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Journal of Social Work Practice
Psychotherapeutic Approaches in Health, Welfare and the Community
ISSN: 0265-0533 (Print) 1465-3885 (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/cjsw20
Humanising Managerialism: Reclaiming Emotional
Reasoning, Intuition, the Relationship, and
Knowledge and Skills in Social Work
Pamela Trevithick
To cite this article: Pamela Trevithick (2014) Humanising Managerialism: Reclaiming Emotional
Reasoning, Intuition, the Relationship, and Knowledge and Skills in Social Work, Journal of
Social Work Practice, 28:3, 287-311, DOI: 10.1080/02650533.2014.926868
To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/02650533.2014.926868
Published online: 23 Jun 2014.
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Pamela Trevithick
HUMANISING MANAGERIALISM:
RECLAIMING EMOTIONAL REASONING,
INTUITION, THE RELATIONSHIP, AND
KNOWLEDGE AND SKILLS IN SOCIAL
WORK
This paper develops Professor Eileen Munro’s coverage of ‘emotional dimensions’ in her
Review of Child Protection in England. It argues that managerialism has failed to
recognise the importance of the emotional life of human beings and the importance of the
relationships we build in social work and that this failure seriously hinders the quality
and effectiveness of social work. The paper begins with an account of what an ‘emotional
dimension’ might encompass and, drawing on conceptualisations mainly from
neuroscience, looks at what is meant by the words emotions and feelings, affect,
attunement and empathy. A second section looks at the skewed representation of logical
thinking as innately superior to emotional and intuitive reasoning and the part played by
conscious and unconscious elements within judicial decision-making. It then analyses the
dangers evident in the more extreme and rigid forms of managerialism that can be found
in some areas of social work and a final section argues that for managerialism to be
humanised it calls for an emotionally responsive relationship-based practice to be located
at the heart of social work.
Keywords emotions; feelings; affect; attunement; empathy; logical thinking;
reasoning; intuition; conscious; unconscious; managerialism; neuroscience
Introduction
This paper will develop a number of key issues relating to the phrase ‘emotional
dimension’ covered by Professor Eileen Munro in the four reports produced as part of
the Government-commissioned Review of Child Protection in England (Munro, 2010,
2011a, 2011b, 2012) and some of the implications for the future of social work.
Although Munro’s reports are specifically focused on child protection in England,
q 2014 GAPS
Journal of Social Work Practice, 2014
Vol. 28, No. 3, 287–311, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02650533.2014.926868
many of the observations and points she makes are relevant to adult services in the UK
and abroad – and can be broadened to other disciplines. In order to identify the
landscape encompassed in the phrase ‘emotional dimension’, this paper begins with
coverage of what is meant by the words emotions and feelings, affect, attunement and
empathy. A second section explores the part played by emotions in the tension,
highlighted by Munro, in relation to logical thinking and intuitive reasoning, and the part
played by conscious and unconscious elements in the judgements we make and the actions
we take in social work. A third section focuses on the extent to which rigid forms of
managerialism tend to ignore the degree to which emotions govern our lives as human
beings, and also the extent to which emotions shape and steer professional decisionmaking and action. A final section draws on my knowledge and experience as an
academic and practitioner to look at what changes need to be introduced to embed an
‘emotional dimension’ into social work practice. As I have highlighted in an influential
paper on this subject (Trevithick, 2003), these changes must place the relationships we
build at the heart of practice if we are to enhance the quality of help we provide and
further the well-being and life chances of the people we seek to support. This calls for
managerialism to be humanised and for us to challenge the myth which states that we
cannot afford quality services.
The extent to which relationships and an emotional dimension have been stifled is
evident in Munro’s vivid summary of the impact of the reforms introduced in social
work:
In the extensive reforms that have shaped today’s work environment, the
professional account of social work practice in which relationships play a central
role appears to have been gradually stifled and replaced by a managerialist account
that is fundamentally different. The managerialist approach has been called a
‘rational-technical approach’, where the emphasis has been on the conscious,
cognitive elements of the task of working with children and families, on collecting
information, and making plans. The focus of reforms has been on providing
detailed assessment forms, telling the social worker what data about families to
collect and, how quickly to collect it. Less attention has been given to helping
frontline staff acquire the skills to analyse the information collected. (Munro,
2011a, p. 36)
An ‘emotional dimension’ and its importance
The most important doorway into the ‘emotional dimension of working with children
and families’ (Munro, 2011b, p. 91), and one that is significant in all areas of social
work practice, is the relationships practitioners work to build. The emotions that
underpin meaningful relationships can be found in the work of earlier eminent scholars
writing on this subject, such as Perlman who notes:
Relationship is an emotional experience. We are moved when our emotions are
touched, motivated by the push or pull of feelings. Those feelings may be
transitory, of varying intensity, and may, of course, be invested more in the
problem situation than in the helper. But if a would be helper is to influence a help
2 8 8 J O U R N A L O F S O C I A L WO R K P R A C T I C E
seeker to cope with his [sic] problem in some more personally satisfying and/or
socially satisfactory way, he will need to connect with and be sensitively responsive
to the emotions with which the person’s problem is charged. It is no mere word
play to recognize that ‘motivation’, ‘movement’, and ‘emotion’ all stem from the
same Latin root, movere. (Perlman, 1979, p. 51)
The quotes from Perlman and Munro highlight the range of emotions that can be
experienced in relation to a particular problem – and the opportunity that a
meaningful and sensitive relationship can provide when attempting to understand the
emotional make-up of service users – their intellectual, practical and emotional
capacities, strengths and limitations. Yet it is important to note that for a significant
period in the UK, the role of the relationship in social work tended to lose its impetus
as an approach that links our understanding of people with ways to work creatively
with the difficulties and challenges being presented (Trevithick, 2003). However, in
recent years there has been a growing recognition of the need to ‘build positive
relationships, and go on to use the relationship to create change’ (Munro, 2010, p. 54),
although in some social work settings this perspective has barely influenced the
managerialist agenda that continues to shape direct practice. This is despite the fact that
the importance of human relationships has been confirmed time and again in the
research findings of attachment theory (Bowlby, 1951, 1979; Howe et al., 1999;
Fonagy, 2001; Howe, 2011) and in neuroscience (Schore, 1994; LeDoux, 2002;
Damasio, 2012; Siegel, 2012). Both disciplines highlight the extent to which
relationships are central to human growth and development throughout the lifespan,
but particularly in the early years of life. Hence, the importance placed by Munro and
others on early intervention and prevention services for children and parents (Aked
et al., 2006; Field, 2010; Allen, 2011; Brown & Ward, 2012; Care Inquiry, 2013). The
importance of relationships is summarised by Siegel and Perry who state:
Relationship experiences have a dominant influence on the brain . . . Interpersonal
experience thus plays a special organising role in determining the development of
brain structure early in life and the ongoing emergence of brain function
throughout the lifespan. (Siegel, 2012, p. 33)
The very nature of humanity arises from relationships . . . essentially everything
that’s important about life as a human being you learn in context of relationships.
