Social Workers’ Sensual Bodies during COVID-19: The Suspended, Displaced and Reconstituted Body in Social Work Practice

Abstract

After more than a year living with COVID-19 restrictions, the UK Governments have now published their ‘recovery strategies’ in which social care has been considered as key to plans for post-COVID-19 recovery in England and the devolved nations. Emerging literature has already explored the ethical and practical challenges facing social workers during COVID-19 and how social work practice has been re-created to embrace hybrid ways of working. To add to this discussion, a secondary qualitative data analysis was performed on a subset of data (280 responses submitted by 176 social workers) collected from the British Association of Social Workers’ (BASW) survey on social work during COVID-19, to explore how social workers’ sensual bodies had been responding to challenges arising from the pandemic. Drawing on sociology of senses and social work literature on tacit knowing and practice wisdom, we will present how social workers’ sensual bodies have been suspended, displaced and re-constituted during the first UK national lockdown, leading to sensual compensation and sensual overload that impacted on social workers’ practice. In striving towards a ‘better normal’, we offer key insights to implement hybrid social work practice and protect against the shortfalls that it might bring to the profession.

Sosyal Hizmet Uzmanlarının Pandemi Döneminde Sosyal Hizmet Kuruluşlarındaki Mekân Deneyimi, Paylaşılmış Travması ve Paylaşılmış Dayanıklılığı

“…Bir diğer ziyaret mekânı ise hane dışı olarak virüs bulaşma riskinin görece daha az olduğu ve hane sınırlarına yakın olan sokak, park ve bahçe gibi yerler olmuştur. Bu açıdan bakıldığında uygulamaların riske bağlı olarak mekanları değiştirmesi "hibrit" sosyal hizmet şeklinde (Ferguson vd., 2022;Kong, Noone ve Shears, 2022;Pink vd., 2022) bu çalışmada da ortaya çıkmıştır. Dijital uygulamaların yaygınlık kazanması (Cook ve Zschomler, 2020;Ferguson vd., 2022;Kaya-Örk vd., 2021;Kuruhalil vd., 2020;Tranca, 2021) kurumlardaki kişisel verilerin kullanımı prosedürleriyle çelişebilen bir durumu ortaya koymakla beraber mesleki uygulama kaygısı ile kişisel kaygıların iç içe geçtiği bir durum bu çalışma bulgularını, literatür bulgularıyla (Cook ve Zschomler, 2020;Ferguson vd., 2022;Şahin Taşğın ve Bürüngüz, 2021) Çalışanlar ve hizmet alanlar olarak iki grubu "paylaşılmışlık" ortaklığında travma ve dayanıklılık ile bir araya getiren mekân deneyiminin bu iki grubu aynı zorlu deneyimde buluştururken kişileri aynı ortaklık altında dayanıklılığa yönelttiği anlaşılmaktadır.…”

“…Görüldüğü üzere bulaşma riskini azaltmaya yönelik ziyaret mekânlarının yeni koşullara uygun olarak değiştiği anlaşılmaktadır. Mekânların bu değişimlerinde, duruma uygun olan yeni bir çalışma pratiği olarak "hibrit" sosyal hizmetin bir uygulama biçimi olarak kendisine yer edindiği görülmektedir (Ferguson vd., 2022;Kong, Noone ve Shears, 2022;.…”

Collaborative practice research in social work: piloting a model for research and professional learning during COVID-19

“…External funding and resources coming from both impact-focused funding and the BASW further created learning opportunities that single service agencies might not be able to offer with their often very strained resources. This methodology thereby sees practice wisdom and research evidence as equally valid forms of knowing, and consistently seeks ways to integrate, link and utilise the two forms of knowing in practically and ethically meaningful ways for informing social work practice (Kong, 2016;Kong et al, 2021b).…”

“…Keeping with a move from linear knowledge transfer to developing cooperative knowledge production (Gray and Schubert, 2013), the network co-analysed 2,222 qualitative responses from UK social workers collected by the BASW's 'Ongoing Survey on Social Work during COVID-19' (hereafter, the BASW survey) during the first COVID-19 national lockdown. The analysis captured UK social workers' worries, challenges and good practice during the first COVID-19 national lockdown (March-August 2020) (Kong et al, 2021a) and informed the production of the reflective activist toolkit (Kong et al, 2021b), an article in a professional magazine and a research article (Kong et al, 2021c).…”

Lonely for Touch? A Narrative Review on the Role of Touch in Loneliness

“…Alongside this, the COVID-19 pandemic has left low-income workers, women, and ethnic minorities at most risk, thereby changing the political landscape of touch further through a ‘syndemic of infectious disease and inequalities’ (Bambra, Lynch, & Smith, 2021, p. xiv). The rise of digital means of connection (such as social media and video calling) along with hybrid working practises (Pink, Ferguson, & Kelly, 2021) have also shifted the ways we connect (Twenge, Spitzberg, & Campbell, 2019), displacing practitioners’ sensual bodies (Kong, Noone, & Shears, 2021), and leaving many at increased risk of loneliness (Hwang, Rabheru, Peisah, Reichman, & Ikeda, 2020). Indeed, the move to digital forms of connection and removal of touch have been implicated in loneliness and attachment in this context (McKenna-Plumley et al, 2021; Menzies, Neimeyer, & Menzies, 2020).…”