“Stretcher Bearers of Society”: Social Work, Neoliberalism and Post-Pandemic Canada

Abstract

American academic, Porter Lee, (1929) distinguished between social workers who were either radical or conservative. Some preferred to repair society and others preferred to repair people. This distinction he referred to as cause and function – cause being those economic and social structures that give rise to the personal problems in individuals’ everyday lives; function being those direct interventions that social workers employ to “help” individuals and families overcome their personal problems, usually understood in psychological, pathological terms. C. Wright Mills (1959) made a similar distinction between troubles and issues. Essentially, he argued that in liberal capitalism widespread public issues are frequently attributed to and treated as problems of individual dysfunction rather than as outcomes of the socio-economic structure of the state. This paper argues that social work in English-speaking Canada has lost its once important voice in social reform and, by pursuing professional recognition and protection, has focused its education and direct practice almost entirely on clinical intervention. Even in the post-pandemic aftermath – it has merely adapted to continued neoliberalism, managerialism, and accountability. Rather than vigorously pursuing social change, social work has remained stuck in its role described by Cassidy (1933) as “the stretcher bearers of society.”