(Perry, 2003)
Given the growing interest in relationship-based practice in social work (Ruch et al.,
2010; Munro, 2011b, p. 88), it feels timely to revisit what this term means in the light
of the scholarship and new thinking emerging from theorists who argue that isolating
and overemphasising ‘rational thought’ (Thiele, 2006, p. 120) at the expense of more
intuitive elements in decision-making can skew judgement and skew priorities (Munro,
2012, p. 5). The findings of neuroscience, particularly neurobiology, have been an
important source of knowledge in this area and many of the authors cited in this paper,
including Munro, have been influenced by this body of research. For this reason, and in
order to understand the points that underpin some of the themes explored by these
theorists, the following is a brief summary of main findings offered by neuroscience,
with particular regard to the importance of relationships.
HUMANIS ING MAN A GERIAL IS M 2 8 9
The findings of neuroscience
Neuroscience is the study of the brain and ‘how our brains make us who we are’
(LeDoux, 2002, p. 1). Like many disciplines, there are different interpretations among
scholars about the human brain and nervous system but many agree on the following
points:
. The brain is said to have over 1 hundred billion interconnected nerve cells called
neurons and each is thought to have roughly 10,000 connections to other neurons.
This equals approximately 1 million billion connections, making it ‘capable of such
wonderful and diverse tasks’ (Howe, 2008, p. 71).

evolutionary or ‘mammilian brain’ and is ‘wired’ to ensure survival, such as fight,
flight or freeze reactions. The ‘upper’ structure, particularly the cortex, is where
thinking, reasoning and reflection takes place.

her primary carer/parent as central to brain development and the child’s adaptive
and maladaptive capacities.
. We learn through our emotions so that when we ‘learn something new associated
structures in our brain change and grow’ (Gilgun, 2005, p. 856). This learning can
be both positive and negative.
To understand the importance given to ‘emotional dimensions and intellectual
nuances of reasoning’ by Munro (2011b, p. 20), the following section looks at what is
meant by the words emotion, feelings, affect, attunement and empathy and how these terms
are conceptualised from a neuroscience perspective.
Emotions
Emotions involve internal sensations that are evident in terms of different bodily
responses. One of the best examples is the way that fear triggers our innate survival
instincts and leads to changes in blood flow, heart beat, breathing, muscle energy and
skin temperature and produce flight, fight or freeze reactions. The unconscious,
primitive and often involuntary nature of these innate responses is highlighted by
LeDoux:
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. . . emotions did not evolve as conscious feelings. They evolved as behavioural
and physiological specializations, bodily responses controlled by the brain, that
allowed ancestral organisms to survive in hostile environments and procreate.
(LeDoux, 1998, p. 40)
These bodily responses are aroused or triggered by cues and, once felt, this aroused
emotional state can ‘monopolise brain activity’ (LeDoux, 2002, p. 320), which means
that ‘what we see, what we think, and how we behave are deeply influenced by that
emotion’ (Howe, 2008, p. 31). Both the amygdala and cortex send signals to different
parts of the brain. Signals from the cortex allow us to perform multiple functions and
to control our response, whereas the survival focus of the amygdala indicates ‘a
primitive brain region almost wholly impervious to conscious control’ (Thiele, 2006,
p. 155). The fact that we are ‘wired’ to act before we think highlights the importance
of self-regulation – also known as emotion regulation (Siegel, 2012, p. 267) or affect
regulation (Applegate & Shapiro, 2005, p. 40) – a subject covered later.
It is interesting to note that there is no universal agreement about what constitutes
the basic emotions that all human beings experience. Also, how these emotions are
defined can differ. For example, some authors draw a distrinction between fear and
anxiety, where thoughts, feelings or actions that trigger fear can be identified and talked
about, whereas for anxiety, which is considered to be a more general emotional state,
the trigger for the sense of danger or threat that people experience can remain
unknown (Reber et al., 2009, p. 48). Often both fear and anxiety are at play – making
any meaningful or helpful distinction difficult to achieve. Plutchik (1991), an influential
psychologist in this field, identifies eight basic emotions: fear, anger, disgust, sadness,
surprise, joy, trust and anticipation. A similar list of ‘basic’ or ‘primary’ emotions can be
found in the work of Ekman (2003) and Damasio (2000),1 respectively, although both
replace the term joy with that of happiness. Howe (2008) lists 14 positive and negative
emotions, namely: fear, shame, disgust, embarrassment, terror, jealousy, anger, loss, rejection,
abandonment, surprise, love, joy and happiness.
Damasio considers ‘primary’ emotions to be innate, universal and ‘wired’ into
human beings as well as animals. What he defines as ‘secondary’ or social emotions, such
as embarrassment, jealousy, guilt and pride, tend to be developed and encouraged – or
prohibited or suppressed – by experience and the interactions taking place within a
particular family, community, workplace or other context. The way that different
contexts influence the display of emotions links to social learning theory (Bandura,
1977). It also links to Ekman’s (1999) account of display rules which describe the
different conventions or ‘rules’ within cultures that indicate who, when and to what
extent certain emotions can be expressed:
. . . culture greatly influences the sense we make of and the meaning we ascribe to
our experiences. In the realm of cultural learning, display rules influence the ways
we visibly express our emotions, and feeling rules influence how we experience
and label our emotions. (Levenson, 1994, pp. 125–126)
One example is the expression of anger, which may be more permissable within
working class than middle class cultures or contexts – or more permissable among
men than women. In a different example, LeDoux (1998) notes that in Western
HUMANIS ING MAN A GERIAL IS M 2 9 1
cultures, ‘there is a grief hierarchy at funerals’ (p. 116) where people considered closer
to the bereaved have a greater right to grieve. Some emotions may be hidden,
suppressed, or subtle bodily changes go unnoticed, such as the feeling of love which
‘generates a general state of calm and contentment, facilitating cooperation’ and
considered almost opposite to the highly charged ‘fight-flight mobilisation’ (Goleman,
1996, p. 7). Given the hidden nature of some emotional states, considerable emphasis
is placed in psychology and neurobiology on the emotional message that is conveyed in
non-verbal cues, particularly in people’s facial expression – a point taken up by Siegel:
The study of emotion suggests that nonverbal behaviour is a primary mode in
which emotion is communicated. Facial expression, eye gaze, tone of voice, bodily
motion, and the timing and intensity of response are all fundamental to emotional
messages. (Siegel, 2012, p. 146)
Siegel goes further to state that ‘we are hard-wired to have meaning and emotion
shaped by the perception of eye contact and facial expression. We are also hard-wired
to express emotion through the face’ (Siegel, 2012, p. 176). However, to understand
the emotional state or emotional messaging of another human being calls for a degree
of self-awareness and emotional insight to ensure that the emotional content of an
exchange can be picked up – a point taken up by Thiele that I return to later in this
paper:
. . . we have a duty to cultivate emotional capacities such that they might become
available to us in the right measure, at the right time. Untutored emotions will not
afford judgment the sensibility and motivation it requires in changing
circumstances, nor, generally, will such emotions be utilized with intelligence
and care . . . . In this regard, practical judgment involves preparing the heart and
mind to work in unison. (Thiele, 2006, p. 191)
Feelings
The term feeling is more confusing because of its general and popular usage. For
example, it can mean (1) being touched physically, (2) the sense of being moved by
something or someone, (3) to denote a tentative thought or an idea that is not usually
supported by evidence or hard facts and (4) to denote an awareness of an emotional
sensation. For this reason, and to emphasise the link between emotions and feelings,
LeDoux (1998) prefers the term emotional feelings that occur ‘when we become
consciously aware that an emotion system of the brain is active’ (p. 302). Put more
simply, ‘feelings bring emotions to the conscious mind’ (Damasio, 2012, p. 108) with
the result that all conscious emotional experiences constitute a feeling.
