James Donnelly, DSW, LCSW

In thinking about what I might say to you today, I framed the event with the image of new recruits joining those of us who are already on the path of practice. I felt quite honored that someone had asked me to turn around and greet you.

Within the spirit of that frame, I thought I would greet you with and offering; something of me, gleaned from twenty some odd years of practice, that you could put in your pocket and make use of from time to time. So in the place of the traditional offering of bread and salt, I offer as you join us:

two metaphors, four pillars and a tree.

First the tree.

The tree is the image of a wish or aspiration which we who preceded you hold for your professional development. It is somewhat in the form of an Irish blessing, and goes like this:

May your roots be deep and secure

to draw the nourishment you will need

May your trunk be wide and strong

to withstand the howling winds of winter

and

May your branches be ample and laden

with the fruit of knowledge and practice wisdom

you will generate for your clients and our profession

It seems as though Social Work is perennially explaining itself to those outside the profession. We do so many tings and are associated with people in such a variety of settings that it sometimes feels like an endless and elusive task to capture our generic essence and communicate it to others. Having worked in a hospital setting all of my professional life, the ability to state clearly and convincingly what you’re about to the interdisciplinary team is an everyday challenge.

Thus, the two metaphors I offer were developed to fit that purpose.

First is an image that refers to the historical roots of Social Work.  I found this a more effective way to start than trying to explain Social Work in terms of what we do. It’s a picture of our historical mandate:

“…Social Work sprang forth from the cracks in society…”

Here is an image of something alive rising out of the reality of disruption. Pointing to the great social upheavals of the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries, I use this image to illustrate the fact that social work evolved as a response to people whose lives have been dislocated by the disruptions in a society moving too fast for itself. The consequence to people and communities imposed by the experience of disruption is that they are, without choice or desire on their part, faced with a task. It is in response to assisting with that task that the essence of social work is to be found.

The second metaphor was developed to clarify the nature of that task and our profession as a response to it. It is used to demonstrate both the nature of this disruption and its essential contextual reality.

In this metaphor, the patterns in peoples’ lives with regard to their habits and relationships with each other and their environments are likened to a fabric. This fabric is a person’s network of things, behaviors, relationships and aspirations that continuously reinforce their sense of who they are and the nature of their world. Our sense of reality, worth and importance as well as a feeling of orientation and direction are contained more in our habits than our philosophies. They are the support and threads for a sense of meaning in our lives.

When these relationships and patterns are disrupted, the essential assault is to our sense of meaning. There is a tear in the fabric of meaning; and what is experienced in this undefined and awful place is a gaping hole between reality as one knew it, and the need to redefine both one’s self and one’s world

This tear, this in-between place is the domain of social work. It is where social work works in assisting people in the essential task of facing them: to find within themselves the capacity to redefine both themselves an the world in which they live.

The essence of social work is assisting people in the process of creating and recreating meanings; to assist them re-weave the fabric of meaning.

Out of the realities of this awful and undefined place to which we are called in response to our clients, come the first of two pillars of social work.

The first is Presence.

Appearance to the contrary, social work is not essentially a profession of doing. The essence of social work is being-with. The first axiom of social work taught to us in Casework I, or its contemporary equivalent, is to “start where the client is”. In my youth as a social worker, I used to think this principal was some kind of intervention. I learned that it is the fundamental value of our profession. First, we step into the circle and fit our means to their need; not their needs to our means.

The second pillar is Relationship.

A terrible wind can blow through this hole in the fabric of one’s life, and relationship is the hand we extend to help people to keep from being blown away. In a place where it’s hard to know how to feel real, one needs a flesh and blood link to the rest of human kind. Relationship can last a minute or a year. Time is not the point.  It’s the openness to connect in the presence of the unfamiliar.

To make the nature of our client’s task and our response to it even clearer, I rely on the concept of “expectation”.  Expectation is a concept that links things and patterns of behavior with meanings.

In a manner of speaking, the mutually defined expectations we hold for each other is what gives the fabric of meaning its color and texture.  The expectations we hold for ourselves and each other are what define our world and our place in it.  When you know who and what you are, you know what to expect and what is expected of you; when you know what to expect, you know who and what you are.

When disruption strikes and tears the fabric of meaning, the task of finding oneself again becomes a process of re-defining mutually held expectations on many levels. This task, that is never easy or smooth, becomes one of re-negotiation expectations in the major areas of one’s life. Expectations one held for one’s self, those between one’s self and intimates and the mutually held expectations between the community and one’s self and family – all need to be re negotiated. In addition, our clients must also negotiate the expectations between them and the providers of care or assistance.  This is the task our clients face and this is where we assist them.

Out of the realities of this process of re negotiation stem the third and forth pillars of social work.

The third pillar of social work is stuff.

The heart of this process of re negotiation expectations takes place around stuff: concrete things and specific circumstance that must be addressed.  Clients are faced with an array of unwanted choices and decisions that must be made; dilemmas that can’t be avoided.  There are arrangements that must be made, decisions about who’s going to do what for whom.

Herein lies the unique genius of social work: our century long tradition of using concrete and circumstantial things in the dynamics of context to help people find their ways to redefine themselves and their reality – after their lives have been disrupted by events beyond their control. Links to meaning are often fragile and attached to specific concrete tasks and circumstances.  The job of re weaving a context is about defining and resolving dilemmas through the risk of action involving specific, concrete things and circumstances… things and circumstances tied to who one is in relation to one’s intimates and community.

The heart of our practice is stuff. If we forget that, we forget who we are.

The fourth pillar of social work is struggle.

The process of re negotiation one’s place in the world is neither easy nor neat.  It is struggle; the agony and drama of people caught in the cross fire of forced change. Conflict, disagreement, push and pull are at the heart of the negotiation process.  The struggle takes place both within and between the participants, including the social worker.  The struggle takes place often with a community unwilling to negotiate redefining itself in the face of the realities our clients present. Always in the middle, we struggle with both our clients and their communities to negotiate new realities.

So there is the offering: a flower between the cracks in society and the torn fabric of meaning out of which stem the four pillars of social work:

Presence, Relationship, Stuff and Struggle.

If you listen and are faithful to the music of that quartet, there is no doubt that

Your roots will be deep and secure

And draw the nourishment you will need

Your trunk will be wide and strong

To withstand the howling winds of winger

And

Your branches will be ample and laden

With the fruit of knowledge and practice wisdom

You will generate for you clients and our profession.

Readings

Donnelly, James. (1992). A frame for defining social work in a

hospital setting. Social Work in Health Care, 18(1), 107-119.

______________. (2009). Soundings: Explorations of social work in a changing health care environment. New York: South Garden Press.

For thoughts and comments, please e mail to: jdonnellydsw@gmail.com

© 2005 James Donnelly, DSW.LCSW

All rights reserved

South Garden Press, New York