TY - JOUR
AU - Smith,, Mark
AB - Abstract Since the early 2000s, in a development since mirrored throughout much of the Anglophone world, social work across UK jurisdictions has been subject to external regulation. Whilst a key justification for regulation was to enhance professional identity, there is little evidence that it has done so. Indeed, a growing literature points out conflictual and unproductive relationships between the social work profession and its regulators, within which a marked power imbalance in favour of the regulator is apparent. In this article, we illustrate the nature of this imbalance theoretically by drawing upon the classic philosophical narrative, developed by Georg Willhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831), of the ‘lord and bondsman’. We seek to demonstrate the utility of the Hegelian narrative using data from a study into the views of social workers on how they understand their professional identities, focusing specifically on those aspects of the study that address the place of regulation in this process. Whilst exposing some fundamental problems in the regulatory relationship, the lord and bondsman narrative may also offer some possibility of a way forward through identifying these dialectics as a step towards a more self-conscious professional maturity. governance, Hegel, philosophy, professional identity, regulation Introduction Legislation in the early 2000s to regulate social work across the different UK jurisdictions brought about a radical transformation of the governance of the profession. Amongst the key changes were reform of social work education; protection of the social work title; the need for continued registration and continuous professional development; and the provision for workers’ fitness to practise to be judged and for them to be struck from the registration list if found wanting. All these functions were overseen by newly created governing bodies in each of England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. Such bodies and provisions are, of course, not unique to the UK but operate or are emerging in various guises in Ireland, the USA and Canada (federal/provincial systems). New Zealand has recently moved from a limited form of statutory regulation to mandatory registration and protection of title and has established a regulatory body not unlike those in the UK. Australia is currently pursuing three options to include registration, protection of title and models for authorised self-regulation. Our focus in this article is on Scotland and its regulatory body, the Scottish Social Services Council (SSSC), set up following the 2001 Regulation of Care (Scotland) Act. The experience reported here might offer some pointers and caveats to other jurisdictions as they pursue their own paths towards regulation. It is no coincidence that regulation has emerged against a backdrop of managerialism. The type of regulation that social work has experienced is not the self-regulating professionalism of more established professions but might be located within governmental efforts to exert control over professions, a process that highlights tensions between professional and the managerial rationalities (Noordegraaf and Schinkel, 2011). Regulation’s impact on professional identity has been contested from the outset. Orme and Rennie (2006) consider it to reflect dominant technical/rational and managerialist approaches to practice. Jordan (2010), sees it as a feature of and emerging out of Third Way politics, which, he claims, emphasised a concern for procedural rather than moral regulation. Philosophically, commentators question the limitations of codes in bringing about ethical behaviour (Hugman, 2003), whilst Perry (2004) and McLaughlin (2010) both observe that the registers and codes of conduct that are central to the regulatory apparatus seek to enforce a new moral code upon practitioners, one fuelled by anxiety, fear and suspicion. Meleyal (2011) highlights a number of unintended and/or ‘perverse’ consequences of regulation’s impact on practice. In the case of the English regulator, she demonstrates that initial optimism amongst practitioners that the new apparatus would champion good practice quickly gave way to a belief that the emphasis was to be on a more hard line disciplinary strategy. Specific mechanisms, such as the publicly accessible record of admonishments and suspensions, were viewed particularly unfavourably. McInnes and Lawson-Brown (2007) argue that regulation has perpetuated a system of power imbalances. McLaughlin (2010) and Leigh et al. (2017) identify such in the English regulator’s investigative processes, in a direction that heavily favours the regulator. Furness (2013) suggests a further power differential in that, by focussing on individual miscreants, the regulatory system consistently overlooks organisational failures. Indeed, the relationship is not one of equal partnership but one in which professionals are subordinate to the superordinate power of the regulator. Nor is the power of the regulator based on any superior knowledge. Indeed, Worsley et al. (2017) reveal concerns expressed by practitioners about the lack of expertise amongst panel members