Service user involvement in social work and beyond. Exploring its origins and destinations
Service user involvement in social work and beyond. Exploring its origins and destinations

Summary/Abstract: This article offers a critical analysis of service user involvement in social work by exploring the modern history of its development. It does this by examining: a) the increasing pressures for more democratic politics and societies during the course of the twentieth century, making connections between efforts to widen suffrage and extend individual and collective rights; the development of representative and participatory democracy and, the emergence of new social movements, including those based on identity and relations with welfare, and b) the impacts on and relations of these with social work. It charts four key stages in the development of user involvement in social work specifically and public policy more generally, exploring by reference to the UK as a case study and international experience, both obstacles in the way of inclusive and effective user involvement and ways in which it seems to be being advanced more effectively.

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