For Siegel, feelings can involve energy (I feel excited), meaning (I feel misunderstood),
behavioural impulses (I want to run and hide) or ‘discrete categories of emotion’ (I feel
sad . . . angry . . . happy) (Siegel, 2012, p. 292). Once we are consciously aware and
able to recognise our feeling state at a particular point in time, or in a particular
context, our capacity for self-reflection allows an appraisal of the emotions felt – their
good, bad or uncertain features – and to adapt our options for action accordingly. For
2 9 2 J O U R N A L O F S O C I A L WO R K P R A C T I C E
example, being aware that we have been insensitive or abrupt with a colleague allows
us to make contact and to apologise, whereas if our insensitivity remained unconscious,
that is outside our conscious awareness, we are unlikely to repair our mistake in this
way. An appraisal of this kind introduces thinking or cognition into our feeling states
and can also elicit the kind of reasoning that shapes and encourages the response to be
made because ‘feelings are a powerful influence on reason’ (Damasio, 1995, p. 245).
That is, in order for reason to be prompted and put to work, some emotion must be
evident, however subtle, because ‘reason requires emotion to stimulate its use, to
recruit and direct its abilities, and to execute its commands’ (Thiele, 2006, p. 176).
Emotions and feelings form ‘part of a tightly bound circle’ (Damasio, 2012,
p. 109), and as human beings, it can be possible to experience several feelings at any
one time and at different levels of intensity. However, the limits of people’s emotional
vocabularly can make it difficult to name or describe their feelings, making it essential
to check the meaning given to the emotional signs and signals being conveyed or
assumed if a misunderstanding is to be avoided. In this process, we need to draw on all
our senses – sight, hearing, smell, touch and taste – to inform our thinking. This can
take time and is likely to be easier if the communication is taking place in a setting
where a meaningful encounter is possible and also where people feel less defended.
Here it is worth remembering that home visits can provide an opportunity to observe
people in a setting where their behaviour, and the behaviour of others, is likely to be
more natural and spontaneous (Trevithick, 2012, p. 190), although entering into a
family’s intimate and private terrain can often be emotionally daunting for practitioners
(Ferguson, 2009, 2014).
Affect
At this point, I want to introduce the word affect – a term not often used in social work
but one that can often be found in neuroscience, and in the area of mental health,
political philosophy, psychoanalysis and attachment theory. Although easily confused
with the verb to affect (to influence/change) and the noun effect (the result/
consequence), an added confusion is that some authors use affect as an alternative to the
word emotion. When used more rigorously, affect or affect expression conveys ‘the way
an internal emotional state is externally revealed’ (Siegel, 2012, p. 389) and can
include how feelings of sadness, fear and anger are communicated non-verbally. For
example, in professional circles the term flat affect may be use to describe a withdrawn
or depressed state where there is little or absent facial expression or vitality in a
person’s posture, tone of voice or general demenour. Affect can also be used to refer to
a person’s mood, which tends to be used to describe the more enduring tone of an
individual’s emotions where there is often no recognised triggering event to give rise to
a sensation or emotion being conveyed (Siegel, 2012, p. 155) – in short, a gloomy or
miserable disposition. An insightful practitioner may be able to sense a person’s
‘affective emotional state’, whereas in other situations this may be signalled by its
physical manifestation:
The physiological components of affects find expression in such autonomic nervous
system responses as blushing, elevated pulse, sweating, and crying, and such
HUMANIS ING MAN A GERIAL IS M 2 9 3
voluntary nervous system manifestations as changes in facial expression, posture,
or vocal tone and rhythm. (Applegate & Shapiro, 2005, p. 26)
A major difficulty with the word affect is the fact that it has no common
usage outside professional circles and is most often used in settings that
exclude the participation of the person whose emotional state is being described in
this way.
Attunement and empathy
A term that is often used in social work is attunement, which describes the ability
to look beyond an individual’s overt or external behaviour and to ‘feel’ another
person’s emotion – their inner world of sensations. Attunement indicates an
emotional resonance or affect attunement and the ‘quality of feeling that is being shared’
(Stern, 1985, p. 142). It is a concept that closely resembles that of empathy, which
describes the ability to imaginatively feel the world from the other’s point of view
and to successfully communicate that understanding (Trevithick, 2012, p. 194).
However, for Stern, an influential writer in this area, empathy is conceptualised as
indicating a conscious awareness of an another’s feeling state, whereas affect
attunement indicates an unconscious awareness:
The evidence indicates that attunements occur largely out of awareness and almost
automatically. Empathy, on the other hand, involves the mediation of cognitive
processes. (Stern, 1985, p. 145)
A similar perspective on the unconscious features of attunement is put forward by
McCluskey (2005, p. 77). For Siegel, attunement is more conscious and embodies
concepts that include tracking, alignment and mirroring, all of which are designed to
ensure that we are open, receptive and capable of being changed by the emotions being
conveyed. However, resonance is considered to have a more enduring quality and
describes how the mutual alignment between people ‘persists within the mind of each
member after direct interaction no longer occurs’ (Siegel, 2012, p. 315). The
emotions and feelings that move between people are also conceptualised in
psychoanalysis – in concepts such as transference, counter-transference, projection and
projective identification – and whilst here-and-now features in an interaction are
important in psychodynamic thinking, considerable additional emphasis is placed on
the extent to which a person’s past or present relationships and conflicts are a feature of
the emotions and feelings being conveyed (Bower, 2005; Howe, 2008; Trevithick,
2011). Whatever concepts are preferred, even with differences in the definition given
they provide a conceptual language that can help us to begin to understand and
articulate the emotions and feelings being conveyed or picked up, consciously and
unconsciously. However, it is important to be tentative when attempting to understand
the thoughts, feelings and actions of others and to seek confirmation of our perceptions
in order to minimise the likelihood of bias and error that can so easily ‘intrude on
rational decision-making’ (Thiele, 2006, p. 120). This is particularly important when
‘display rules’ – or the context – influence the ability to feel and express certain
emotions.
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Munro highlights the importance of practitioners being able to read and understand
their own emotional responses, and to use this self-awareness as a basis for
understanding others:
When a social worker visits a home and the father behaves in a threatening
manner, his or her body reacts automatically, generating stress hormones in
response to the perceived threat. Similarly, when an experienced social worker
meets a family, he or she can quickly pick up an intuitive awareness of the state of
the dynamics in the family, the warmth of the relationship between members, or
the level of fear felt by a child. Appreciating the importance of both logical and
intuitive understanding and the contribution of emotions offers guidance on the
different training needs in using them to best effect. (Munro, 2011a, p. 37)
In this quotation, Munro highlights the extent to which conscious and unconscious
processes may be evident and communicated non-verbally in the face, eyes, tone of voice
and body language of service users and practitioners. For Thiele, it is how emotions are
expressed in the body that offer an insight into the unconscious processes at play:
There is no ‘direct route’ by which we can access the unconscious mind. But the
body provides the surest indirect route. Just as we can measure unconscious
reactions by way of changes in the galvanic skin conductance and heart rate, so we
can access other unconscious states by attention to affect, gesture, posture, voice,
and facial expression . . . For those who can read its signs, the body serves as a
palimpsest of the mind. (Thiele, 2006, p. 285)
The ability to recognise the emotions and feelings being communicated verbally and nonverbally, and to work with this awareness is a central feature of relationship-based
practice – and one that highlights the importance of the concept ‘use of self’. However, it
is an approach to practice that calls for changes in social work education and training, good
supervision, ongoing peer support and an understanding of the part played by conscious and
unconscious processes – a theme explored briefly in the following section.
