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Classic Text Revisited

The discussion which follows is an attempt to examine the main ‘strands’ of the content of Hugh England’s book where he explores why ‘thinking about helping as art’ (95) is useful, and to explore why the book continues to be influential today. It provides a useful and, I would suggest, essential contrast to the pervasive power and encroachment of ‘thinking about helping’ that attempts to locate social work within a discourse more familiar to the social sciences. Here, terms like ‘throughput process’ and ‘macro risk assessment’ (as measurable and certain) have been adopted and rarely questioned. Almost by stealth, the ordinary, everyday language of metaphor and symbolism, embedded within processes of shared understanding between people, has been rejected in favour of empirical evidence-based outcomes where effectiveness can apparently be objectively measured. Against these arid backgrounds social workers seem to be increasingly constrained and risk losing confidence in their ability to relate to people as whole human beings. Part 2, Section 6, of England’s work provides some valuable insights and reminders about the limitations and impoverishment of social work when ‘the assumption (that social work is intellectually rooted in Social Sciences) is never explicitly challenged’; England goes further, ‘The social worker’s means of selection and integration of knowledge . . . linking theory into practice is not scientific’ (76). He argues that there must be shared societal and cultural understanding within social worker education and between people. England draws upon the thoughts of the cultural historian Raymond Williams (1922–88) to illustrate his belief that we must share a common human reality. This can ‘fill in the gaps’ left by an over reliance upon social sciences (77). PRACTICE: SOCIAL WORK IN ACTION VOLUME 22 NUMBER 1 (FEBRUARY 2010)