Adoption in Context and Social Work Intervention

Abstract

I doubt that anyone would challenge the view that social workers are concerned with matters of consequence. This assertion is valid across the whole range of social work activities, whether we interpret these as a means of exercising more effective social control or as a way of enhancing the quality of life for individuals and groups within an established political, social and economic structure. At this juncture, however, we are not afforded the continuity of ‘eternal things’, either in relation to problems which social workers are legitimately expected to confront or with regard to appropriate means of tackling these at a professional and organisational level. We are still faced with questions concerning the interpretation of social problems, the organisation of resources, development of appropriate skills and the identification of potentially successful methods of intervention. Social workers act within the context of political power, ideological debate, economic constraints, changing social and demographic conditions, legally circumscribed choices, as well as responding to professional issues of theory and practice.

Geographies, said the geographer, are books which, of all books, are most concerned with matters of consequence. They never become old-fashioned. It is very rarely that a mountain changes its position. It is very rarely that an ocean empties itself of its waters. We write of eternal things.

Antoine de Saint-Exupery, The Little Prince