Jeans

    M A R Y   T H O M S O N

I qualified as a social worker in 1982 and I work currently as a frontline social worker. As you can imagine I have seen many, many changes.

I chose Jeans because …

… they represent for me social work before the managerialism of the 1990s transformed social work into a corporatised, homogenised, depersonalised and overly regulated profession.

Jeans represent the time when workers did not hide behind a badge that identifies them as being somehow different from and superior to the people with whom we work.

It represents a time before we had created an industry to service a resource.

It is stated that social work is unsustainable beyond the year 2020 and I would state that the reason for this is the exponential increase in the number of staff now employed to tell us that there is no room for the relators and motivators from whence social work traditionally drew its staff and has now replaced this with the processors and producers who are more concerned with meeting deadlines and targets than in authentically engaging with people in need.

It is time for the men and women in suits to give social work back to the men and women in jeans!