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A critical analysis of the social work definition according to the relational paradigm
Fabio Folgheraiter and Maria Luisa Raineri International Social Work 2012 55: 473 originally published online 3 April 2012 DOI: 10.1177/0020872812440588 The online version of this article can be found at: http://isw.sagepub.com/content/55/4/473

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International Social Work 55(4) 473487 The Author(s) 2012 Reprints and permission: sagepub. co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav DOI: 10.1177/0020872812440588 isw.sagepub.com

A critical analysis of the social work definition according to the relational paradigm
Fabio Folgheraiter
Catholic University, Milan, Italy

Maria Luisa Raineri


Catholic University, Milan, Italy

Abstract In this article, we attempt to conduct a critical analysis of the joint IFSW and IASSW social work definition by re-reading it from the perspective of the relational paradigm. Our hypothesis is that if we adopt a precise position that focuses on the essentials, rather than seeking to pull together different and sometimes discordant perspectives, it might be possible to overcome some discrepancies and difficulties evident in the current definition. The intention is to identify the core of social work without undermining the paradigmatic openness of it. Keywords reciprocity of help, relational approach, self-determination, social change, social work definition

Introduction
The enduring problem of intuitively representing the essence of social work (Bartlett, 1958) has induced the International Federation of Social Workers
Corresponding author: Fabio Folgheraiter, Sociology Department, Catholic University, L.go Gemelli 1, Milano 20123, Italy. Email: fabio.folgheraiter@unicatt.it
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(IFSW) and the International Association of School of Social Work (IASSW) to work together to formulate a Definition Statement officially approved by both IFSW and IASSW at their respective General Assemblies in 2000 and by both organizations jointly in 2001. It runs as follows:
The social work profession promotes social change, problem solving in human relationships and the empowerment and liberation of people to enhance wellbeing. Utilising theories of human behaviour and social systems, social work intervenes at the points where people interact with their environments. Principles of human rights and social justice are fundamental to social work. (Hare, 2004: 418)

The text is dense, and carefully thought out. Although the definition was intended to be a cornerstone of professional thought, this valuable aim has been achieved only partially. In this article, we conduct a critical analysis of the definition by re-reading it from a particular point of view, that of the relational paradigm (Donati, 2010; Folgheraiter, 2004, 2007). Folgheraiter (2007) defines relational social work as a practice paradigm in which practitioners identify and resolve problems by facilitating coping networks (conceived as a set of relationships between people interested in a common aim) to enhance their resilience and capacities for action at both individual and collective levels. Participative and inclusive ways of working are engaged to mobilize and develop supportive and problem-solving networks that can include both family members, friends, neighbors and professional as teachers, health workers and social workers. Relational social work focuses on relationships as the basis for change. The central idea is that change emerges from a reciprocal aid. The practitioner helps the network to develop reflexivity and improve itself in enhancing welfare, and in turn - the network helps practitioner to better understand how he/she can help it, even when the matter is to counter structural inequalities. Although intended to provide for broader understandings of persistent social problems, it is developed within a Western social context, so can only be applied elsewhere with caution. Nevertheless, a number of good social work practices implemented in non-Western context can be well understood in the light of the relational paradigm. Our hypothesis is that if we adopt a precise position which focuses on the essentials, rather than seeking to pull together different and sometimes discordant perspectives, as the current definition does, it might be possible to move in new directions, although intrinsically unsettled ones (Rossiter, 2011). The relational paradigm overturns the normally taken-for-granted assumptions in mainstream social work: that is, that if we exploit the prescriptions furnished by scientific knowledge, it is possible to eliminate

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peoples problems. This salvationist claim is gainsaid by relational theory, which provocatively suggests that it is the human energy that emanates from motivated people that resolves the problem of the apparently growing inefficacy of welfare systems. It is sociality and humanity, modulated in the correct ethical and scientific terms, that legitimate whatever helping practices are adopted.

2. Analytical discussion of the joint definition


Following the procedure used by Hare (2004) and later adopted by Hutchings and Taylor (2007), we analyse the official definition, breaking it down into individual statements.

