ABSTRACT

This paper will examine the relationship between social control of deviance, ethical principles and social work. I will address this issue by adopting a specific social work theoretical perspective, that of “critical social work”. In this article a specific phase of social workers’ control of deviance in social work will be examined: the phase in which they collect information through specific fact-finding modalities, in order to decide whether, and in what way, social services will intervene. I chose a specific aspect of social work with involuntary clients to develop my analysis: child protection. I will organize my analysis in two parts.

In the first part I will tackle the issue of social control in social work. I will subsequently analyze two theoretical paradigms (Positivism and Constructionism) within which child neglect and abuse are conceptualized and operationalized. In the second part, I will examine a case study, the story of a drug-addicted mother who had one of her children removed, with the aim of highlighting how the paradigm that guides fact-finding activity on a given phenomenon can influence the forms in which social control is exercised, favoring or hindering anti-oppressive practices. The analysis of mother’s story shows how the positivist framework applied by the social workers in the decision to remove her child, affected the form in which power and social control was exercised, favoring the transition from protective power to oppressive power. The categorization of clients, aimed at the identification of the risks children run in their family contexts, may reduce social workers’ activity to pure control of family life in an “antagonistic role” to their clients.

摘要

本文将研究越轨的社会控制、伦理原则和社会工作之间的关系。我将通过采用特定的社会工作理论视角，即“批判性社会工作”的视角来解决这个问题。在本文中，社会工作者控制社会工作中的越轨行为的特定阶段将被研究：他们通过特定的事实调查方式收集信息的阶段，以确定社会服务是否以及以何种方式进行干预。我选择了非自愿客户的社会工作的一个特定方面来展开我的分析：儿童保护。我将把我的分析分为两部分。

在第一部分中，我将解决社会工作中的社会控制问题。我随后将分析两种理论范式（实证主义和建构主义），其中儿童忽视和虐待被概念化和操作化。在第二部分，我将研究一个案例研究，一个吸毒成瘾的母亲将她的一个孩子带走的故事，目的是强调指导对特定现象的事实调查活动的范式如何影响形式其中行使社会控制，有利于或阻碍反压迫的做法。对母亲故事的分析表明，社会工作者在决定带走她的孩子时应用的实证框架如何影响权力和社会控制的行使形式，有利于从保护性权力向压迫性权力的转变。