Conclusion

Publication Date:
11 Jul 2018
Pages:
427–434
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.51952/9781447332558.con001
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Editing this book has been a major project. Two things directly encouraged us to embark upon it. First, our own personal experience of the inadequacy of traditional social policies and services and second, our experience as activists that people’s participation could make possible a more hopeful alternative. We felt both that conventional social policy has lost its way and that participatory social policy had something very helpful to offer instead. The work we have done in putting the book together, the contacts we have made and the developments we have discovered mean that our own understanding has expanded, rather than remained static. We have learned so much – especially internationally – and we hope that this book also offers that opportunity to readers. Editing it has opened our eyes to just how much is going on to advance participatory social work in theory and practice globally. It has confirmed our and other people’s growing concerns that traditional social policy, whether of the political left or right, may be set on a road to nowhere, the two cancelling each other out. Proposals either continue to be prescriptive and therefore politically weak or backward looking, cutting welfare, turning to the market, deluding us that this offers a way forward. In our view, the Grenfell Tower tragedy in the UK, in which so many died unnecessarily, is likely to have reverberations for social policy much more widely and for much longer than could ever have been imagined. It has given the lie to previously unchallengeable arguments that public spending is wasteful and damaging, that spending cuts are synonymous with ‘efficiency savings’ and that only the private sector can ensure that the ‘consumer is king’, rights and social responsibility secured and the voice of the citizen heard (Walker, 2017).

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