I recently started reading Fighting Monsters, an interesting blog by a social worker. Social work, as I was taught in my introductory college orientation class, involves facilitating vulnerable people’s capaacity to act upon their civil roles. It seems therefore surprising to find that social workers are often involved in procedures that will essentially take some of their client’s liberties away. For example, in the UK apparently, social workers carry out Mental Health Act evaluations – in the Netherlands, only a psychiatrist can do this -, and both here and there, they are involved in incapacity and best interest assessments.
The fact that social workers participate in these procedures, even if they never wanted to take away a client’s liberty, runs a risk of leading to oppression, in this case from the very people whose job it is to prevent this. In my own experience, a social worker has been particularly forceful in her decisions about where I would live – or at least, for which places I would be signed up. All the while, eveyrone claimed that she was doing this in my best interest, but I had good reasons to disagree.
It seems rather paradoxical to me that someone who is supposed to facilitate your civil capacity, is actually taking some of that capacity away. To me at least, it didn’t seem as surprising if a doctor was dominating me, since her job was to treat mental illness (or behavioral disturbance, for that matter). However, if a social worker thinks I cannot make decisions independently, what would be the protocol for decision-making on my behalf? Would it depend on my level of (perceived) competence? Is there any situation in which a social worker can ethically suppress a client’s attempt at communicating her wishes? Even if social work originally wanted to stay away for force, of course, however, it doesn’t mean this cannot be part of a social worker’s job now.