Logical thinking and intuitive reasoning
In Munro’s second and third report, there is a considerable focus on the tension
between logical thinking and intuitive reasoning and the part played by conscious and
unconscious influences in ‘professional reasoning’ (Munro, 2011a, p. 11). In her
coverage of this subject, where at times the same wording is used in both reports,
Munro draws on a range of eminent writers from the area of neuroscience, psychology,
psychiatry, political theory and social work to present her argument, which is
summarised as follows:
Conscious logical thinking has quite rightly been highly valued as a human
attribute, but the traditional view that it is inherently superior to intuition and
emotion has been overturned by developments in neuropsychology.
Hammond . . . argues convincingly for the need to see logical and
HUMANIS ING MAN A GERIAL IS M 2 9 5
intuitive thinking on a cognitive continuum where we use a different balance
between them depending on what task we are carrying out. Solving a maths
problem is at the analytic extreme while calming a frightened child uses intuitive
understanding. The importance of our intuitive reasoning capacity is also
illustrated by the difference in size between our conscious and unconscious
capacities. (Munro, 2011a, p. 37)
The conscious and unconscious capacities of the mind
When speaking about unconscious processes, it is important to note that in the field of
neurobiology this term does not refer to those aspects of the unconscious conceptualised in
psychoanalysis. For this reason, Thiele suggests the alternative term ‘cognitive
unconscious’ to describe the extensive range of mental capacities of which we have little or
no awareness or conscious control (Thiele, 2006, p. 14). Similarly LeDoux’s
conceptualisation of the unconscious describes ‘the many things the brain does that are not
available to consciousness’ (LeDoux, 2002, p. 11) – the fact that when we walk, talk or
eat most of our actions are not conscious and deliberate. For example, an experienced
driver can often drive between one place and another with little conscious awareness of the
journey, whereas a novice driver is likely to be highly conscious of the fear and exhaustion
that learning to drive can engender. For LeDoux, these unconscious processes include:
Almost everything the brain does, from standard body maintenance like regulating
heart rate, breathing rhythm, stomach contractions, and posture, to controlling
many aspects of seeing, smelling, behaving, feeling, speaking thinking, evaluating,
judging, believing and imagining . . . much of the time consciousness is informed
after the fact. (LeDoux, 2002, p. 11)
Thiele agrees and notes that our conscious mind carries only ‘a small share of what is made
available to us’ and that ‘memory, like perception, is not fully, or even primarily, within
our conscious control. We remember much more than we can ever recall’ (Thiele, 2006,
p. 121). This point is emphasised by Wilson (2002) who describes in some detail the
limited capacity of conscious perception when compared to the extensive contribution of
our unconscious mind, and the role of all our senses – hearing, sight, smell, touch and
taste – when processing information. At the same time, the brain is involved in processing
and analysing information recalled from prior experience in order to ‘categorise the
sensations into a perception’ (Siegel, 2012, p. 224). The conclusion drawn by several
scholars, and articulated by Thiele (2006), is that our ‘conscious perception represents
only the smallest fraction of what we absorb from our worldly encounters. It is the tip of an
iceberg’ (p. 121). Within this storing and retrieving process, the ability to remember –
and to learn – is enhanced when the brain evaluates an event as being ‘meaningful’
(LeDoux, 2002, p. 9; Siegel, 2012, p. 46) – a point I return to later.
Intuition
The same complex relationship between conscious and unconscious features can be
seen in relation to the part played by intuition and the self-awareness that underpins the
2 9 6 J O U R N A L O F S O C I A L WO R K P R A C T I C E
use of our intuitive capacities (Trevithick, 2012, p. 112). Munro describes this quite
generally in terms of ‘an unconscious process that occurs automatically in response to
perceptions, integrating a wide range of data to produce a judgment in a relatively
effortless way’ (Munro, 2011a, p. 37). Intuition has to involve some cognitive
elements because our brains are involved in this activity but most judgements call for
both intuition, which largely draw on unconscious processes and analysis, which
involves conscious, logical, identifiable and defensible processes, such as calculations or
rules (Hammond, 2007, p. 235). However, in situations where thinking is the
dominant mental activity, Hammond (2007) argues that we are not ‘engaging in
intuitive cognition’ (p. 147). The importance of integrating logical thinking and
intuitive reasoning, and the part played by conscious and unconscious elements, is
succinctly portrayed in the following account from Munro:
. . . engaging with, and understanding a child and their family, involves far more
than logical reason. When social workers are talking to a child and family in their
home, they are drawing on several sources of information and making swift
decisions and changes as the interview progresses. Their conscious mind is paying
attention to the purpose of their visit; at an intuitive level they are forming a
picture of the child and family and sensing the dynamics in the room, noting
evidence of anger, confusion, or anxiety. This feeds into their conscious awareness
and helps shape the way the interview progresses. Their own emotional reaction is
one source of information; the despair, for example, that some parents feel evokes
an empathic response in others. It will be argued that previous reforms have
concentrated too much on the explicit, logical aspects of reasoning and this has
contributed to a skewed management framework that undervalues intuitive
reasoning and emotions and thus fails to give appropriate support to those aspects.