2.1. The social work profession . . .


The definition begins with the phrase The social work profession, not with the more obvious the profession of social work. In so doing, it subtly emphasizes that social work should not be understood as a single profession (Hare, 2004; Lorenz, 2001), but it does not immediately make clear that social work should be conceptualized as a multi-professional field, a plurality of professions or para-professions, all derived (or derivable, if we consider currently unknown future possibilities) by differentiation from the individual practitioner who originally constituted the historical so-called generic social worker (Smith and Whyte, 2008). Social work is a large umbrella (Van Ewijk, 2009) which encompasses all the realities that can be related to its complex identity. Whatever may have been the component parts of the original professional role from which distinct practices arose, they all have a common basis, namely the social model of helping. The term social professions includes all those professions or activities (such as care management, therapy, education, services organization) which seek to help people by enabling them, in an associated and reflexive manner, to cope with life-problems as they themselves perceive them. Here we make just one macroscopic point with regard to the definition: it makes no reference not even a vague one to the redistributive function of the classic social worker (Webb, 2010). In nearly all European countries, social workers have a conventional image as being government functionaries, a kind of high priests of the states distributive and normative functions. The redistributive function should not, in our opinion, be either concealed or denied: rather, it should be reconceptualized and in some way dignified. Social workers are not social purely because they make welfare apparatuses work from within by lubricating their mechanisms where they

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impact unilaterally with beneficiaries or end-users. Even when a social worker acts as a mere cog in one of those mechanisms, she or he is still a social worker because she or he is acting as a fluidifier of human reflexivity (Seikkula and Arnkil, 2006). Whatever his or her institutional status may be, a social worker acts in such a way that the interested parties can so long as they are recipients of services always evaluate those services and discuss them on an equal footing with the professionals who deliver them (Barnes, 1997). For the above reasons, the analysed expression could be reformulated as follows:
The professional arena of social work is the set of the various social professions carried out within or without national welfare systems . . .

2.2. Promotes social change . . .


This statement captures an essential aspect of social work practices, namely that they seek to improve society (Dominelli, 2004). Change is always desirable wherever there is suffering, but what kind of change is pursued by social workers? Obviously, they cannot be held directly and exclusively responsible for every deliberate social change. This term usually indicates a transformation in overall socio-political conditions or politico-administrative interventions with a certain impact on welfare. What are the changes exclusively claimed by social work? They are changes subject to two interconnected conditions: they must relate to a) the lives of real flesh-and-blood people (Ferguson, 2001); and, in particular, b) lives lived in conditions of such intense hardship that the concerned persons consider them unacceptable and therefore needing to be changed. The change that interests us here springs from a perception of concrete existential malaise, from awareness that a certain way of living generates hardship and suffering (BASW, 1997, principle 7). This perception may relate to medium-range aspects of life (the community) or to more detailed micro-aspects of the life of a family or an individual. But there must be a certain level of concern which extends across a relational network of a certain size (if it does not, the problem giving rise to the change is not social). The perception that this is not right may on occasion be a deep and sudden insight, but at other times it may be slow and reluctant, and even have the counterpoint of denial and suffering due to the act of realization. Whatever the case may be, social work is always involved in the escape from life situations which have been judged (by the various people involved) unacceptable or intolerable. Social work is

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actional, and therefore relational, because it always presupposes an associated (social) action, that is, a joint will to attain a desired improvement, a change which, it is hoped, will be for the better and therefore lead to recovery (if not to a solution). It is not, therefore, any change whatever that is of interest to social work; but rather, since social work is a welfare profession, a recovery which changes for the better human living conditions that are perceived as precarious and poor. The well-known relativistic dilemma (the question of establishing what exactly constitutes the good: is it what I say it is, or what you say it is?) typical of applied ethics, and which is always likely to arise in any situation where subjectivity is prominent, attenuates in the day-to-day practice of social workers. This is due to the remedial intrinsic nature of social work. Social workers generally intervene in severe hardship situations where establishing what is right, or at least what is openly wrong, is usually immediate (for example: in the case of an alcoholic who abuses his children and asks for help, it is he himself who suggests that it would be good if he gave up drinking and stopped being abusive; even if the drinker does not acknowledge the problem and it is his or her partner who asks for help, it is obvious that it would be good if he or she quit drinking and abusing). Relational theory assumes that every human being has an innate drive although sometimes covert or blocked towards the good (a life more human), and that this drive is more powerful when, because of various ordeals or misfortunes, people find themselves in the bad to the point that they have grown tired of it. It is in these circumstances, where people have an acute awareness of the hardship in which they find themselves or into which they may fall, that the most powerful internal energies are unleashed to achieve change, and at the same time to seek alliances and human support that is, to construct social bonds of trust. If, by contrast, people perceive themselves at ease, there will not be the self-motivation to change. Also, prevention is driven by a fear of the bad. Even if the bad does not exist at present, it is still foreseen in our minds, and as such exists now. As we said, the desired change which inspires social work moves in two directions: a) a direct change in community, family or individual lifestyles; and b) a change in the institutions and normative/administrative systems which may affect peoples lives in a certain place or time. In order to reorganize their lives on more salubrious, more human principles, people may direct their actions against these structural situations. Also in this latter case, social work is circumstantial and particularistic, and it aims to achieve changes brought about from below by responsible, motivated individuals. When institutional changes or reforms are driven from above, the change is political, and not attributable (except perhaps indirectly) to a primary social

