Why should social workers be interested in how legal rules are made and reviewed?

Gwyneth Roberts

I think social work has a dynamic role to play in society. To make that body, that we’ve been talking about, a healthy entity, one which has an impact on people’s needs in society. Then social workers do, I think, have a duty to be involved, much more broadly, in the evolution of the law. I think they have duty not to accept the legal situation always but to say “Well, this bit, this bit of the skeleton is a little bit defective, the flesh and blood here needs a little bit of cosmetic treatment”. And so I think there is a wider social enterprise that social workers should carry out as a pressure group within society for the sake of those people for whom they are in existence to help and serve.

Alison Brammer

I think social workers have a key role in commenting on the way in which the law may or may not facilitate what they want to do. It’s an important skill for social workers to develop in being critical, in being reflective about their practice and their use of law is an obvious aspect of that practice. Part of the tool kit of being a competent social worker being able to use the law. And so if there are opportunities to question the law and to perhaps exercise choice in their use of the law then that’s an obvious opportunity for them to exercise that critical reflection.

Stuart Vernon

I think social work, as a discipline, has a responsibility and a role in the development of the law. That can be seen in a number of ways. You may want to talk about the influence of childcare enquiries, about the influence of social work as a profession, or as a discipline or, if you like, as a value base in the development of law at the pre-legislative stage. The Law Commission, for instance, is responsible for recommending to government changes in the law and the social work profession, the discipline can intervene at that stage. And I’m also thinking particularly about the way in which there has been a considerable influence in what was thought to be the future of, the development of mental health law. There were scoping exercises, there were green papers, there were white papers. There is a space in which influence can occur and social work has to seize that space.