(Munro, 2011a, p. 35)
One of the common ways to describe intuition is in terms of gut feelings (Trevithick,
2012, p. 12) which can be valuable because ‘they take advantage of the evolved
capacities of the brain and are based on rules of thumb that enable us to act fast and with
astounding accuracy, shown, for example, in our ability to recognise faces’ (Munro,
2011b, p. 90). However, ‘gut feelings’, like the use of intuition, can be untrustworthy
and vulnerable to error particularly when used to replace reflection and analysis and
when the importance of context is ignored (Thiele, 2006, p. 142). Munro, drawing on
the work of Hammond and others, gives the following example to illustrate the
importance of conscious and unconscious awareness, and intuitive and analytic thinking
in social work:
There is now a considerable body of research on how expertise, in whatever field,
is developed. This provides valuable lessons for social work. Intuitive and analytic
reasoning skills are developed in different ways, so child protection services need
to recognise the differing requirements if they are to help practitioners move from
being novices to experts in both dimensions. Analytic skills can be enhanced by
formal teaching and reading. Intuitive skills are essentially derived from
experience. Experience on its own, however, is not enough. It needs to be allied
to reflection – time and attention given to mulling over the experience and
HUMANIS ING MAN A GERIAL IS M 2 9 7
learning from it. This is often best achieved in conversation with others, in
supervision, for example, or in discussions with colleagues. (Munro, 2011a, p. 87)
In terms of the link between logical thinking and intuitive reasoning, a theme that runs
throughout Munro’s four reports is the impact of uncertainty and how this is addressed
through policies and procedures, many of which reflect a ‘defensive management of
risk’ (Munro, 2011a, p. 78). This defensiveness can become more pronounced where
the drive is for positive outcomes: ‘professional judgment, however expert, cannot
guarantee positive outcomes for children and families’ (Munro, 2011b, p. 107) – a
situation where problems can be made more complex through the involvement of
‘multiple stakeholders and multiple perceptions of the same problem’ (Munro, 2011a,
p. 79). For Hammond (2007), sound judgements become even more important
when presented with ‘uncertainty that is irreducible – that can’t be reduced or
eliminated’ – an unpredictability which tends to create anxiety or stress in individuals
and organisations (p. 16). In a somewhat surprising comment, Hammond argues that
given the nature of uncertainty, some judgements may need to be defended on the
grounds of common sense, which can describe an ‘ability to order ideas and
experiences in an intelligent and reasoned way’ (Trevithick, 2012, p. 92) or ‘as
analytical as time and knowledge permit’. Thus, for Hammond:
it will be common sense (robust flexibility) that replaces rationality as the desirable
cognitive tactical response to problems involving uncertainty that stem from
fallible indicators, entangled causality, and other elements of our task environment
that induce our judgement. (2007, p. 234)
Munro links the impact of uncertainty to the defensive stance adopted by some
practitioners in child protection for whom ‘following rules and being compliant can
appear less risky than carrying the personal responsibility for exercising judgment’
(Munro, 2010, p. 6) and also to organisational defences in the management of risk:
Uncertainty pervades the work of child protection and trying to manage that
uncertainty is central to the way the system has evolved since the 1970s. Many of
the imbalances in the current system arise from efforts to deal with that
uncertainty by assessing and managing risk. Risk management cannot eradicate
risk; it can only try to reduce the probability of harm. The big problem for society
(and consequently for professionals) is working out a realistic expectation of
professionals’ ability to predict the future and manage risk of harm to children and
young people. (Munro, 2010, p. 19)
For Hammond (2007), the anxiety and fear that accompanies uncertainty in relation to
organisations can be found in the defensive need to gather more and more information
and to set up newer and better systems, policies and procedures for this purpose
(p. 22). It can lead to an overconfidence in systems and the danger that ‘procedures
may be followed in a way that is technically correct but is so inexpert that the desired
result is not achieved’ (Munro, 2011b, p. 40) – a situation that can be found in other
professional contexts. There is no doubt that adhering to prescribed, standardised and
approved procedures may be appropriate in some situations. However, where these
2 9 8 J O U R N A L O F S O C I A L WO R K P R A C T I C E
are deployed to defend individuals and organisations from criticism, they can impede
the opportunity for important information to be acquired and sound judgements to be
made, for as Thiele notes: ‘If we are to improve human judgment, there is no
alternative but to grapple with the rich, multi-layered . . . and always vital interaction
between reason and emotion’ (Thiele, 2006, p. 166).
As a final point on the subject of uncertainty and risk, within this process of
merging reason and emotion we also need to broaden our conceptual framework to
take account of political and ideological developments in order to analyse the way that
the concept of risk has entered our thinking and come to dominate the realm of public
service provision and reform. For example, services that were once allocated on the
basis of human need, that could include emotional needs, are now tending to be
allocated on market-led, bureaucratic systems designed to identify levels of risk based
more on practical or legal considerations. This emphasis on risk rather than need,
together with funding cutbacks in service provision, now means that people designated
as being of low-risk status are increasingly denied access to services. It highlights the
extent to which our social work values and professional ethics are being trapped within
a narrow and ideologically based marketisation of human need – a development that
needs to be resisted. The same market-based emphasis on health risks rather than health
needs is a feature of troubling changes taking place in the UK National Health Service
(Pollock, 2005; Davis & Tallis, 2013).
The impact of managerialism on social work
Managerialism is one of the most striking examples of the way that so-called rational
thinking has skewed intuitive reasoning and the importance of ‘practical judgements’
(Thiele, 2006, p. 8) – a development that has had a seriously negative impact on
critical thinking, decision-making and action. This administrative and organisational
system, also known more officially as New Public Management, introduced a new
approach to the co-ordination, management and delivery of services, loosely based
around the concepts of the three M’s: markets, managers and measurement (Ferlie et al.,
1996) and the three E’s: economy, efficiency and effectiveness (Audit Commission, 1983,
p. 8). Its introduction was designed to address difficulties encountered due to the
considerable growth in the public sector in the UK and to improve practice and the cost
of service provision (Hughes and Wearing, 2012, p. 21). It was also introduced to
address professional decision-making that some considered to be ‘insufficiently
rigorous’ (Munro, 2010, p. 12). As a result, a trust in professional judgements and
accountability was replaced, to varying degrees, with a top-down ‘performance
management regime’ of inspection and monitoring and system of ‘imposed managerial
targets and regulations’ (Munro, 2011a, p. 8), characterised as a ‘tick-box’, ‘one-sizefits-all’ approach to service provision. For Munro (2010), the ‘skew in priorities’ that
were introduced have produced ‘an over-standardised system that cannot respond
adequately to the varied range of children’s needs’ (p. 5).
Managerialism’s hold as an administrative system is promoted, aided and abetted
by a flawed interpretation of evidence-based practice (EBP) when compared to the
original conceptualisation put forward by Sackett and colleagues.2 This definition
included not only (1) research evidence but also (2) knowledge, skills, expertise and
HUMANIS ING MAN A GERIAL IS M 2 9 9
practice wisdom that professionals bring to the encounter and, importantly, (3) the
knowledge and personal experience that service users (patients) and other nonprofessionals contribute (Sackett et al., 1996; Trevithick, 2008). The dangers of a
narrow and uncritical approach to what constitutes ‘evidence’ is noted by Munro
(2011b) who calls for the ‘need to be wary for marketing techniques that mislead’
(p. 94), citing the work of Gambrill on the way that propaganda in the EBP literature
can distort the findings of research (Munro, 2011b, p. 95):
We are gullible and easy prey for propaganda pitches as illustrated by the
spectacular success of the medicalization of hundreds of problems-in-living as
mental illnesses and promotion of drugs as a remedy . . . . If a report of research
includes a picture of a brain, we are more likely to believe the article reports
accurate findings. (Gambrill, 2011, p. 29)
Here I am reminded of conversation with a probation officer and the despairing account
he gave of a so-called ‘successful’ cognitive-behavioural anger management programme
located in a prison where the only men assessed as eligible for this provision were those
considered capable of completing the 10-week programme. Significantly, the positive
evaluation of this programme was not based on changes in the men’s behaviour but
measured by how many men completed the course. Clearly, not all programmes of this
kind are organised and evaluated in this way but an unscrupulous and unchecked form
of managerialism can lead to corrupt practices of this kind.