making decisions on fitness to practise cases. Most recently, Banks et al. (2020) point to the disproportionate number of social workers reported to the regulator on fitness to practise grounds compared with other professions, suggesting that this may be related to the often-conflictual nature of their task, a consequence of which is that complaints can arise. Logically, one might expect that numbers of social service workers being referred to regulators would reduce as they become aware of the implications of breaching codes of practice. The opposite, however, has been the case, which may suggest a system propagating itself. The regulatory function has shifted ever-more towards surveillance and compliance, with much of its power base vested, increasingly, in the lawyers who oversee its fitness to practise apparatus. This situation has led Whyte (2016) to ask, ‘Who is calling the shots?’ in respect of the governance of social work. This power imbalance between the profession and its regulator and the implications of this for professional identity provides the starting point for this article. Whilst our arguments are likely to resonate across regulatory regimes, they are amplified in the Scottish context, where the SSSC regulates a far broader swathe of the social care workforce than do other UK regulators. It has, in the past decade, overseen a massive increase in the numbers of registrants referred on fitness to practise grounds (S. Grant et al., unpublished data). Our original contribution to debates around professional regulation is to locate it theoretically within the classic philosophical narrative of the master and slave or ‘lord and bondsman’, developed by Georg Willhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831). Hegel was the first to set out a modern philosophy of labour and established the problematic of the ‘non-labouring’ classes (see, for example, Hegel, 2001). His work has been incredibly influential and, specifically, has influenced Marxist interpretations of society, wherein a non-labouring capitalist class appropriates the labour of the working classes. However, although the past decade has seen something of a turn to social theory in social work (e.g. Gray and Webb, 2013; Garrett, 2018), it does not seem a stretch to say that Hegel is the discipline’s most overlooked major philosopher; there have been very few attempts to use Hegelian philosophy as an analytic framework for social work research—(Chatterjee, 2005, 2010, 2018; Bransford, 2011; Houston, 2016, is an almost exhaustive list). This article constitutes the first sustained attempt to utilise Hegel’s lord and bondsman narrative in relation to the governance of social work. It will consider the utility of Hegel’s dialectic of domination and freedom as it might be applied to an understanding of the regulatory function of registering bodies and their relationship with the social work profession. We go on to illustrate our arguments empirically, drawing on data from a Scottish study into social work identity. We conclude that whilst the creation of regulatory bodies might be considered a step towards a more self-conscious professional maturity, there now needs to be a transcendence of the current arrangements. The lord and bondsman narrative Hegel’s narrative of lord and bondsman is set out in The Phenomenology of Spirit (2018). We offer here a summary of this in order to set out the theoretical framework for the analysis of empirical data. Briefly, Hegel seeks to tell the story of the development of the human spirit or ‘Geist’ through a history of consciousness. He imagines a situation in which two consciousnesses encounter one another. Initially, each regards in the other that of themselves, which is to say that they recognise a shared identity. In so doing, they ‘alienate’ a part of themselves into the other, which they must then reabsorb, ‘sublate’, back into themselves through recognition from the other of their existence as autonomous beings as well as the recognition of the other as also autonomous. This is the first step towards ‘self’-consciousness, prior to which neither is a ‘subject’. ‘It is in confronting an other that the I is itself’ (Hegel, 2018, §166, p.102). However, the mutual progress towards full self-consciousness is lost if one or both fails to recognise this mutuality. When the desire for recognition becomes a non-reciprocal demand, two consciousnesses emerge and become locked in a struggle. The nature of this struggle, Hegel suggests, is such that one will either submit, and enter bondage, or be destroyed by the one who becomes master. The servant, then, labours for the master, under his direction and for his ends; the master appropriates the fruits of the servant’s labour. Paradoxically, however, because the servant, even in a state of bondage, is labouring and by labouring is ‘transforming’ the world, it is the servant and not the master who develops a more complete sense of selfhood. In all things, the master is alienated. He does not transform the world through productive activity and is wholly dependent upon the servant for his sense of being. The consciousness of the master is dependent upon the existence of the servant. For