This text is part of the special Social Work section
Launched last spring, the Estates General of Social Work led to a vast public consultation involving a multitude of actresses, actors and organizations in Quebec. With the main objective of defining the contours of tomorrow’s social work in a world in full transformation.
Water has flowed under the bridge since the holding, in 1998, of the Estates General of the profession launched by the Order of Social Workers of Quebec. At the time, this founding act played a truly structuring role, in particular by supporting the professional identity of social workers. But numerous and diverse upheavals have made the organization of new states general more than necessary concerning social work as a whole, and no longer just the profession.
Started in the spring of 2023 with the support of the Institut du Nouveau Monde (INM), this reflexive and collective approach aims to “shape the social work of tomorrow”, so as to be able to better respond to the new challenges posed by a society facing immense challenges. Very often on the front line, actors in the social field have directly faced major demographic, economic and climatic crises, and new issues affecting identity, ethnic and sexual diversity.
“Social work is a privileged witness. We see the consequences of social dysfunction and the worsening of problems. But social work does not want to be just a witness. He wants to contribute to change,” underlines Denis Bourque, professor in the Department of Social Work at the University of Quebec en Outaouais (UQO), one of the three commissioners responsible for overseeing the consultations of the Estates General, with independent journalist Ariane Émond and emeritus social worker Nadine Vollant.
Appointed by the Order of Social Workers and Marriage and Family Therapists of Quebec (OTSTCFQ), these three independent commissioners were given the mandate to collect proposals and make recommendations. The objective is to place social work in the best conditions to fully fulfill its mission in the years to come. The consultation tour, conducted with some 500 people and organizations, made it possible to draw up a list of grievances and identify some priorities.
“I heard great ethical suffering,” confides Ariane Émond, public consultation specialist. “Social workers are no longer able to do the work for which they were trained. » A rather alarming observation which was also noted by Denis Bourque. “There is a loss of meaning and effectiveness of social work, which is subject to bureaucratic standards that prevent it from playing its role. It is experienced as a kind of dissonance by social workers, between the reasons for which they got involved and the constraints imposed in practice. »
Another great frustration is that the collective approach to social work has been largely abandoned over the years in favor of an individual approach, which is inherently more limited. “We are too much into symptom management, into curative treatment, compared to a social work mission which aims to act on the causes of the problem,” summarizes Denis Bourque. “What we value at the ministry is the individual approach. Collective practice must be revalued. This was hammered home by the people who came to see us during the consultations,” confirms Ariane Émond.
Avenues for action
To reconnect with its primary mission, the social work of tomorrow must have a role to play in the development of public policies. “There must be a capacity to act at a systemic level on what generates a large number of distresses and social problems, the inflationary crisis with precariousness, the housing crisis and its consequences on homelessness, the increase in violence in all its forms, or even the climate crisis. If we are not able to act upstream on these problems, we are in a dead end,” specifies Mr. Bourque.
“We must ensure that social workers can do useful work and feel less powerless in the face of a world that is in major transition. We were told: we want to be consulted because we have things to say! », adds Ariane Émond. This revaluation of the collective approach to social work notably involves a significant increase in the number of positions in community organizations. “We currently have 500 full-time positions in the public network, and we recommend increasing to 1000 within five years,” indicates Denis Bourque.
“We need to reconnect the different actors in a spirit of collaboration, in order to be able to better respond to the needs of our vulnerable populations,” says Nadine Vollant, who has more than 25 years of experience in the field of youth protection. and who participated, with Denis Bourque and Ariane Émond, in the drafting of the commissioners’ report for the Summit of the Estates General of Social Work, organized on April 19 and 20 at the Collège de Maisonneuve.
“We should not see this report as an end in itself, but as the beginning of avenues that will emerge from the Summit to shape social work according to our realities today. The idea is to improve consultation work,” explains Nadine Vollant. “The Summit, to which the entire population has been invited, should make it possible to transform the recommendations into courses of action, to set two or three priorities,” adds Ariane Émond. “There is really a desire to go back to the front together and make the voice of social work more audible. »
Two main priority areas
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