Managerialism: the ignoring of emotions, the relationship, knowledge and skills
To the best of my knowledge, managerialism was introduced into social work with no
robust research findings to indicate its superiority and effectiveness over ‘Old Public
Administration’, the form it replaced (Dunleavy & Hood, 1994). Like other
administrative systems, it has no knowledge of its own to offer to aid our understanding
of the complex nature of human behaviour. This in itself is not a difficulty if the
knowledge, skill and experience in the workforce is allowed to bridge this gap, but in
the more rigid forms of managerialism within social work, the tendency is for
‘standardised processes, frameworks and procedures’ (Munro, 2010, p. 13) and cost
considerations to be given precedence over professional decisions and the quality of
service provided. This means that everyone influenced by managerialism –
practitioners, service users, managers, senior administrators and policy-makers –
are expected to work within the principles of ‘business methods’ of ‘market-style
public management’ (Dunleavy & Hood, 1994, p. 15) – principles that can be found in
anxieties that underpin the recording systems required to be ‘Ofsted compliant’.3
Munro describes the limitations of this ‘over-standardised framework’ (Munro, 2011b,
p. 37) as follows:
. . . children’s needs and circumstances are very varied and this is not an area of
work that can be reduced to a set response. Consequently, professional judgment
needs to be exercised in determining how or whether to follow procedures and
guidance in any specific case. This requires professionals to understand the
3 0 0 J O U R N A L O F S O C I A L WO R K P R A C T I C E
rationale for procedures and guidance in order to use them intelligently. (Munro,
2011b, p. 44)
This quote refers to children’s services but is relevant in many other areas of social
work practice. This paper now turns to look at the particular emotional impact of
managerialism on service users, social workers and organisations.
Service users
As the threshold and eligibility for services continue to rise, and the hardship
experienced by people on low income becomes more severe, problems that were once
relatively uncomplicated and amenable to early intervention are increasingly being
neglected to the point where their features are complex, multifaceted and virtually
unworkable. In addition, describing human needs and real concerns in terms of a
target, an ‘output’ or a product – where the focus is on a standardised, prescribed
‘one-size-fits-all’ approach – can easily deny the personal and situational uniqueness that
are evident in most problems presented. All problems have a social dimension and are
rooted in a social system – and no bureaucratic system can capture the unobvious and
intricate social features that lead to and alleviate certain problems. Clearly, some
uncomplicated problems can be met through standardised frameworks but it cannot be
assumed that meeting a target necessarily means meeting a need, not least because
problems carry an ‘emotional dimension’ in two overlapping areas. First, in the way
that service users feel about the difficulties they experience, such as the sense of shame
associated with poverty or excessive debt, the fear carried by the possibility of eviction
or sense of terror when a visit from the bailiffs is imminent or an abusive partner is due
home, or the sense of humiliation and anger that can be felt when social workers arrive
to ‘inspect’ parents’ care of their children – and to scrutinise how this is manifest in
household or personal cleanliness, the condition of children’s bedrooms, food in the
cupboard, etc. Some scrutiny of this kind may be essential to ensure the well-being of
children but the emotional impact of asking ‘challenging questions about very sensitive
matters’ (Munro, 2011b, p. 87) needs to be acknowledged.
A second interrelated dimension relates to people’s emotional capacity to deal
with the problems they face or present to social workers. We know from the findings
of neuroscience – and from our own experience as practitioners – that when people
are struggling with feelings of stress, trauma, bereavement or depression their capacity
to remember can be seriously impaired and hamper their capacity to fulfil certain tasks.
For example, in relation to stress and depression LeDoux (1998) notes: ‘One of the
consequences of excess life stress is depression, and depressed persons sometimes have
poor memory’ (p. 243). With regard to the way that traumatic experiences can limit
people’s lives, Freud considered ‘ . . . the memory of the trauma acts like a foreign
body which long after its entry must continue to be regarded as an agent that is still at
work’ (Freud, 1895, p. 6). When these emotional limitations are not factored into the
decision-making process, people may be drawn to agree to undertake certain tasks or
meet particular targets and at the same time remain unaware of their inability to
achieve these expectations – feelings that may also lie beyond the awareness of the
practitioner and other individuals involved. However, these complex emotional issues
are more likely to be picked up when practitioners have the time and opportunity to
HUMANIS ING MAN A GERIAL IS M 3 0 1
use their ‘intelligence and good skills’ (Munro, 2012, p. 6) in ways that establish an
open, accepting and meaningful relationship with service users – a point taken up by
Howe:
One of the hallmarks of a good relationship is that our feelings, however dark and
distressing, are recognized, understood and accepted by the other. If the
relationship is a place where we can feel safe, then we can explore the thoughts and
feelings that are distorting and disfiguring our lives. (Howe, 2008, p. 6)
Social workers
In relation to social workers, some of the concerns identified by Munro include the
emotional impact of excessively high caseloads and ‘burdensome administrative tasks’
(Munro, 2010, p. 115) that leave too little time and opportunity for practitioners to
build the kind of relationship that makes it safe for service users to explore the practical
and material problems and emotional issues they are experiencing. This includes the
opportunity to use intuitive reasoning to aid understanding and the decision-making
process – opportunities that can be stifled by the ‘unintended consequences’ and
demands of an over-prescriptive approach:
For example, too much prescription of practice, which diminishes professional
responsibility for judgments and decisions, has an unintended consequence of
reducing the job satisfaction, self-esteem and sense of personal responsibility
experienced by child protection workers. This leads to the further unintended
consequence of increasing amounts of time taken off absent or sick. In fact, this
goes on to create a reinforcing loop . . . those still at work have to take on larger
caseloads and in turn have less time to build relationships with children and
families; in time, this reduces the quality of the outcomes for children and young
people, which further reduces the sense of job satisfaction . . . . Another
unintended consequence of prescription is that dissatisfaction with the role causes
high staff turnover. (Munro, 2011b, p. 37)
In addition to these tensions and demands, social workers are required to operate
within a ‘compliance culture’ which involves adherence to a system of policies and
procedures that they know in their hearts and minds cannot provide the quality of help
and support that service users need – and deserve. It can lead to ‘moral dilemmas’
(Munro, 2011a, p. 70) and ethical tensions. In this low-trust culture, the opportunity
for learning and change is hampered by organisational priorities that are ‘focused on
complying with targets and performance indicators’ (Munro, 2012, p. 27) to the point
where front line workers often feel unsupported by their managers and given too little
opportunity for reflection in supervision. Munro notes that these difficulties are
compounded by the way the public and media respond to tragic incidents relating to
children – reactions that are known to have a damaging impact on social workers’
morale when faced with no-win situations that lead to feeling ‘damned if they do and
damned if they don’t’ (Munro, 2011a, p. 38). In some situations, parents may behave
in ways that are evasive, dishonest, aggressive, intimidating and angry – experiences
3 0 2 J O U R N A L O F S O C I A L WO R K P R A C T I C E
that can be frightening and emotionally draining for social workers (Ferguson, 2014).
These situations call for good supervision and peer support and organisational backing to
ensure that they do not lead to practitioners losing their focus or becoming burnt out:
Being exposed to the powerful, and often negative, emotions found in child
protection work comes at a personal cost. If the work environment does not help
support workers and debrief them after particularly traumatic experiences, then it
increases the risk of burnout which, in the human services, has been defined by
[Maslach et al., 2001] in terms of three dimensions: emotional exhaustion,
depersonalisation (or cynicism), and reduced personal accomplishment. (Munro,
2011b, p. 91)
This reduced personal accomplishment can also lead to the practitioners becoming
deskilled through a lack of opportunity to use the knowledge, skills and experience
they have acquired. Here it is important to remember the ‘use it or lose it’ principle
(LeDoux, 2002, p. 79) in neuroscience which states that brain cells that are not used,
and do not ‘fire’, can fall away and wither. Munro notes that the many difficulties
experienced by social workers could be turned around if we could move away from
culture of compliance based on ‘perverse incentives’ and ‘too much focus on achieving
targets’ (Munro, 2012, p. 43) and instead create a learning culture that supports
ongoing feedback, learning and change in social work and toward a culture where
practitioners feel in touch and able to communicate their emotions in ways that are
caring and supportive.
