Professional capital and social work futures: Contemporary challenges for Australian social work

The future of social work preoccupies scholars and educators in the field, with consideration periodically extending beyond 'trends' to the fundamental question of whether social work per se even has a future. A recurring theme in these debates concerns social work's professional project, and whether professionalisation enhances or undermines social work's values and aims. Whilst contributing to the conceptual articulation of a social work habitus, few of these contributions are informed by the views of practitioners in the field. This article analyses 122 practitioners' perspectives on current issues for social work, through data taken from a survey conducted in Victoria, Australia in 2018. Practitioners' perspectives are analysed in relation to the theoretical construct of professional capital. In contrast to modernist interpretations of professionalisation-as-status typical of polemical works, a professional capital perspective construes social work's professional project as a legitimation strategy, the primary aim of which is to secure recognition of the unique view of the social world which informs social work practice. From that perspective, arguments against professionalisation misrecognise the role professionalisation plays in securing social work's future, unwittingly placing its future in jeopardy. Whether professionalisation is consistent with social work's ethics and aims is a topic of much scholarly debate. This article draws on survey data gathered in 2018 to explore 122 social workers' perspectives on issues facing social work practice. A dominant theme in the issues identified by practitioners was the status of the social work profession in the field. The concept of 'professional capital' is used to analyse practitioners' perspectives on the position of social work in its contemporary fields of practice. It is argued that social work's professional project can be understood in many ways; from a self-interested quest for status at one extreme to a strategy to maintain and enhance a unique vision of the social world at the other, with many combinations in between. We conclude that the future of social work as a distinct practice depends on a critical understanding of the concept of professionalisation, and that this understanding needs to be grounded in evidence from the contemporary state of the field.