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© British Association of Social Workers
Towards a Theory of Social Work Expertise
Jan Fook is a social worker and Professor of Social Work at Deakin University. She has taught social work and welfare students over the past fifteen years. Most of her research work is on social work practice, and she is probably best known for her work on structural and feminist perspectives on direct practice. She is the author of Radical Casework (Allen and Unwin) and editor of The Reflective Researcher (Allen and Unwin)
Martin Ryan is a Senior Lecturer in the Graduate School of Social Work at La Trobe University. As well as practice research on the skill and knowledge development of social workers, he has also researched consumer bankruptcy, palliative care social work and a number of areas in social work education. He is the author of The Last Resort: A Study of Consumer Bankrupts (Avebury) and Social Work and Debt Problems (Avebury)
Linette Hawkins is currently employed in field education programmes for social work, welfare and community development students at Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, Deakin and La Trobe Universities. She also works as a ‘freelancer’ in a broad range of community service projects
Correspondence to Prof. Jan Fook, School of Social Inquiry, Deakin University, Geelong, Victoria 3217, Australia
Summary
This paper begins by summarizing the results of a qualitative exploratory study of thirty experienced social workers which was undertaken in order to identify some characteristics of social work expertise. Some of the features identified include a confidence with professional identity and an ability to deal with complexities. Participants were also able quickly to prioritize relevant factors and were aware of constraints and resources, but made conscious use of formal theory only minimally. The full results of this study are reported elsewhere (Fook et al., in press). The main purpose of this paper is to explore the implications of these results in developing a theory of social work expertise. The issues examined include the debates around the relationship between theory and practice in social work, the generic versus the specialist nature of social work, the relevance of existing theories of expertise to social work, and the affirmation of artistic elements of social work practice.
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