So, I've been looking online for some fellow-travelers in this area of study. So far, the list has been vanishingly small. Searches for "radical social work" do not turn up much relevant information. They are usually websites that take a more stringently progressive approach to social work. Libertarian social work has even less of use as a search term.
I branched out from my actual base to include conservative social work. Evidently, there are people who hew to the conservative typography and practice social work. And they are all pretty pissed.
Just to evince a little personal bias here, I think conservatives are remarkably thin-skinned folks. The NAS piece linked above does a good job of raising a few valid points, but the overall tenor of it is just whiny.
Anyway, the article does raise some good points and a couple of jump-off points for future thought. The biggest criticism (repeated ad-nauseum) throughout the article was that social work must promote social justice. I'm used to this, as I had to go through social work education, and it's not that shocking. Also, the trotting out of "social justice" as a conservative boogeyman has worn down my ability to be annoyed by it. They make passing mention to Nozick and Hayek, but ultimately are just content to say that there are other ideas for social justice beyond egalitarian-minded redistribution of wealth. It would have been nice if they did some critical analysis of those ideas to give a sense of the debate and how conservative/libertarian ideas cold change the landscape of social work theory.
One of the major flaws in the article is in its contention that through the CSWE and NASW code of ethics, social workers are conscripted into service of the stated ideas and objectives of those national organizations. I've never felt like I couldn't believe what I do and still be a social worker. I guess that would be different if I held pro-life, anti-gay, or other such beliefs. But, as a libertarian, I don't feel like I can't be a social worker. Much to the contrary, I believe that critical study of social work must lead someone to libertarian ideas. No one really agrees with me on that one, yet.
I'm going to ignore their trotting out the other conservative boogeyman "diversity." Diversity is good, multiculturalism is wonderful, but viewing people as part of groups before recognizing their individual humanity is idiotic. In brief, that's what I think about diversity.
Now, it is difficult to suss out why Nozickian or Hayakian ideas have not percolated through social work education or theory. It is likely a confluence of circumstances. Both the professoriate and student body are much more likely to hold liberal views. Specifically, their values can be delineated further by its level of statism/radicalism.
The more earnest progressives will tend towards the radical approaches to solving social problems--ones that may rely on theories of redistributive social justice, reparations for social damages, but a nominal skepticism of the government as an entity. Extrapolating further, I would venture that these social workers are likely younger than most and have positions with lesser power.
While this label describes most of the social workers I know, I believe that the older, more powerful cohort of social workers subscribe to a perspective I will call liberal statism. Liberal statism uses the authority of the state to put into practice socially and economically liberal values. Their belief in the ability of the state to solve social problems is unwavering and considered settled. They focus only on directing ("ever-dwindling!") government resources to the appropriate programs. At this level people become statistics, metrics to gauge a idea. They are inculcated from the direct effects of their actions, and shielded from the unintended consequences of their interventions.
Liberal statism is the ossified version of progressive social work--the ingrained system that we currently labor under. I would imagine that a prototypical social worker would start out as a progressive and eventually morph into a liberal statist, if they progress career-wise at a large agency or in government. Both ideologies adhere to the same fatal conceit that "if only we had the right people in charge, allocating the right resources to the right places, we could fix all of these problems." This is the same fatal conceit Hayek refers to in criticizing state-run economies. It should be no surprise that mental health is a state-run economy (at least for those of low-income and other populations social work directs itself towards). While progressives may come up with liberatory programs on the micro scale to help people in these groups (it's radicalism in practice), the authority for these programs lies with government agencies, they work through private agencies tied inseparably to government funds, and operate under a government-dominated regulatory framework. These progressives are actually asking the liberal statists the freedom to experiment with ideas and practice how they see fit (great ideas!), but on the system's dime and under the system's rules.
To give an example, I used to work for a harm-reduction, housing-first program for chroncially homeless adults in Washington, DC. Their ideology was inherently progressive and it provides an interesting case study in delineating the difference between progressive and statist. It began as a pilot program in NYC, upended the approach to homelessness throughout the country through the housing-first model, and is one of the astonishingly few harm-reduction agencies in the country. Because their model was rigorously tested and found tremendously effective, DMH and DC government bigwigs love the organization--giving it wide latitude with resources (like housing vouchers) and not enlisting it in the war on drugs. At the same time, there were meetings I attended there where we railed against proposed Medicaid cutbacks in the city, fretted over budgetary problems caused by federal and local funding issues, and in individual conversations (never with anyone high up, though!) the uselessness of some DMH employees, their paperwork/busywork quotas, and an overall frustration with the social support system that extended from local issues to federal policy.
As a libertarian, I loved their micro-level approach because it valued individual competency and choice so dearly! But, their exo- and macro-level conundrums were difficult to sympathize with. Of course the government will start auditing our records--what we do is essentially social control from their standpoint! Of course our funding is going to be cut--that's because we rely on public funding! Of course DMH is going to be useless or idiotic on this issue--they have no competition or incentive to perform well!
To close that personal anecdote off, it was clear that people had simply not thought to set these programs up using private funding, in jurisdictions with small/non-existent mental health oversight, and advocate on the larger scale for more private control of charitable/helping professions.
This is the point, ostensibly, made in the NAS study. Ideas that do not fit in with liberal statism or progressivism are simply not considered. The fault for this lies partially with the professors, organizations, and students of the profession for not demanding a more critical course curriculum that fosters independent thought. However, the majority of the fault falls to those in the libertarian and conservative movements who have never addressed themselves coherently to the helping professions.
Social work as an academic discipline (and academia as a whole) is biased as hell on its face. But that does not mean that they should be any different. As long as they are promoting and fostering independent thought--new approaches to social justice other than redistribution of wealth, e.g.--they are useful institutions. The anecdotes presented in the NAS study, though they evince a great deal of political bias, are fundamentally about abuses of power to those with differing ideas. Idiotic administrators abusing their power is a problem in itself--that they were doing it under the guise of politics is notable, but not of premier importance. The political aspect of these cases does not amount to enough for the NAS' overall narrative--that social work students are forced to become indoctrinated or face discipline.
That's not to say there's a lot of people with my beliefs out there in social work. I started this post out by saying how little material there is for conservative social workers and that there is next to none for libertarian social workers. We got a lot of work to do here!
