We Live in a Political World: Between Needs and Money

Abstract

This chapter outlines a classical conflict within the domain of social work, that between clients exposing a need and budget cuts regulating or de-emphasising that very same need. Beginning in a personal memory of having turned a vulnerable elderly client’s application for a place in a residential home down, the chapter continues in an expose of this conflict through examples taken from the domain of social work for the elderly and that of schooling. I argue that the way we institutionally deal with the needs of the elderly and that of children in certain aspects seem to conflate, especially notable in the fashion that needs are made to be reduced in the face of financial discipline. Closing with a discussion about how these matters may position the research field of social work, the chapter asserts that practitioners and academics need to join forces to combat this false dichotomy. The chapter furthermore argues that a large part of the responsibility for that task lies within the academy, which is outlined as an important agent in the undertaking to educate future social workers to make them armed with the necessary skills to accomplish the disclosure of the ideology urging us to make do with what we have.