Keeping our heads: Preserving therapeutic values in a time of change

This paper offers a discursive overview of the present state of therapeutic social work in Britain today, and locates this in the context of political and ideological struggles over the nature of the profession in the last two decades. Therapeutic social work has often been contrasted with more politically driven models of practice, but the author suggests that it is now a political task to defend and promote these practices and perspectives. Consistent with the principles underpinning therapeutic practice, practitioners are posited as individually and collectively indebted to one another and to their teachers for the skills they have, and recognition of this is what might bind us into a community capable of fighting to preserve what we value. This paper was given as the opening address at the Therapeutic Social Work Today conference, held at the Tavistock Clinic in 2001.