Book Review: The End of Social Work: A Defense of the Social Worker in Times of Transformation

The End of Social Work: A Defense of the Social Worker in Times of Transformation, by Steve Burghardt. Cognella, Inc., ISBN: 9781793540157, 2021, 159 pages, $48.95 hardback, $29.95 paperback, $23.95  digital.

    Burghardt, a professor of social work at Hunter College, offers a self-admitted polemic against the forces he perceives are undermining the social dimension of social work practice. The foreword by Cheryl Hyde asks, where are the bold initiatives to promote “courageous, systemic, and meaningful change?” (p. xiv). Burghardt answers by dismissing as hollow the contemporary approaches. Among the pretenders are the Special Commission for the Advancement of Macro Social Work Practice (Chapter 1), the Academy of Social Work and Sciences’ Grand Challenges (Chapter 2), and the NASW Code of Ethics (Chapters 3 and 4). It is important to note that Burghardt’s critique is without rancor. He is an advocate for the frontline social worker who often serves sacrificially to promote client well-being. His lament is that our social work institutions have done so little to improve frontline working conditions.

    Burghardt claims that our own institutions have squelched public debate. Unlike the Addams-Richmond disputes, the rank-and-file controversies of the 1930s, and the race-fueled militancy of the 1960s, today’s social work controversies are insular and disconnected from larger social movements. As Burghardt asserts in his introduction, “Real courage begins with the awareness that your actions on behalf of a cause or principle might personally hurt your professional status” (p. xxvii), a consequence uncommonly embraced today.

    A more insidious assault on the profession has come from neoliberalism. The right constrains our funding and then quickly accuses our interventions as ineffective. The left claims we have forsaken our social change goals. To Burghardt, social work has never been the dominant leader in social change, but rather has worked alongside others. He believes we should cease over-celebrating our past and recommit to participating in today’s movements for change (e.g., BLM, Green New Deal, and Medicare for All). He is convinced that we need a narrower focus on working with the poor and marginalized.

    In Burghardt’s analysis, social workers have always been reluctant to work in their own best interests. Our ethical code prioritizes client well-being with no comparable emphasis on our own well-being. (Editor's note: As of June 1, 2021, the NASW Code of Ethics addresses social worker self-care.) Pro bono service is virtually mandatory. The remaining mechanisms to fund social services include an underfunded nonprofit sector and federal/state grants demanding short-term outcome reporting that undermines the relational essence of social work practice. The resulting managerialism with its emphasis on efficacy and paper trails fails to provide the bare minimums of a professional life, namely, autonomy and creativity. The commonly underpaid, overworked, and micro-managed individual practitioner has fled into the self-protection of professional clinical licensure and part-time practice simply to make a decent living. The focus away from a non-poor and non-marginalized clientele is merely an unintentional byproduct of the shift to clinical work.

    Along the way, Burghardt has much to say about the profession’s less than stellar history with racial injustice and the futility of assessing competencies that take decades of practice, not months in a classroom, to develop. His final chapter aspires to presenting mechanisms for resisting the forces that have diminished the profession but is not completely satisfying. A more coherent counterclaim against neoliberalism, revision of our Code of Ethics, structural changes to promote collaboration between social service managers and frontline social workers, and the development of effective interventions to help the poor and marginalized are not fully consistent with Burghardt’s exaltation of the relational and constructivist essence of social work. Greater professional competence is more consistent with clinical practice than it is with community practice, and herein lies Burghardt’s largest unanswered question.

Reviewed by Peter A. Kindle, PhD, CPA, LMSW, Professor of Social Work, University of South Dakota.