the servant, by contrast, despite becoming alienated from the result of her labour, she is able to transform herself by transforming the world. The servant ‘sees’ the result of her (trans)formative labour and sees herself reflected in it. The master ‘owns’ and ‘consumes’ those results but cannot recognise himself in them and he thus fails to achieve the consciousness ‘qua’ master that he sought. Although it is only the master who gives recognition freely, he cannot withdraw it without destroying his own position; he needs the servant, though he is surplus to the needs of the servant who, through her knowledge of the world, begins to develop her own consciousness and independence. The governance of social work Translating this into an analysis of the relationship between the social work profession and its governing bodies—our example and evidence relate specifically to the SSSC—allows us better to understand whether, in their current relationship, either party can be considered fully self-conscious. In this section, we further explicate how our Hegelian position might apply to social work. The Hegelian dialectic would operate thus: upon its establishment, the SSSC recognised itself in the profession of social work that confronted it through its objects of ‘desire’, viz. the aims of social work practice or services, which must be negated—which is to say, the elimination of the individual and social problems with which it engages and the transformation of lives (S. Grant et al., unpublished data). The regulators’ existence demands recognition from the profession in order to negate its object, which is the profession, because the regulator itself does not engage directly with social problems. Social work seeks recognition of itself from the regulator as a self-sufficient consciousness, existing for-itself and in-itself. Simultaneously, the social work profession initially recognises itself in the regulator—as a consciousness that it imagines to embody its own values, objectives and practice (Meleyal, 2011). However, because in the nature of its inception, the SSSC had legally mandated authority over the profession, it immediately assumed a position akin to lordship. The Hegelian analogy follows through because the SSSC does not itself labour directly on its objects and instead, through its putative role as the guardian of standards, appropriates the fruits of the profession—societal, community and individual transformation—to itself: We [the SSSC] protect the public by registering social service workers, setting standards for their practice, conduct, training and education and by supporting their professional development. By doing this we increase the protection of people who use services. Where people fall below the standards of practice and conduct we can investigate and take action. (SSSC, n.d., emphases added) The profession of social work, we argue, far from seeing its confidence and competence enhanced by the introduction of registration, as initially held out, has become diminished in its agency and is increasingly alienated from its work—it has become servile to the regulator. The only response to this situation is its dialectical negation, the transformative action in which full self-consciousness is reached precisely within this state of alienation. Desire, for Hegel, is the name given to the essential force that moves us to action. Through the dialectical workings of desire, we negate what ‘is’,—the self and the object—in order to achieve what ‘is not yet’. It is through desire that we are in a constant state of ‘becoming’. For social work, this negation centres, first, on the concrete action of transforming the object in the world through practice and, second, in so doing, the transformation of itself into a consciousness that has fully sublated this change. In other words, this negation embraces and absorbs the initial state, the process of transformation and its outcome, even though it does not ‘own’ them. Because only the profession retains this capacity, it has the potential to utilise its servitude to achieve full self-consciousness. For the SSSC, however, this negation can only be accomplished in and through the social work profession, i.e. setting standards for qualification, publishing codes of conduct, the enhancement of practitioners’ knowledge and skills, and the elimination of bad practice. It controls the process and consumes the outcome, but remains alienated from the dialectical transformation and, whilst it consumes it, it does not sublate that outcome. Lacking formative cultural production, the SSSC, as Lord or Master, is not ‘transformed’ by the dialectical movement effected by the profession. Its self-consciousness, therefore, remains an impoverished one, wholly dependent upon the social work profession, despite the latter’s bondage to the former. The SSSC, in other words, is wholly reliant on the transforming practice of the social work profession in order to achieve successful negation for their mutual goals, i.e. those circumstances that make social work necessary: ‘Our work means the people of Scotland can count on social services being provided by a trusted, skilled and confident workforce’ (SSSC, n.d.). What