Social work tensions. A critical look from the execution of public policy

Abstract

One of the great paradoxes of social work is that it must be deployed in a system that, by definition and verification, increases inequalities and enhances exclusion processes. On the one hand, the place of the discipline in the execution of social policies highlights its particularity in social construction and reproduction and, on the other, it stresses its transformative nature by inserting itself as a key piece in the implementation of social policies that seeks to mitigate the effects harmful effects of capitalism through a fragmented and focused intervention. From this premise, we carry out a situated analysis of the conditions of development of social work in the Atacama region, obtaining from the first source, the details that invite us to delve deeper into the distortions that transformative social work encounters in professional practice. Through interviews with key informants, it is possible to obtain precise, experiential information relevant to professional development in the execution of social policies in the region. The results are structured into five categories of which 2 are emerging; Distensions associated with centralism and bureaucracy, hyper focusing and fragmentation, contractual situation and job insecurity of social workers, resistance to change of professional teams and loss of the purpose of social policy through its politicization are identified. It is concluded that the place of the discipline in the execution of social policies reveals its particularity in social construction and reproduction and that it stresses its transformative character by inserting itself as a key piece in the implementation of social policies that seek to mitigate the harmful effects of capitalism through a fragmented and focused intervention. Likewise, the salaried nature of social work conditions the possibilities of generating critical work spaces that advance towards dissidence and superimpose transformative logics over institutional logics.