BASW launches Anti-Poverty Practice Guide

Today, BASW launches its Anti-Poverty Practice Guide for Social Work in-front of an audience of social workers, students, health care professionals, heads of service and representatives from local authorities and universities.

In this Guide, BASW as the professional body for social work, aims to support the practice of social workers when working with people living in poverty.

Poverty is an everyday reality for those needing and using social work services, and yet models and debates about anti-poverty social work practice and policies are underdeveloped.

Thus, the Guide provide knowledge acquired from researchers, professionals, and families and communities to social workers to inform strategic policies and guide practice.

The work to develop the Anti-Poverty Practice Guide for Social Work started because of BASW members’ concerns about the increasing amount of poverty levels they were seeing and expanding inequality between different social groups.

To take collective action against this, BASW members voted at their 2017 Annual General Meeting for BASW to campaign against austerity. The Guide is one practical outcome of this vote by BASW members.

One of the authors of the Guide, BASW policy and research officer, Dr. Godfred Boahen said: “The Guide is practice-focussed and is intended to be useful in all aspects of practice, across children and adult services, in all settings.

“It is also designed to be a reflective tool for practice – social workers can use it for individual and group supervision, and to identify the CPD required for anti-poverty social work.”

He added: “In the immediate post-war period, there was a political consensus around the necessity of state intervention to reduce poverty. However, since the 2008 recession, that political consensus has been broken by the current long period of ongoing austerity.

“Governments no longer appear committed to eradicating poverty and indeed some policies appear deliberately designed to do the reverse. Therefore, we hope this Guide will be a useful tool for policymakers as much as it will be for social workers.”

Speakers at the launch event include Ruth Allen (CEO, BASW), Gerry Nosowska (Chair, BASW): Prof. Kate Morris (University of Sheffield); Kwaku Affram (IRO and Ghana Association of Social Workers); Tom Croft and parent activist (ATD Fourth World); Aine Morrison (Professional Officer, Department of Health, Northern Ireland); Calum Webb (University of Sheffield).

The guide is available to download on the link below.