Post-Pandemic Welfare and Social Work

The COVID-19 pandemic represents a critical juncture in the development of the welfare state affirming its importance for its citizens’ economic, health and wellbeing, and safety, especially for its most vulnerable populations. It demonstrated that the crisis preparedness that is crucial for an effective protection of its citizens, the ultimate purpose of the welfare state, unquestionably exceeds the narrow horizon of a corporatised welfare industry with its singular focus on the maximisation of profit for the elites and cost containment for the government. Social workers need to engage with the contradictions and tensions that spring from underfunded welfare services and engage in the political struggle over a well-resourced welfare state.

Contributors to this book take on this challenge. By tracing the various contradictions of the pandemic, the contributors reflect on new ways of thinking about welfare by exploring what to keep, what to challenge and what to change. By highlighting important challenges for a social justice-focused response as well as exploring the many challenges exposed by the pandemic facing social work for the coming decades, contributors critically outline pathways in social work that might contribute to the shaping of a less cruel and more capable welfare state. Using case-studies from Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australia, Italy, Slovenia, Estonia, Sweden, Spain, South Africa, Canada, Sri Lanka, Zimbabwe, China and the United States, the book features 19 chapters by leading experts.

This book will be of interest to all social work scholars, students and practitioners, as well as those working in social policy and health more broadly.

Goetz Ottmann is a senior social work lecturer and a member of the Future Regions Research Centre at Federation University. His research has focused on participatory, community-based social services and public policies in aged and disability care. He has extensive experience in qualitative and action research methodologies and has led several multi-methods programme evaluations. His theoretical work revolves around the application of critical social theories to a wide range of social work topics. He has held senior positions in public and private tertiary education.

Carolyn Noble is Emerita Professor of Social Work at ACAP, Sydney, and Emerita Professor of Social Work at Victoria University, Melbourne. Senior Research Associate, Johannesburg University, South Africa. She is editor-in-chief of open access social issues magazine for IASSW (www.socialdialogue.online). Her most recent books are Radicals in Australian Social Work (co-editor, Connor Court, 2017), The Challenge of Right-wing Nationalist Populism for Social Work. (co-editor, Routledge, 2020). The Routledge Handbook of Critical Pedagogies for Social Work (co-editor. Routledge, 2021).