must be stressed in the analysis of this encounter is how, having been brought into existence, the SSSC becomes vital to the movement of social work towards its own completeness. The most important thing for social work is to recognise that the creation of the SSSC was not a retrograde step. The servant, within the Hegelian dialectic, does not achieve full self-consciousness in spite of servitude, but, rather, because of it. This potential opens up that, through its productive labour, social work comes to recognise the hitherto latent ‘truth’ of itself and its own identity and, as a result, fear and obedience to the SSSC is negated. The ‘objective negation’ of the world allows social work to supersede its existence for the SSSC and to recognise itself as being-for-itself. However, for Hegel, this point can only be reached through struggle. As lord and servant, neither can achieve what it wants. The SSSC achieves only enforced recognition from a subservient consciousness, in other words, no genuine recognition at all, and the profession is recognised only as an instrument for the satisfaction of the SSSC’s desires and not as an acknowledged autonomous consciousness. Moreover, it is not only for the SSSC that social work is servile, at this point, the consciousness of social work is also one of servility. However, it is through this servility that social work learns the discipline of obedience and service. The control of the master operates in two principal forms: explicit formalised rules of force and also the willing acceptance of the servant about ‘the way things are’ (see Worrell, 2017). Such willing complicity in one’s own subservience is a clear obstacle to any dialectical negation of the status quo. Whilst the idea of social work as a consciousness may be moot, there is no possibility that it can be regarded as self-conscious whilst unquestioning of its own relationship to regulatory bodies. Whilst practice remains unthought, obedience and service remain abstract. Only when social work practice becomes conscious formative labour can the profession become concretised and actualised. We now go on to test out the utility of The Hegelian narrative through an analysis of interviews with social workers about their attitudes towards the SSSC, which we know from preliminary examination are less than positive. Our aim is to help both the social work profession and the SSSC achieve a sublation in which each would exist whilst fully acknowledging the other without any residue of servitude or domination. This requires the distillation from these interviews of the ‘Geist’, or consciousness, of the profession. Methodology/methods/ethics Our data are drawn from a broader study of social work professional identity. The data were gathered through life-story interviews (Andrews et al., 2013). A professional leadership body for the social work and social care professions, acted as gatekeeper for the study. A total of nineteen social workers were interviewed including front line workers and senior managers. Whilst the sample can make no general claims of representativeness, participants were drawn from across Scotland, from a range of practice domains (children and families, adult services and criminal justice), from varied practice sectors (statutory and voluntary) and from different practice bases (fieldwork, residential, housing and advocacy). All interviews were conducted face-to-face and all were audio-recorded and transcribed. Ethical approval was obtained through the researcher’s university. Names have been changed to maximise anonymity. Social work consciousness As noted above, the legislation to regulate social work encompasses a broad range of functions. We pick up on some of these that emerged from the interviews and might be directly related to the dialectical relationship between a social work ‘consciousness’ and that of the SSSC as regulator. These relate to registration; fitness to practise; education and development; Codes of Practice and representation and oversight. In our analysis of the data, we looked for evidence of struggle and subservience. Whilst, these were not uniformly present in the views of all participants, they were evidenced clearly in all of the five themes. Registration Participants’ views about registration were generally mixed and at times contradictory. Margaret accepts the rationale for registration, believing it confers a status and a standing which ‘one hopes would be up there with any other regulated profession’. This chimes with Meleyal’s (2011) findings of an initial, ‘in principle’ optimism continuing, even after the reality experienced following the creation of the regulatory bodies. Some approved of the idea of registration per se but hold the current regulator in poor regard. Josh supports registration but holds an extremely negative view of the regulatory body which he believes is widespread: ‘…they don’t seem aware of how they're perceived. They are hated. Absolutely hated. And in my view, with good reason. So yeah, I don’t think much of the SSSC although I agree with a lot of the principles’. However, since the principles cannot be equated with the regulator qua master, the dialectic emerges vis-à-vis