Sustaining the Social Work Profession

Purpose: Social work in the mental health sector in Ontario, Canada, has recently faced several threats: de-institutionalization in the mental health field has led to increased demands on social workers with insufficient funding and unclear roles; the expanding role of nurses using holistic and empowerment principles in community mental health has led to nurses moving into positions traditionally held by social workers; budget cuts have led employers to hire workers with lower qualifications than university degrees; and other disciplines have begun to regulate roles which overlap with social work roles (e.g., psychotherapy) without including social work in the regulation development process. Although the literature has attempted to define social work, the lack of consensus has resulted in the inability of social work to articulate exactly what it is we do and how we are distinguished from other disciplines. This paper presents new contributions to the challenge of defining social work and concludes with a revised framework for articulating what it is we do.

Methods: To better understand the role of social workers currently working in the mental health sector in Ontario, an on-line survey addressed three research questions: 1) What do social workers do in the mental health sector in Ontario? 2) Are there differences in what they do based on gender, geographic location, size of community, or level of degree? 3) How useful to practice are the knowledge and skills taught in university curriculums? A convenience sample of 339 people participated in this survey between December 2005 and April 2006. Frequencies were reported and chi-square statistics were used to address the second research question about differences across subsets of the sample.

Results: Analysis of the demographic data indicated a trend toward a decreasing proportion of male social workers in the mental health sector. Also, about half of the MSW participants had an undergraduate degree in another discipline, and there were more MSW's than BSW's in larger versus smaller communities. Findings relevant to what we do included: there was an immense breadth of services, roles, and assessment tools that were being used; over half of participants considered themselves to do "psychotherapy", but the proportion varied significantly across regions; and, men were still more likely than women to be in administrative positions. Most noteworthy was the lack of distinction between what BSW degree holders did as compared with MSW degree holders. Responses about the relevance of the curriculum revealed that most of the respondents' practical knowledge and skills came from 'on the job experience', but this varied according to degree and region.

Implications: The findings have implications for the recruitment of social workers into the profession, and for the curriculum and continuing education. Articulating what it is social workers do, or a comparison of what BSW's versus MSW's do, requires an incorporation of the current practicalities of each individual field of practice, the setting, and the geographic community, rather than a catch-all description based on what social workers are learning in the curriculum. Suggestions for future research are presented.