Thomas Kampen: ‘Professionalisation of social worker profession needed more than ever’
17 October 2024
In his oration Gespleten Loyaliteit: Sociaal werkers in morele nood ('Split Loyalty: Social Workers in Moral Distress'), Thomas Kampen highlights the struggles of social workers balancing between following policy and acting ethically. He sees this struggle increasing in countries where radical-right populism is gaining the upper hand. To make them less dependent on policy, it is more important than ever to further professionalise social work, says the Professor of Social Work at the University of Humanistic Studies. This can be done by strengthening the knowledge base and control within the profession.
Social work is sensitive to policy trends, even when they put pressure on the profession's core values, such as justice and respect for diversity. Radical-right populism poses a serious challenge to these values. How do social workers stay true to their principles when policies force them to make choices contrary to them? Kampen shows how social workers, both in the Netherlands and abroad, deal with moral distress.
Moral distress arises when public service providers have to implement policies that are at odds with their professional moral identity or view of roles. Think of social workers in the homeless shelters, who will feel the effects of the recently announced discontinuation of the bed-bath-bread scheme. According to the rules, they cannot house people who have exhausted all legal remedies in regular shelters, but making people sleep on the streets against their will is not in line with the core values of their profession.
Kampen: ‘According to researcher Albert Hirschman, when social workers are repeatedly confronted with moral distress for long periods of time, they have three options: exit (they quit), voice (they protest) and loyalty (they remain loyal to their work). I mainly focus on loyalty in my research because the vast majority of social workers remain loyal to their work despite impossible situations and moral distress. This makes me curious about what drives them. Moreover, social workers who are loyal to their work are less likely to leave and more likely to speak out. More attention is also needed to the question of exactly who or what social workers are loyal to: to policy, to the client, to their profession?’
Split loyalties
In his inaugural lecture, Thomas Kampen describes social workers' reactions to three policy developments over the past decades in the Netherlands that led to moral distress: New Public Management, the self-reliance ideal and the mandate to involve loved ones in care and support. He sees a pattern in the responses that he calls ‘split loyalties’. ‘While trying to stay true to their professional ideals, they describe their actions in the language of policy that is diametrically opposed to it. In doing so, they try to alleviate moral distress.’ This has a problematic side, according to Kampen. For moral distress is also an indicator of policies that overshoot or fall short. ‘When moral distress is concealed by silent resistance, for example, we therefore also don't know where policies fail.’
Kampen also sees this split loyalties elsewhere in Europe and gives a number of examples. He concludes that the real problem is not the actions of social workers themselves, but the fact that social workers have relatively little ability to oppose policies. ‘It is therefore more important than ever before to further professionalise social work, by strengthening the knowledge base and control within the profession. This requires not only academic research and education, but also greater job security and continuity for social workers so that they remain able to act ethically and professionally.’
Gespleten Loyaliteit: Sociaal werkers in morele nood, Thomas Kampen, 2024
Professor and sociologist Thomas Kampen has spent many years researching social work by neighbourhood teams and social service client managers, and client experiences with public services. He has published on the subject in international academic journals, Dutch-language professional journals such as Sprank and Tijdschrift voor Sociale Vraagstukken, and books for a wide audience, including Streng maar onrechtvaardig, De verhuizing van de verzorgingsstaat and De affectieve burger. He received his PhD from the University of Amsterdam in 2014 and has been at the University of Humanistic Studies since 2015, as professor since September 2023. In 2021 he was a fellow at the Netherlands Institute of Advanced Studies and from 2016 to 2019 part-time lecturer at Hogeschool Inholland.
In his oration Thomas Kampen highlights the struggles of social workers balancing between following policy and acting ethically. He sees this struggle increasing in countries where radical-right populism is gaining the upper hand. To make them less dependent on policy, it is more important than ever to further professionalise social work.