Organisational defences
In relation to organisations, one ‘emotional dimension’ that has already been
mentioned is the way that service users’ and social workers’ emotions and feelings are
avoided and denied. This is a defensive stance. Another manifestation is the extent to
which fear and anxiety are driving an organisation’s structure and decision-making
processes – a defensive strategy that may have conscious and unconscious features.
Some of this fear is likely to be rational and a result of the criticism that central
government and the public direct at local government, including social work agencies.
Also, the ongoing demands placed on local authorities, often without additional
funding, can lead to rigid responses that make organisations less amenable to change.
For Munro (2012), the organisational picture in social work is of ‘a defensive culture
that focuses on compliance with targets and rules instead of whether services are
providing effective help’ (p. 3) – a system which perpetuates a mistaken confidence in
the view that compliance with policies and procedures can protect children. Munro
conceptualises the defensive culture that has emerged in terms of single and double
loop learning, where double loop learning allows for errors to be detected and corrected
in ways that lead to changes in the organisational structure, policies, objectives and
assumptions: ‘via this loop the system is able to learn’ (Munro, 2010, p. 50) and the
opportunity to operate as a learning organisation.
In contrast, single loop learning creates ‘a self-defence mechanism which “hides” the
perceived errors’ (Munro, 2010, p. 20) in order to fend off criticism. Instead, there
can be a ‘tendency to consider the error was avoidable and to blame the individual’
HUMANIS ING MAN A GERIAL IS M 3 0 3
(Munro, 2010, p. 1146). The development of a ‘blame culture’ (Munro, 2010, p. 38)
is one that places unrealistic expectations on social workers and service users
(MacDonald, 1990; Lees et al., 2013), and one where ‘blame’ can be placed or
projected on to service users if they fail to engage in ways deemed appropriate or fail to
meet certain targets or responsibilities (Bower, 2005, p. 163). It is a culture that can
lead practitioners to seek other self-protection strategies – a situation where ‘the more
punitive and defensive the culture, the harder it is for anyone to accept flaws in their
reasoning’ (Munro, 2011b, p. 91). No practitioner can be working from their best self
(Trevithick, 2012, p. 227) in such a climate but one of the most disturbing features of a
more ruthless and defensive managerialist approach is that it can lead to a culture of
bullying, harassment and intimidation (van Heugten, 2010). Here I am reminded of a
social work agency that has a ‘shame board’ which lists the names of social workers
who have failed to meet assessment targets. I am also reminded of a comment by an
experienced social worker who was told by a newly appointed, non-social work
manager to ‘dump’ the toys she used in her work with children, adding the comment
‘my way or the highway’.
This section has looked at the impact of managerialism and argued that by ignoring
the ‘emotional dimensions’ that practitioners and service users bring to an encounter
means that this system has consistently failed to understand key areas of human
experience and to build this understanding into its organisational culture, policies and
procedures. An example of this failure is the extent to which conscious and
unconscious defences dominate social work and are a serious obstacle to effective
practice (Trevithick, 2011) – defences that are evident in the fear and anxiety that lead
to compliance rather than courageous decision-making among practitioners, defences
that lead to a bullying culture where differences are attacked and independent thinking
prevented (Munro, 2010, p. 31), and defences that lead to service users feeling
reluctant to be open and honest for fear that the services they need may be denied. The
skewed system this has produced means that the opportunity for service users and
practitioners to learn and change – and to work together in ways that can achieve
lasting and meaningful change – remains seriously hampered.
Humanising managerialism
Like Munro, most practitioners know that for behaviour change to be fundamental,
enduring and meaningful takes time. It requires focused work, quality relationships and
good support, sometimes by professionals but, importantly, by building support from
other individuals within a person’s wider community and social world. It calls for an
understanding of the complexity of behaviour change and for a whole systems approach
in order for ‘change to have a chance of being most successful’ (Munro, 2011b,
p. 106). Once upon a time a professional stance involved adapting our approach and
resources to meet a service users’ need but increasingly service users are being
expected to adapt their needs to suit the resources and services available. These are
worrying developments that too often lead to people to being processed through a range
of administrative procedures with tight time frames toward a preordained goal – a
court hearing, a referral onward or case closure. It is at this point that managerialism
fails service users and fails social workers who are trapped within a heavily
3 0 4 J O U R N A L O F S O C I A L WO R K P R A C T I C E
proceduralised, emotion-stripped and unworkable system. However, in relation to
social work managerialism could be said to fail to meet the principles that underpinned
its introduction – economy, efficiency and effectiveness (Audit Commission, 1983, p. 8) –
on the grounds of its failure to provide an opportunity to fundamentally address
problems in ways that achieve lasting and meaningful change. The following is an
account of the kind of details that managerialism would have to embrace if it were to
humanise its policies and procedures in ways that included an emotional dimension at
its heart. The two examples chosen are learning and self-regulation.
Learning
The research findings of neuroscience indicate that it is through our emotions – or our
‘emotional brain’ (LeDoux, 2002) – that we become linked to other human beings,
and begin to make sense of who we are and the world around us. Central to this
understanding is the capacity to learn and the fact that when we ‘learn something new
associated structures in our brain change and grow’ (Gilgun, 2005, p. 856). These
changes to the ‘emotional self’ or ‘synaptic self’ (LeDoux, 2002) involve alterations in
synaptic connections that underlie learning and a process where memory stabilises and
maintains the changes over time (LeDoux, 2002, p. 134). It is also essential to note that
the greater the emotional arousal, the greater the learning that is achieved and
remembered:
Emotionally meaningful events can enable continued learning from experience
throughout the lifespan. Such learning may be seen as, in effect, the ongoing
development of the brain. Experience plays a primary role in stimulating new
neuronal connections in both memory and developmental processes. Findings
from neurobiology suggest that such development continues throughout the
lifespan. (Siegel, 2012, p. 345)
The realisation that it is the quality of the relationship and the emotions this engenders
that leads to greater learning has profound implications for social work. It suggests that
the opportunity for learning, for both service users and practitioners, is inhibited when
standardised, tick-box forms of information-gathering and other prescribed tasks and
targets take precedence over an emotionally meaningful encounter. That is not to deny
the importance of meeting specific tasks because all professions have important
administrative requirements to perform but as Munro and other commentators have
noted, it is the emotional content of the encounter this is as important in informationgathering – and only a small percentage of this information is evident in terms of fact
or answers that can be ‘ticked off’ and considered relevant in the wider picture:
Emotions allow us to see suffering as something negative that matters, just as they
allow us to see happiness as something positive that should garner our allegiance.
Without emotional insight, ethico-political judgment proves to be impossible.
(Thiele, 2006, p. 183)
The capacity to learn is as important for social workers as it is for services users because
it is in this area that we grow and change as human beings and as practitioners. In a
HUMANIS ING MAN A GERIAL IS M 3 0 5
learning culture, it is possible for every experience to be a teacher (Thiele, 2006,
p. 29) – an opportunity that is denied in a defensive culture (Trevithick, 2011).
