Telling Stories of Practice in the Neo-liberal Context of English Social Work

The authors contend that the rise of neo-liberal codified management systems within English social work increasingly restricts social workers freedom to be creative in their practice reducing them to social administrators. We are two registered social work professionals and academics who believe managerial contexts encroach on our professional values. As insider researchers, we engaged in conversations and case storytelling to examine how our knowledge and practice as social workers positively influenced outcomes for people who have lived experiences. The two stories articulated in this article magnify how professional use of self can enact emancipatory empathy in the minutiae of practice. Collaborating as insider ethnographers supported us to deconstruct practice using critical reflection and reflexivity in post-modernist contexts. We highlight how micro examinations in collaborative autoethnography have potential for engaging wider philosophical conversations about social work identity. The article uses examples of two stories the authors told each other as part of our narratives on use of self to explore social work identities. We used our conversations to examine the potential of critical theory for neutralising the impact of codified processed case work within neo-liberal frameworks. Our purpose is to share the importance of examining the minutiae of our practice that can bring heightened awareness of emancipatory empathy, creativity and flexible approaches that fashion principled social work agency.