Abstract
Social work with children and families continues to be a highly contested area with considerable emotional impact on workers and managers involved in this work. Whilst other ethnographic study of children and families social work has been undertaken, this thought-provoking study, which focuses specifically on pride and shame, offers astute and original insights into how social work practice is driven and influenced by these powerful emotions. Based on Gibson’s doctoral research, there is an impressive level of scholarship throughout, and this book repays close reading.
The opening foundational chapter offers a detailed theoretical exploration of the role of emotions more broadly in social work practice, firmly setting out a constructionist conception of emotions. It is argued that from this perspective, an ‘emotion’ cannot be considered a thing, but rather a process, which, ‘is both macro, operating within a social group over a long period of time, and micro, operating within a person over a short period of time’ (p.30). A useful framework for conceptualising the process of experiencing emotions is offered, and a significant range of literature is synthesised and critically engaged with. I would suggest that this chapter on its own represents a useful starting point for exploration of the role of emotions within social work practice generally. A further chapter applies this analysis more directly to social work with children and families, laying the groundwork for later chapters, which draw more directly on the empirical aspects of the study.
Chapters four and five draw most heavily on the empirical aspects of the study on the creation of the ‘appropriate’ organisation and ‘appropriate’ professional within that organisation. They focus very heavily on the impact of audit and inspection, key aspects of a neoliberal ideology. Challenges to that ideology have, Gibson asserts, ‘been diverted by blaming social workers and social work organisations, and eclipsed by presenting a version of events that evoke shame in the profession, rather than identifying problems within the wider system’ (p.74).
The sense from these chapters is that the impact of audit and inspection, as well as engendering shame within workers and organisations, has skewed the organisation’s functioning towards the needs of the system, rather than the needs of families.
The book concludes with the development of a model to consider the relationship between emotion regulation, emotion work and professional practice and suggests how the findings of the study might be applicable beyond the organisation at the heart of the study, along with suggestions for further research in this important area. As the author acknowledges in the concluding chapter, the focus of the book is primarily on individual experiences of pride and shame of social workers and their managers, and there is room to explore both collective feelings of social work professionals as well as the impact of pride and shame on families that are subject to social work intervention. Whilst Gibson argues persuasively that moving beyond shame to a more humane practice requires courage, honesty and self-compassion, perhaps the book would have benefitted from some more concrete ideas as to how that might be brought about and strategies that workers and organisations might adopt.
I would suggest that the readership of this book will largely be an academic audience, and I certainly see it being a very useful reference for my own teaching on pre-qualifying social work courses. Also I would consider that social work students and social workers, particularly in the early stages of their careers, who are doing the ‘emotion work’ explored here would find this a useful aid for reflection. Overall, this is not a comfortable read, but one that makes a very significant contribution to the debate about shame and pride within social work.