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action. When changes are made through violence or fiat (even with a view to a perfect good or justice), they do not pertain to social work, because they are extraneous to its underlying values (IFSW and IASSW, 2004). The analysed expression could therefore be reformulated as follows:
[Social work] promotes and accompanies the desired social changes which emerge as a reaction from shared perceptions of severe hardship, actual or potential, in social life . . .

7.3. [Promotes] problem-solving in human relationships


With its emphasis on problem-solving, this statement grasps an important traditional feature of social work: its pragmatic tendency to address problems directly and seek to solve them, rather than lingering on their understanding and explanation, as instead is the propensity of clinical approaches like psychodynamic therapies. But this succinct formulation may induce misunderstandings and suggest that problems are solved by social workers (problem-solving is, in fact, a professional method). As the phrase continues, another potential misunderstanding arises, namely that interpersonal relations are in the interests of social work because they are the causes of social hardship. All the various kinds of social distress therefore arise from pathological relationships (dysfunctional social bonds). Nonetheless, according to the social model, it is not essential to refer to the cause in order to operate socially. In addition, even if relationships are virtually pathological or pathogenic, social workers will take note of the fact but they will move in the opposite direction, seeking the residual humanity in those dysfunctional relationships. This search may on occasion produce scant results, but it is one method whereby social workers look for the positive elements that are present. As a social science, and a science for beneficial change in the future, social work is by definition concerned with social relationships as the primary source from which may spring the reflexive and emotional forces required to attain the desired change. In such situations, a social worker steers straight ahead and will not be deflected. She or he always seeks out the existing potential. She or he checks whether some strengths still remain, and then acts so that this residual attribute can grow as the result of a shared reflexive agency aimed at accomplishing the desired change, and she or he solicits and supports this action. We can describe as relational an expert who knows that social relations are the leverage points for change, and not the source of all problems (a typical view of those who work from the conventional viewpoint of family therapy, for example). The focus of social work consists in motivated, as

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opposed to miserable, relationships (Ramsay, 2003). Unlike a systemic therapist, a relational social worker will always believe, until proved wrong, that if peoples desire to solve their problems by helping each other is cultivated and supported, it will always prevail over their unconscious, mechanical, self-hurting. The analysed expression could therefore be reformulated as follows:
[Social work] promotes problem-solving, whatever the origin of the problems, by exploiting the energy present in human relations . . .

7.4. [Promotes] the empowerment and liberation of people to enhance well-being


This statement, too, is crucial in many respects. The idea that people are liberated and empowered by actions and words, so that the quality of their lives improves, is, as we have seen, a core concept in social work. But some specifications are necessary. In the international literature, the term empowerment is often interpreted in terms of collective action centred on the liberation of oppressed social groups in developing and other countries. It may be that this term actually has an anti-oppression connotation in the global definition. It is important nonetheless to make it clear that empowerment is a broader concept. It is a strategy of action which cuts across all social work practices. It is valid for macro-practices but also for microones in face-to-face relationships (in counselling, for example). Without empowerment, no help from a welfare professional would ever be possible (Barnes and Bowl, 2001). We agree with Parsloe (1996) when she declares that empowerment is one of the most slippery words in the welfare literature. It is liable to misunderstanding, and especially so is the notion that the social worker is the source of the greater power which liberates users and oppressed people. As Parsloe wrote: It [empowerment] is a most unfortunate word for social work to have adopted because it can well be argued that the very idea that one person, a social worker, can empower another, a client, runs counter to the whole idea of greater equality of power on which the concept supposedly depends (Parsloe, 1996: 6). As regards social work, true empowerment should be defined as follows: people who are empowered are those who are not oppressed or impeded by oppressive professional and institutional powers concerned with their wellbeing, and who are therefore free because of their human essence, not because of a professional device, and have the power to join together so that they can unleash the strengths which can liberate them from themselves

