‘People are responsible for their own individual actions’: dominant ideologies within the Neoliberal Institutionalised Social Work Order

Abstract

Despite existing in contradiction to the espoused values of social work, neoliberalism has arguably transformed the profession in various places across the globe. This phenomenon has been widely considered, investigated, analysed, but the ways in which neoliberalism has shaped the consciousness of social workers has often been neglected. This is a substantial omission as it potentially fails to recognise how social workers themselves might now be complicit in reproducing and amplifying neoliberal worldviews. Conceptually rooted in the delineation of a Traditional Institutional Social Work Order (TISWO) and a Neoliberal Institutional Social Work Order (NISWO) paradigm, the article includes a small, qualitative, exploratory study focusing on the perceptions of six senior social workers. The findings appear to highlight how neoliberal discourses are manifesting themselves in how these practitioners conceive social ills, their causes and ‘solutions’.