How to address social work difficulties in social services? A supervision-based participatory action research study

Abstract

Introduction. The primary care social services system and therefore social work professionals face an important challenge in responding to the current situations of vulnerability and/or social disadvantage. In order to contribute to this challenge, an investigation has been carried out in Vitoria-Gasteiz City Council's social services, which serve an average of 32,000 people annually. The objective of this study was to favour strategies that contribute to the improvement and transformation of the professional practice of social work, and consequently the enhancement of the processes of social care as well as the living conditions and coexistence of citizens. Methodology. Participatory Action Research (PAR) was conducted that incorporated supervision. Research is understood as a dynamic, reflective and collaborative construction, in which supervision represents a sphere for critical and constructive reflection on professional practice, based on collaborative dialogues. With this approach, a mixed research team composed of four social workers from the academic world was set up together with nine social workers from the professional field. Nine discussion groups took place during supervision sessions over one year. They addressed different aspects related to the objectives of the study in order to generate knowledge. The applied research techniques comprised the discussion groups integrated in the supervision sessions, as well as the qualitative content analysis and the discourse analysis. Results. Core difficulties were identified in the daily practice of social work professionals in primary care social services, as well as some strategic lines of action that would enable to address and overcome those difficulties. All was structured according to six basic axes of supervision, which became key analytical pillars of the study: contextual-organisational, technical-methodological, intrapersonal, interpersonal, epistemological and ethical-ideological. Discussion and Conclusions. The results show the centrality and the interconnections between the six analytical axes used. Based on these interconnections, the main difficulties and possibilities encountered by municipal social workers in their daily professional work were grouped together. The results largely coincide with those obtained in other works and with expert contributions in the field. Four main difficulties should be underlined: the excessive standardisation and red tape; the assimilation of social work by social services; the disciplinary weakness of social work and the personal impact of professional practice. As for improvement strategies, several dimensions were identified, such as: seriously undertaking to simplify procedures and work with social work criteria, principles and models; promoting participatory and reflective research; strengthening the presence of ethical principles in professional praxis; encouraging the real participation of the citizens in the processes, making sure that their involvement is expressed in social reports, collaborative diagnoses, codesigned intervention plans and improvement and change strategies. In addition, supervision notably revealed itself as a tool to face the difficulties identified, to contribute to the continuous reconstruction of professional identity and to improve social work praxis.