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and enable them to overcome their own shortcomings and environmental constraints, and therefore the problems which assail them. For social work professionals, the obligatory way to create power is to take a step back and relinquish some of their own power. Here we follow Levinas and also refer to subtle powers such as the exercise of knowledge and professional representation (Dominelli, 2002; Parton and OByrne, 2000; Rossiter, 2011). Social workers promote empowerment when, notwithstanding their role, they express trust in such a way that they leave weak individuals (how weak they need to be we shall see later) free to find their own escape routes, thereby respecting the typically human need for conscious self-determination. Professionals have a role, and they perform it, but it is supervisory and facilitatory rather than manipulative and technical. Thereafter, experts may achieve greater power for themselves from the betterment of persons who are motivated to change. Because their role is facilitating success of this kind, social workers receive in exchange the emotional benefit implicit in doing a job well and delivering what has been promised. Both experts and interested parties work together on a synergic search for a common good.1 In genuine relational social work, there is not one party who seeks to provide well-being to another; everybody pursues the well-being of everyone else together. Generally speaking, the relational approach maintains that every interaction between a professional and a social network including individuals within it, should be authentically and radically reciprocal. By definition, a social worker recognizes and boosts the freedom of action of those being helped, even to the extreme extent that other peoples freedom, when constructively used, becomes to all intents and purposes an indispensable support to the social workers own humanity, and, therefore, to his/her capability to do his/ her work most effectively. The reciprocity of help letting the person being helped be an equal and help us is not an empty slogan, or something which is better if it exists. It is a radical turning point, because if it is absent that is, on the null hypothesis that those being helped do not reciprocate help to their helpers the help withers and dies (Beresford and Croft, 2004). Both human agents in a true helping relationship aid each other (Pettersen and Hem, 2011) in a twofold sense: to undertake their shared task, operating to all intents and purposes as co-workers, and to improve their personalities by virtue of the liberating experience of trusting each other. The analysed expression could therefore be reformulated as follows:
In accordance with the spirit of empowerment, [social work] promotes the liberation of people by showing trust in their real powers of initiative, so that they feel that they are able to contribute towards the building of common well-being, and even to help the helping professionals in [the] exercise of their statutory tasks.

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7.5. Utilizing theories of human behaviour and social systems


This statement exhibits perhaps the unconscious prescriptive imbalance of the entire definition. First, we should ask whether theories can be really utilized to reach social works aims. We should also ask whether psychological theories, in particular the more technical ones such as behavioural theories or system theories, can be really utilized for this purpose. These celebrated theories lend themselves to being utilized (literally, handled as if they were tools) only for directly clinical purposes: or in tests to diagnose individual dysfunctions and understand their origins; or, operationally, as techniques for planned change. But neither looking at the past and causes, nor focusing on (behavioural or relational) dysfunctions, are appropriate strategies for social work. Likewise, it is not the task of relational social work to seek prescriptive theories which will allegedly lead to techniques able to hit specific functional targets. Since the ultimate purpose of social work is free and unpredictable change for the better, it requires a theory which gives practitioners space in which to act freely (Sen, 1999). Schn (1983) teaches us that theories imparted to human workers become useful only when they have been assimilated and constitute a base on which to construct personal reflexivity that is, precisely when they are not utilized as such. As we know, professional social workers do not apply reflexivity to inert matter, but enact it as a support for the interlocutory reflexivity of a social network. Ideally, reflexivity becomes a transformative mental power (that of the social worker) that joins with an equally powerful force (that contained in the social relationships encompassed by a social network), and they work together to construct a shared outcome. If we must indicate the specific disciplinary referents for social work (having acknowledged that it is a multi-disciplinary area in which many social sciences interweave), we can say anything except that they are psychological, and especially behav iouristic and clinical. According to the relational paradigm, these general referents must be linked to ethical humanism (Levinas, 1972) and micro sociology (Archer, 2003; Donati, 2010). These broad disciplines help social workers understand the pivotal idea of their work: that micro-communities (the social networks that they engage with) can attain within the given environmental constraints wanted outcomes which they themselves have self-generated, exploiting the endowment of trust and cooperation termed social capital (Putnam, 2002). The analysed expression could therefore be reformulated as follows:
Based on all the social sciences, with special reference to phenomenological and humanistic oriented ones . . .