the consciousnesses of the profession and the regulator. Maya welcomes the guidance, direction and focus provided through registration but begins to identify its downside: it probably makes you very cautious of what you are doing, very defensive of what you are doing. Very aware of making sure that your case notes are up to date in case you are audited, in case something happens, in case somebody comes in to inspect files. This resonates with Meleyal’s (2017) and Banks et al.’s (2020) cautions that regulatory interference can be a disincentive to good practice and, worryingly, that the threat of external sanction limits practice or leads to defensive practice that is not necessarily in the best interests of clients but safe enough to avoid bringing practitioners to the attention of the regulatory body. Coupled with this, Maya believes that the requirement to comply with regulation ‘draws away your time from actually being with people … I am so cautious of the fact that everything is pulling us into the office and less time with people doing what we should be doing’. This level of caution obviously does not constitute any positive development of professional consciousness through formative practice. Rather, it reflects a profession in a condition of fear and submission. There is neither resistance nor labour directed towards the objectives of social work—for the profession or the regulator. Jim also welcomed registration and the registered status of social workers and has been a member of a ‘Fitness to Practise’ panel at the SSSC but feels that ‘the SSSC would chuck the bloody book at any one of us who transgress in any shape or form’. He believes that this is partly down to inexperience ‘because I don't think the SSSC is quite as experienced as other regulators’. Arguably, that inexperience and insecurity regarding its own identity and legitimacy is manifest in the SSSC falling back on demands for recognition as master in its relationship with the profession and may explain its increasing reliance on lawyers. The scope of its demand for compliance is broad and extends to workers’ use of social media (SSSC, 2016), which McLaughlin (2006) views as an intrusion into their private and personal lives that prioritises public image over autonomy and privacy. Others expressed that registration has had no impact or has had a negative impact on professional identity, but they are not yet able to express this as perhaps requiring struggle or resistance. Laura says: I’d love to be able to say that I think the registration of social workers has impacted. [laughs] And I’m glad that this is going to be anonymous when you write it up in case this filters through but I think that was the single most disastrous thing that’s happened to the profession … what is there is not what was promised, it’s not what social workers thought it was going to be. And I think that’s a real shame. For Andy, the SSSC ‘mean nothing to me other than they take money off me. I know that some people think it maybe strengthens our identity, but I personally don’t get anything out of SSSC’. He does not feel registration has made any difference to either practitioners or to the people social work supports, and that it is more punitive than supportive: The feeling is just ‘watch what you do, it’s this body, this organisation, you know the police internal affairs division, if anything happens, we’ll clobber you’. And it’s not making any difference to the people out there on the street, not at all. This ambivalence about registration is reflected in a current longitudinal study of newly qualified social workers, who generally do not feel that registration supports their professional identity (Grant et al., 2018), and in Meleyal’s (2017) findings that regulatory bodies mean little to social workers personally or professionally. Helen summed this up suggesting that the only value of registration is knowing ‘that you're a registered social worker’. She then qualified this by saying ‘I mean it sounds a bit pompous. I know I'm a social worker’. So, although Helen already had a consciousness of being a social worker, these comments also reflect the co-option of the privileged and privileging narrative of the regulator as master in conferring that identity. These findings attest to the applicability of Hegel’s narrative. What he described as the meeting of two consciousnesses was not initially a struggle for domination. Likewise, the social workers were broadly supportive of the ‘idea’ of a regulatory body but perceived its reality as a dominating force that made them submissive. Rather than creating a greater focus on good practice, the SSSC made workers more defensive and led them to concentrate on attending to the bureaucratic instruments of control—completing paperwork, keeping files up to date and so forth rather than engaging in the substantive and transforming labour required to meet its societal goals. Fitness to practise Several participants expressed concern about the increased bureaucracy that has resulted from regulation: the doubling up of investigations of staff within employer and ‘fitness-to-practise’ procedures; the time frame for investigations; and the impact of this on workers