The importance of self-regulation
One of the findings of neuroscience is the importance of self-regulation, sometimes
referred to as emotion regulation or affect regulation, which describes the capacity of
individuals to understand and control their emotions and behaviour and to do so in
ways that are flexible and adaptable to the situations encountered. It states that ‘how
we experience the world, relate to others, and find meaning in life are dependent on
how we come to regulate our emotions’ (Siegel, 2012, p. 273). As human beings, we
are not born with the ability to regulate our emotions. This begins in the early
attachment relationships between a child and his or her parents/carers and in the way
that different emotional experiences are organised and integrated – an integration
where the more expansive the experience, the greater sense of self that the infant
develops: ‘because emotional systems coordinate learning, the broader the range of
emotions that a child experience, the broader will be the emotional range of the self
that develops. This is why childhood abuse is so devastating’ (LeDoux, 1998, p. 322).
In social work, we can encounter service users whose early emotional experience
has led to a fractured sense of who they are – a situation that is sometimes indicated in
term of emotional dysregulation:
Emotion ‘dysregulation’ can be seen as impairments in this capacity to allow
flexible and organised responses that are adaptive to the internal and external
environment. When integration is impaired, coordination and balance cannot be
achieved, and the system moves toward chaos, rigidity, or both . . . repeated
patterns of such dysregulation can have their origins in constitutional elements,
interactional experience, and the transaction between these two fundamental
components of the mind. (Siegel, 2012, p. 269)
The extent to which an individual demonstrates a sense of ‘chaos, rigidity, or both’ can
be observed in practical ways, appointments that are not kept, or tasks not achieved,
but also through our capacity to feel the emotions being conveyed (Stern, 1985). The
example given above in relation to learning and self-regulation could be applied to our
understanding of other areas of emotional distress that we regularly encounter in social
work – such as the impact of trauma, abuse, stress, depression, bereavement and loss and also
the emotional impact of poverty, social inequalities and discrimination. How we work in
practice with this ‘reading’ of our own and others’ emotions and feelings will involve
drawing on different areas of knowledge, our capacity to relate to others and our
capacity for logical, rational, intuitive, analytic, critical and reflective thinking in ways
that enable us to work alongside service users to initiate change. As a final point on this
subject, the concepts of ‘chaos, rigidity, or both’ could also be applied to social work
where we struggle, amid competing pressures placed on us by government, to be a
self-regulating profession.
In this paper I have argued managerialism has hijacked the importance of
professional judgements and intuitive reasoning by promoting a skewed interpretation
of logical thinking. In this task, I have focused on more extreme and rigid forms of
3 0 6 J O U R N A L O F S O C I A L WO R K P R A C T I C E
managerialism because these pose the most serious threat to the future of social work
and how we are seen by others, including the general public. Managerialism
compromises everyone within its reach which means we must avoid splitting people
into ‘goodies’ or ‘baddies’ – although there are good and bad decisions and decisionmaking processes. As Munro notes, there are excellent examples of good practice
taking place in England due largely to a more relaxed and innovative interpretation of
managerialism and the courageous stance adopted by some managers and senior staff.
Examples of good practice are also evident in the courage and integrity demonstrated
by social workers who have found ways to remain relationship-based and to work
between the cracks of managerialism.
To humanise managerialism would change the future of social work and radically
change how we work with people. It would involve working with an understanding of
the emotional nature of the difficulties people experience, and adopting an approach
that builds on the research findings of attachment theory and neuroscience – and the
practice wisdom and professional expertise of social workers. It would involve
practitioners having more direct contact with service users and more time to assess
what is happening and why, and how best to positively engage and collaborate with
others to progress the work to be undertaken. This would call for a significant increase
in the number of social workers employed and more a thoughtful approach to
retention – together with changes to the administrative burden that practitioners are
expected to meet. It would involve placing the relationships we build at the heart of
social work practice and introduce a more emotional and collaborative language to
replace the more sterile, mechanistic and proceduralised terminology that is sometimes
adopted. This focus on relationships and relatedness would allow us to understand and
change the extent to which defences are operating in social work, particularly
organisational defences (Trevithick, 2011) and encourage us to articulate and resist its
worst features. Managerialism’s greatest weakness is its failure to recognise the
importance of emotions and it is this weakness, or Achilles Heel, that can offer the
chance to collaborate with service users and other professionals to bring about change.
It is only by placing an emotionally responsive relationship-based practice at the centre
of social work that managerialism can be humanised.
If we were to introduce these four basic changes – an emotional and knowledgebased dimension, higher staff levels, administrative changes and relationship-based
practice – other positives would occur. But to achieve this vision also means
challenging the myth that we cannot afford quality services and to care for people in
ways that are appropriate to their needs. The UK is reputed to be the seventh richest
country in the world but one of the most unequal in terms of the distribution of wealth
(Wilkinson & Pickett, 2009). For example, if we add together tax evasion, tax
avoidance and late tax payments, more than £120 billion is owed to the state, which
would be ‘enough, at least in principle, to close the whole current government deficit’
(Murphy, 2010). Similarly, it is reported that UK banks benefited from a £36 billion
subsidy from government in 2012 and an estimate from the London School of
Economics put the cost of financial scandals among 10 banks in the UK at £100 billion
in the five-year period from 2007 to 2012 (Treanor, 2013). Or again, in 2006 the
government estimated the cost of replacing the Trident nuclear missile system to be
between £15 to 20 billion which Greenpeace state could rise to £97 billion over the
system’s 30-year life (Norton-Taylor, 2009). We need to draw on these and other
HUMANIS ING MAN A GERIAL IS M 3 0 7
examples to argue the case that there is money and that we can afford to provide good
social work and services of high quality – if there is a commitment to do so.
I believe that as human beings we are capable of anything. Time and again
throughout history people have shown the ability to change the given order, despite the
obstacles and barriers erected to hinder progress. If the efforts of human beings can
bring down the Berlin wall, it has to be possible to humanise managerialism – a task we
need to begin now.
Notes
1. In an amusing quote cited by Damasio (2012, p. 319), love was described by Stuart
Sutherland (1996) in the The Macmillan Dictionary of Psychology as ‘A form of mental
illness not yet recognised by any of the standard diagnostic manuals’.
2. The term ‘evidence based practice’ was first developed by the Evidence-Based Medicine
Working Group at McMasters University in Canada. This working group included
David Sackett who has written extensively on this subject.
3. Ofsted stands for The Office for Standards in Education, which inspects and
regulates services working with children in the statutory, voluntary and community
sectors.
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Dr. Pamela Trevithick is the Visiting Professor in Social Work at Buckinghamshire
New University and a Project Manager for GAPS, which is a membership organisation
set up to promote relationship-based approaches, and psychodynamic and systemic
thinking in social work (www.gaps.org.uk). She is the author of the best-selling text Social
Work Skills and Knowledge: A Practice Handbook (2012) which has been translated into five
languages. Dr Trevithick runs workshops and lectures in the UK and abroad on a range
of subjects relating to the knowledge and skills base of social work, and the importance of
defences, emotions and ’use of self’ in relationship-based practice. She is a feminist and
actively campaigns against inequality and the privatisation of public services. Address:
Pamela Trevithick, GAPS, 10 Saville Court, Saville Place, Clifton, Bristol BS8 4EJ,
England, UK. [email: [email protected]]
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