A longstanding and slightly comical criticism of social work is that it is wooly. At times it can appear unclear and unfocused, in others it is all encompassing but overtly soft in nature – the rub being that social workers sometimes struggle to successfully address and countenance issues of harm, because we are often trying too hard to be nice.

There is some truth in this, we are trained to hold unconditional positive regard, we recognize that harping at someone won’t necessarily elicit the kind of change we might wish to see, and we repeatedly experience transitions in behavior by modeling better behavior for others – therefore it becomes increasingly problematic to be stern, strict, or even flatly critical as a practitioner. The more serious issue with enacting wooly social work is the litany of missed opportunity, and failures to protect, because we (as a collective profession) have been scared or misguided when it came to intervention.

I have come across social workers that are entirely too wooly, social workers that are clearly not wooly enough, and social workers who are able to criticize and comfort at the same time – while writing that sentence I cringed slightly, I did so because a part of me rejects the idea of criticism; it seems so archaic, so punitive, and in the opposite direction from interventions like motivational interviewing, and client-led self-determination. So what does all that actually mean, why should we wish to criticize anyone?

Well, it depends on where we work, and the comprehension level of the client. There is little point in being critical of the infant, or the impaired – because we understand that nurturing and support are the modi of intervention. Conversely, there is little road in giving subtle hints to someone who is harming a child, we must act directly to protect; this is the lynchpin of traditional, interventionist, social work practice.

Interaction, and intervention, become more complex when dealing with clients within a therapeutic environment – we wish to support their development and determination, we wish to facilitate them towards their own realizations, and to remove ourselves from coloring their decision making; yet we can offer insight, we are there to assist in their healing, and in this way we engage in intervention through our reflection and psychoeducation. When we are present with a client we are both consciously and unconsciously commenting upon (and within) their narrative, we become part of it, and when faced with an issue (of which we might observe as having some level of objective truth about it) we are affecting the life-course of another.

That’s fine though because our role is not supposed to be, and should not be, entirely passive within the therapeutic relationship, we are sought out for our insight, for our ability to reflect and to reframe. We utilize research and employ theory to help our intervention in the lives of others; we are a profession of standards.

But what of a traditional social worker’s role in pivoting systemic change, what of campaigning, and even of engaging in protest? There are ills in this world that fall under our charter (perhaps they all do?). If we really wish to be agents of social change we have a duty to speak out when we encounter harm. So, here is an interesting dynamic – when do the actions of a person become a target for criticism, and when do they become a client to be nurtured? Are these concepts mutually exclusive?

There are obvious definitions to make: those who seek out help are clients / those who we witness exacting cruelty or trespass are likely to be criticized – but is that criticism a rather visceral reaction to an event or is it a sound (even clinical) intervention to speak out against those outside of the therapeutic setting?

We should be able to agree that approaching a person we witness harming a child and asking them about their feelings towards their mother, their relationship with their father, or their hopes and fears, would do little to deescalate the situation and would most likely not be the best intervention to safeguard the child. But, and somewhat controversially, we might only interact in this manner with a client who has harmed a child after the fact and within structured sessions; we avoid the criticism because we work therapeutically with the individual. We are acutely aware that etiology begets action, and that there is a story and a complex set of causes for almost everything – so criticism has little to no place within a therapeutic setting. Furthermore, outside of the office, we might interject with someone’s behavior but we are not enacting true change by admonishing that person, or by simply chiding someone on what to think or feel.

If we elicit shame in a person, we create a sense of otherness, and leaving someone with shame (whether or not they can tolerate to hold it) is likely to move him or her further into opposition, and toward concrete thinking. I have heard it described as a coin, when we take one side, we automatically force a person to the flip-side – when we call out against someone, we give cause to them either joining or opposing us, leaving a thin ridge for middle ground. Here enters the wooly social worker, in an attempt to round out the playing field, rather than level it. We might picture the wooly social worker vs. the critical interventionist as a good cop / bad cop dynamic; neither are particularly effectively, and only moderately actionable when together. The wooly social worker gets nowhere, while the critical interventionist loses clients. We would do better to hold multiple concepts in action, to lead the way for change through a form of tailored invitation to join with concepts of humanism and the nature of interconnectedness through a structured lens of accountability and pragmatic reason. There are objective truths that we can utilize; it can be ok to highlight the destructive nature of behavior, to speak to the fallout of action, and to give name to bigoted action. This is especially true outside of the therapeutic relationship, in fact it is a necessary part of continued advocacy for change, but calling someone out isn’t enough, we have to help the individual to hold and tolerate the issue if we wish to assist in eliciting change.

Recently I had cause to speak out against public bigotry and chauvinism, and in doing so I felt quite heavy, yet also quite hollow. Examining these feelings juxtaposed the success of taking on a cause against the failure of missing interpersonal communication. The individual(s) did not welcome my input, nor my perspective, and in being rejected by the subjects I experienced a quite profound sadness – I reasoned this to be because although I knew myself to be objectively correct, that correctness meant little in the micro sense. I can be right until the end of time, but being-ness doesn’t enact change, and change had such far-reaching implications. I considered if I should increase the interpersonal communication, if I should reach out in a more detailed and open manner, to offer something more – but then recalled a longstanding and extremely complex child protection case I had worked on for years:

I had faced repeated barriers and rejection from the parents, to a near pathological level of denial. Whatever I (or my team) did to enact change fell short in action, serving to entrench the parents, and we inevitably ended up in a lengthy court case. For weeks there was little change, until the final day of my giving evidence where I had summarized with a reflection upon the loss experienced by all parties. I had already established the harm, had spoken to the wrong-doing, but I acknowledged that we were all left with an undeniable sadness, that culminated in lost opportunity, and in something greater – we were all witnessing the crushing reality that the parents were unable to provide, that they embodied the failure, that they had sided with it, and that this meant the government should remove their right parent the children. Something happened during that summary, and as I spoke to my wish for the children to remain safe, for their needs to be met according to their timescales, I also spoke to my longstanding wish for the parents to have been able to understand what we had been saying and why we had intervened, and that action of holding them in deeply rooted humanistic regard whilst simultaneously speaking to the fault in their actions served to move them to tears. I had successfully joined wooly and critical social work into one delivery. I had attempted to do so many times before during my work with them, but something specific about holding them in positive regard right at the end, when they expected me to only be against them, brought about a realization that I had actually been on their family’s side all along – they told me this, and expressed emotions that I had not expected.

A mentor of mine once said that clinical work begins at intake, that the action of intervention is clinical. All the work we do means something, all human interaction has the potential for profound meaning, but we must understand where one role ends and the other begins, we must work with the crossover, and we must not call one flip-side of the coin – instead we should bring attention to the nature of choice, and to the incredible power of self-determination through empowered insight, lest we abandon the process of intervention to preloaded outcomes, and enact oppressive social work because we didn’t have the skills to speak out.