once the battering ram of radical criticism and a source of shock and horror for traditionalists, the idea has now passed into commonplace discourse, almost to the point of being irrelevant. Yet it is on our analysis of this particular function that our approach to social work must turn, because it highlights the standards by which we work and poses the question of our ultimate loyalties.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Notes and references
R. Williams, The Long Revolution (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1965) ch. 3.
R. Pinker, Social Theory and Social Policy (London: Heinemann, 1971) p. 170.
The potential client population among children is delineated by P. Wedge and H. Prosser, Born to Fail (London: Arrow, 1973). Selwyn Smith found a higher incidence of non-accidental injury to children in working-class families; see his The Battered Child Syndrome (London: Butterworth, 1975) p. 198.
J. Packman, Decisions in Child Care (London: Allen and Unwin, 1969).
B. Davies, 1. Barton, A. Macmillan, Variations in Children’s Services (London: Bell, 1972).
Bill Jordan, Poor Parents (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1974) chs 1, 2.
G. Konrad, The Caseworker (London: Heinemann, 1976) p. 16.
M. Simpkin, ‘Clients in the Community’, in R. Jenkins, M. Aldridge and R. Thorpe (eds), Working in the Community, Social Work Studies no. 1 (University of Nottingham, 1975) p. 94.
For a critical discussion of Bernstein’s work, see H. Rosen, Language and Class (Bristol: Falling Wall Press, 1974).
Jim Slater, Return to Go (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1977) p. 228.
P. Janet, La Force et faiblesse psychologique (Paris: Maloine, 1932) p. 258.
I. Reid, Social Class Differences in Britain (London: Open Books, 1977).
The Sunday Times Magazine, 29 September 1976.
P. Kinnersley, Hazards of Work (London: Pluto Press, 1974).
The Sunday Times, 17 July 1977.
Factory Inspectorate, Annual Report 1974 (London: H. M. S. O.). See also Dr G. Ffrench, Occupational Health (Lancaster: Medical and Technical Publications, 1973) pp. 62–4, who adds that many of the 7000 annual fatal accidents in the home can be attributed to poor design or cheap production.
P. Powell et al., 2,000 Accidents: a shop-floor study of their causes (London: National Institute of Industrial Psychology, 1971).
Health and Safety Executive, The Explosion at the Appleby-Frodingham Steelworks, Scunthorpe, 4 November 1975 (London: H. M. S. O., 1976) p. 28.
P. Lomas et al., Poverty and Schizophrenia (London: Psychiatric Rehabilitation Association, 1973).
E. M. Goldberg and S. L. Morrison, ‘Schizophrenia and Social Class’, British Journal of Psychiatry, no. 109, November 1963, pp. 785–802. See also R. Turner and M. Wagenfeld, ‘Occupational Mobility and Schizophrenia’, American Sociological Review, vol 32 (1967) pp. 104–13.
A summary of S. Michael and T. Langner, Psychiatric Symptoms and Social Class’, Diseases of the Nervous System, vol 24 (1963) p. 128, by Myre Sim in his A Guide to Psychiatry (Edinburgh: Churchill Livingstone, 1974) p. 668.
G. Fielding (Bradford University), paper presented to the 27th Annual Conference of the International Communications Association, Berlin, 1977.
A. B. Hollingshead and F. C. Redlich, Social Class and Mental Illness (New York: Wiley, 1958).
J. Myers and L. Bean, A Decade Later (New York: Wiley, 1968).
Goldberg and Morrison, ‘Schizophrenia and Social Class’, p. 801.
V. Kral, ‘Stress and Senile Psychosis’, in Proceedings of 5th World Congress of Psychiatrists, 1971 (Excerpta Medica Amsterdam International Congress) series 274, Psychiatry, part I.
G. W. Brown, T. Harris and J. R. Copeland, ‘Depression and Loss’, British Journal of Psychiatry, no. 130, January 1977, pp. 1–18.
Profits against Houses (London: Community Development Project, 1977) p. 33.
J. Westergaard and H. Resler, Class in a Capitalist Society (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1976).
The information in this paragraph is taken from Royal Commission on the Distribution of Income and Wealth, Report no. 1 (London: H. M. S. O., 1975).
Ibid., para. 171.
Westergaard and Resler, Class in a Capitalist Society, p. 68.
Racism (London: Counter Information Services, 1976) p. 34.
Social Work Today, vol. 8, no. 5, 3 May 1977.
G. Fiegehen, P. Lansley and G. Smith, Poverty and Progress in Britain 1953–73 (Cambridge University Press, 1977).
M. Seeman, ‘On the Meaning of Alienation’, American Sociological Review, vol. 24 (1959) p. 784.
Copyright information
© 1983 Mike Simpkin
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Simpkin, M. (1983). Not clients but workers. In: Trapped within Welfare. Titles in the Crisis Points Series. Palgrave, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-06449-6_4
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-06449-6_4
Publisher Name: Palgrave, London
Print ISBN: 978-0-333-33956-5
Online ISBN: 978-1-349-06449-6
eBook Packages: Palgrave Social & Cultural Studies CollectionSocial Sciences (R0)