and employers. Alice described situations where complaints have been investigated internally and not upheld, but which the SSSC has continued to investigate and, due to a backlog, have taken years to conclude: I was told this morning by an operational colleague that a retired colleague had commented to her that she had only just this minute, been told they were going to take no further action in relation to her about a thing that had happened five years ago. (Alice) Josh echoed this concern whereby people are investigated by their employer and ‘there's no case to answer’ but the SSSC is ‘sitting on their hands and not investigating, saying they don't have the resources’. This, he said, impacts the employer as much as the social worker as they are a worker down pending the outcome of the investigation. Rita also described a huge delay in dealing with conduct issues: ‘I met somebody who sits on conduct and it’s a massive number of hours each week, she was doing far more than she expected’ . Laura said that she would be reassured of the value of the fitness to practise process in protecting the public if it was carried out within a reasonable timescale. Moreover, she is concerned about the ‘wide and varied’ decisions that are taken around professional competence. This reflects the literature in England where Leigh et al. (2017) report, amongst other problems with the ‘fitness to practise’ process, a disconnect between the alleged misconduct and the sanctions applied. Andy also described negative experiences with SSSC where areas of practice have been ‘looked into unfairly’. He gave the example of a worker being berated in court for their risk assessment and this being reported in a newspaper and later picked up by the SSSC who contacted the worker’s manager for an explanation. Jim also stated that whilst it is right for social workers to be accountable for practice, it ‘should be on a level playing field’ and described situations where people have been in front of fitness to practise panels who held ‘a caseload of eighty’. This, again, reflects findings (Furness, 2013; Leigh et al., 2017) that organisational failings are not always considered in hearings addressing poor performance and can lead to labelling and scapegoating of individual social workers. Jim feels the SSSC does not have ‘enough social workers at its heart to understand this’, a view which he says is shared by fellow panel members, concluding that ‘it's perhaps too dominated by lawyers’. Wiles (2011) contends that the messy nature of social work practice makes attempts to define and measure appropriate conduct for workers problematic whilst Haney (2012, p. 9) suggests that this is compounded by the lacuna that is created when regulation is handed to people who know nothing of the practice where ‘no body of knowledge, no evidence, no discrete idea or philosophy underpins the “system” of regulation’. These comments reflect two key aspects of the relationship between social work and the SSSC, first, the obvious power differential between master and servant; the accountability of social workers is not mirrored in the position of the SSSC. Second, the connection between fitness to practise and public protection is difficult to see when investigations take so long and take place against the backdrop of impossible demands. The SSSC, in this respect, shifts attention from the political and practice realities of social work and social care; it becomes a relationship for its own ends at best and an ideological diversion at worst. Education and development As described above, a third function of the SSSC is the education and development of the workforce. It sets out Post Registration Training and Learning (PRTL) requirements for social workers consisting of study, training, courses, seminars, reading, teaching or other activities to advance the individual social worker’s professional development or contribute to the development of the profession as a whole. Every worker is required to keep a record of the training and learning undertaken and ‘failure to comply with this Schedule may be treated by the SSSC as impairment of fitness to practise’ (SSSC, 2016). Participants, however, experience this as perfunctory: At the moment very few people are asked for their portfolios so people are saying ‘why am I going to bother doing them, why should I keep all this material, no-one is ever going to look at it and do I really respect that body anyway?’ (Margaret). For Jack, the PRTL requirements have little value. He described being negligent in relation to his own training: ‘I haven’t recorded the stuff I’ve done and I haven’t done enough, in contrast to the medical profession for instance, or any other profession where I would have had to be much more assiduous about how I’d logged it’. Grant et al. (2018) found that PRTL arrangements are not well understood by either NQSWs or their line managers. Rita believes there’s a lot of frustration around requirements for registration and that it is generally perceived as restrictive rather than facilitating. Despite our claim that the SSSC appropriates to itself the outcomes of social work activity, it is generally forced to do this via shallow rituals and proxy indicators, of which PRTL is one. This is despite the fact that the connection between PRTL and good practice is more one of ‘self-evidence’ than demonstrable good. Social work finds itself in a submissive position—unable and/or unwilling to stake its existence in a struggle for its essential values and purpose. Codes of practice The fourth function of the SSSC is the development of the ‘Codes of Practice’ (SSSC, 2016) for employees and employers. Jack said he was unsure about what the ‘Codes of Practice’ offered over the British Association of Social Workers’ (BASW, 2014) Code of Ethics: For me the BASW Code of Ethics, although they’ve evolved in my time in social work, was the core way back and SSSC didn’t add anything to that really. They simplified some of the language but didn’t change anything in terms of the ethos or how I would see myself in relation to the profession. This mirrors Payne’s (2005, p. 196) view that codes of practice require compliance in terms of ‘general accountability, effectiveness and probity’, as opposed to codes of ethics ‘based on professional values’. As a union shop steward, Josh believes the ‘’Codes of Practice’ could be ‘an excellent stick to beat bosses with’ but that the regulator is not interested in regulating employers. Jim, who has been on fitness to practise panels agrees that the employers’ code of conduct is underused even ‘when they're seeing the same employer come up again and again’. These findings bring us back to the point about the unsatisfactory nature of proxy indicators. The ‘Codes of Practice’ (SSSC, 2016) do little to promote social work values of social justice and empowerment. Instead, they regulate only compliance with rules around appropriate behaviour. Ultimately, the SSSC can only influence social work practice through social workers. In the unequal relationship that currently exists, this inevitably leads to a situation where improvements can only be made by holding all registered professionals individually culpable. The economic and political climate cannot be influenced and so it is ignored. Far from improving practice or advancing social work values, the Code of Practice serves merely to strengthen the SSSC’s regulatory grip over social workers. Representation Several participants identified what they might hope to be a role for the SSSC in representing and promoting the profession, which it is not seen to be fulfilling. [T]hat’s a bit devaluing that this is sharp-end stuff that people are doing, and it’s not got somebody up there overseeing but also arguing their corner. SSSC, they are our face into Government as well, not just doing down onto us but (I) hope they are representing us back at Government level. Josh does not believe that the SSSC represents the profession in any way: ‘I just think “what do they do for us .. they're not interested in sticking up for social workers. They're interested in pulling them down”’. He believes there are inconsistencies in practice, citing examples particularly in relation to people’s experiences of adult protection and that ‘the SSSC and the likes of them should be trying to promote cultures that are consistent across the country with the legislation’. Carol believes social work needs an organisation, but we need something, with more power, more force behind it … I'm not sure that the regulators are the people to do it really… An organisation is only as good as what it can do, and I don’t think any organisations out there for social workers have much power round the table just now. Again, the logic and consciousness of the master are evident here. The Hegelian master (the regulator) has a consciousness that is only ‘for itself’, only those in bondage (social workers) have a consciousness for another (the master), albeit their allegiance is not freely given. For Hegel, however, true self-consciousness implies precisely such a freely given and mutual ‘being for another’. The regulatory consciousness does not have as its object the promotion of social work per se, it is not directly invested in such an outcome. Instead, the focus for the regulator is the elimination and punishment of ‘unsatisfactory’ work or behaviour by those whom it holds in bondage, viz. social work and social care professionals, in the expectation that this is the key to meeting the policy objectives of government, its own master. Discussion Although our treatment of these research findings has been somewhat tentative, we suggest that a discernible social work consciousness emerges from the interviews. Of course, we must point out here that there is a certain neatness to Hegel’s tale of the master and servant and that in reality many more consciousnesses and dimensions come into play and things do not play out in such a straightforward manner. Nonetheless, we contend, the Hegelian dialectic does help us to make sense of the current relationship between social work and the SSSC—with implications for other regulatory arrangements—as well as pointing us towards possible ways forward. Whilst we can only comment from the social worker as servant perspective, it is clear that the social workers in the study—in findings supported by other studies (Meleyal, 2011; McLaughlin