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7.6. Social work intervenes at the points where people interact with their environments
In light of everything said thus far, we may once again ask a terminological question: does social work really intervene? The word intervene literally means interfere in other peoples business, to modify it according to my idea, as Levinas (1972) would say. We may doubt that social work seriously understands the word in this sense. In actual fact, social work accompanies, facilitates and offers guidance. It only intervenes as a last resort. Having said this, with regard to the considered expression, it is still of interest to ask in what sense the locus of an imaginary intervention of this kind might be that mysterious razors edge, where people interact with their environments. However, the statement is part of mainstream theory in social work. The literature has always stressed interaction with the environment, in order to emphasize that distance must be maintained from all those forms of introspection typical of psychology. If we examine the issue more carefully, however, some serious semantic issues arise. By definition, there is an interaction between two distinct parties if both of them act in relation to each other. Yet it is doubtful that a given environment can act in regard to individuals: the environment is an amorphous container indifferent to its creatures, let alone concerned to interact with them. It is also doubtful that human beings literally act with the environment. Strictly speaking, people interact only with other living beings on a par with them, while they are all influenced by the impersonal environments in which they act.2 Relational theory accepts that social difficulties powerfully influence, for better or worse, the desire and capability of people to establish bonds: when the matters to be remedied concern serious questions of life itself. If not a question of survival, their associative efforts become more intense and more productive. We know that individuals who are vulnerable frequently isolate themselves because of embarrassment or a suspicion of others. But here we are discussing relational potential, which remains intact amid difficulties, and indeed is stimulated by them. If these individuals are helped to join together in a united whole such as a group, they will usually seize such opportunities and soon realize their benefits (as in mutual help groups; see Steinberg, 2004). Environments raise challenges or create niches within which people can, if they so wish, develop shared strategies for action. The analysed expression could therefore be reformulated as follows:
Social work operates at the points where people interact among themselves, joining together to more effectively cope with shared difficulties within their environments.