et al., 2016; Grant et al., 2018)—do cast themselves in a relationship of subservience to the demands of the SSSC. They perceive a disconnect between the core values and aims of social work, and the blunt and often tokenistic instruments that the regulator employs to legitimate its role. Use of these instruments has led in large measure to a retreat into a defensive rule-following mode of practice. The social workers in this study did at least perceive their dominated position and understood how it impacted negatively on practice, suggesting a level of professional consciousness. Alienation from practice presented a complex picture. It was evident that the activities of the SSSC do impact massively on the behaviour of social workers, though there was no evidence of this being in any particularly positive ways. The interviewees expressed an alienation from their work insofar as they were now forced to spend a lot of time on things that they did not perceive as being driven by the needs of service users. At the same time, unlike the Hegelian servant, they did not recognise the SSSC as the proprietor of their labour. The importance of mutual recognition emerged at various points in the interviews. Most significantly, the interviewees were generally supportive of the idea of a regulatory body, but, in line with other research (Meleyal, 2011), they were angered with what materialised. Whilst looking for an essentially equal consciousness that would promote the values of social work, celebrate and endorse its work, they are instead confronted by an institution that does not appear to them as doing any of these things. Rather, the SSSC was experienced as an external force, eager to whip them into line whilst not understanding, or at least concerning itself with, the everyday realities of being overworked and under-resourced. Whilst those interviewed did not identify themselves with the SSSC, their relationship to it did lead to a transformed sense of self. They had moved closer to realising a more fully self-conscious subjectivity. Conclusion The current antagonistic relationship between the social work profession and the SSSC serves neither party. In this article, we have sought to take this antagonism beyond mutual recrimination, but rather to understand it theoretically within Hegel’s lord and bondsman dialectic. Despite our critical stance, or, rather, through it, we suggest that the confrontation between the profession and its regulatory bodies may be an essential part of their mutual development through a dialectical process. We contend that it is only through its current servitude that social work is able to confront itself and, in so doing, have the chance of negating its current consciousness that is, transforming it. However, whilst servitude may be a necessary stage in the profession’s development towards full self-consciousness, it does not guarantee it; rather, this requires objective practice in order for the profession to transcend itself. If it is to achieve full self-consciousness, social work must confront its fear and accept the ‘risk’ of its own annihilation; it must negate both its own being and that of the world through objective practice. The successful negation of itself, therefore, involves the reflective understanding, or, in Hegelian terms, ‘speculative thinking’ (Rose, 1981) of the negating power of its formative work. Social work, then, cannot come to the understanding of itself through the actions of an externality—the enforcement of command and prohibition—and yet, this is precisely the existing situation. The SSSC relies entirely upon things which must be externalised—frameworks and rules, principally through the ‘Codes of Practice’ (SSSC, 2016)—and attaches these to the profession, again as an externality. It is here that Žižek’s (2012) reading of Hegel might suggest the next stage in the dialectic between the profession and the regulator. As social work develops its own consciousness through labour and, in part, through its struggle with the SSSC, the superordinate power of the regulator will disappear, not as a result of being overturned but because it has become superfluous; social workers will sublate to themselves the discipline required for effective practice. What is required of social workers ‘is a free allegiance’ (Hegel, 2001, p. 442), meaning, first, that only the profession can internalise its ethics and values, and, second, that this internalisation can come only from its own desire and not through fear or imposition. Freedom and ethical being are here one and the same, neither can exist without the other. Professional autonomy is, therefore, fundamentally incompatible with rule-following servitude. Current regulatory arrangements, by such analysis, cannot hold; there is no mutual recognition. 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TI - The Social Work Regulator and Professional Identity: A Narrative of Lord and Bondsman
JO - The British Journal of Social Work
DO - 10.1093/bjsw/bcaa034
DA - 2020-07-01
UR - https://www.deepdyve.com/lp/oxford-university-press/the-social-work-regulator-and-professional-identity-a-narrative-of-fXUbL96CAP
SP - 1
VL - Advance Article
IS - 
DP - DeepDyve
ER -