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7.7. Principles of human rights and social justice are fundamental to social work
Social work has always held the values of human rights and social justice in high esteem (Healy, 2008). However, the term fundamental can be used simply to state that these principles are of great importance, for example in deontological terms, so that as social workers do good they never inadvertently breach those fundamental values. Similarly, one may say that specific social work practices are geared to the defence of human rights and justice. But it is quite different to claim that the protection of human rights or social justice is the main operational responsibility of social workers, as if fulfilling these rights or guaranteeing them directly were the essential competence of the profession. The definition is ambiguous on this point, though it should instead make it explicit. If we ask where the responsibility to ensure general respect for human rights and social justice lies, we must reiterate that it lies primarily with politics. Social workers are closely concerned with these principles (OBrien, 2011), but it is doubtful that they can work primarily to establish them or to guarantee them in a general and abstract sense (Murdoch, 2011). This is the task of political systems, and of social policy in countries with mature welfare systems. The defence of social justice through redistribution or the protection of fundamental human rights is the statutory duty of welfare systems in countries where they exist and therefore of policymakers, who work to protect these principles through universal measures. Social work does not operate on a massive, impersonal scale: it always works directly with real people, here and now.3 The fundamental and deeply humanistic principle with which social workers must comply in their professional tasks is the inalienable right of the users to activate themselves, and, if they wish, to associate to deal with their problems, as they themselves have defined them. If we look at the ethical roots of the profession, and conceive justice and rights as the cornerstones of its methodology, then we can appreciate the tone of the global definition. Thus we can only state that: a) the right to be actively involved in decisions which relate to a persons life is a fundamental human right even if that person has accepted welfare services and professional interventions; and b) it is an elementary principle of social justice (a kind of restorative justice) that social workers establish wholly human contact to ensure that the aspirations of the weakest individuals are fully heard, and support them until these have been fulfilled. It is only with these semantic specifications that we may say that the two principles mentioned in the definition pertain in essence, even if only tangentially, to social work practices.
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More simply, the principle lying at the root of social work is the classic one of self-determination. The essential, and truly exclusive, constituent principle of a relational profession like social work is that Otherness must be respected as far as possible, and that each individual must be enabled to achieve good in his or her life in the manner that she or he wishes, within the limits of his or her constitutional rights and obligations, and thereby become the controller of his/her own life under all even the most adverse circumstances. This celebrated principle must necessarily be cited in any definition of social work, which by definition manipulates the lives of human beings most vulnerable to abuses even those unintentional abuses which may paradoxically originate from the good intentions of the helpers themselves (Illich, 1977; Rossiter, 2011). Another fundamental principle is the principle of reciprocity, connected with the famous golden rule of ethics the duty not to do unto others what you would not have them do to you. In social work, besides its obvious deontological implications, the principle of reciprocity has a crucial methodological significance: in any helping relationship, the help is only produced when the worker accepts help from the interested parties as if they themselves were workers. The principle of reciprocity states that terms like workers and users are misleading categories in social work because in a true helping relationship, each human being simultaneously gives and receives help (Folgheraiter, 2004). The analysed expression could therefore be reformulated as follows:
The principles of self-determination and reciprocity, as well as the defence of human rights and the redress of concrete social injustices, are fundamental to social work.

Conclusions
We represent but one suggestion in the debate about a definition of social work that has universal relevance. The preceding arguments that we have made result in our concluding with the following refinement to the existing definition. The professional arena of social work is the set of the various social professions carried out within or without national welfare systems. Based on all the social sciences, with special reference to phenomenological and humanistic oriented ones, social work promotes problem-solving, regardless of the origin of the problems, by exploiting the energy present in human relationships. The principles of self-determination and reciprocity, as well as the defence of human rights and the redress of concrete social injustices, are fundamental to social work. Social work operates at the

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points where people interact with each other and come together to cope more effectively with shared difficulties within their particular environments. Social work promotes and accompanies the desired social changes which emerge as a reaction from shared perceptions of severe hardship, actual or potential, in social life. In accordance with the spirit of empowerment, social work promotes the liberation of people by showing trust in their real powers of initiative, so that they feel they are able to contribute towards the building of common well-being, and even to help the helping professionals themselves in the exercise of their statutory tasks. Funding
This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.

Notes
1. So, that is a relational good, as Donati (2007: 11) writes: The relational goods are those that can be produced and enjoyed only together with ones who are concerned in them. 2. It should be noted, obviously, that other people also constitute a social and socio-cultural environment. But here it should be specified that my interacting with Tom, Dick or Harry to achieve common goals is different from my living in a wider society which affects me in various ways, with its customs and rules (Archer, 2003). 3. As Lipsky (1980) has argued, the decisions taken at the front line make policy effective, but these micro-practices themselves are not the policy line.

References
Archer, M. (2003) Structure, Agency and the Internal Conversation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Barnes, M. (1997) Care, Communities and Citizens. Harlow: Addison Wesley Longman. Barnes, M. and R. Bowl (2001) Taking Over the Asylum: Empowerment and Mental Health. Basingstoke: Palgrave. Bartlett, H. (1958) Working Definition of Social Work Practice, Social Work 3(2): 58. Beresford, P. and S. Croft (2004) Service Users and Practitioners Reunited: The Key Component for Social Work Reform, British Journal of Social Work 34: 5368. BASW (1997) The Code of Ethics for Social Work, rev. edn. Birmingham: BASW. Dominelli, L. (2002) Anti-oppressive Social Work: Theory and Practice. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Dominelli, L. (2004) Social Work: Theory and Practice for a Changing Profession. Cambridge: Polity Press.

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Author biographies
Fabio Folgheraiter is Professor in the Sociology department at the Catholic University, Milan, Italy. Maria Luisa Raineri is a researcher in the Sociology department at the Catholic University, Milan, Italy.

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