Fixing Symptoms Won't Fix the Problem

Just a few more words on the Australian Association of Social Workers.

For those of us who have actually lived longer than five minutes - the heading of this note is self evident.

We started to learn this I suspect when we were teenagers afflicted with acne. All of the creams and solutions we tried masked the problem for a while but alas unless we changed our eating habits and got our hormones under control that's all we did. Mask the symptoms.

Thankfully for most of us as we grew older the hormones came under control of their own volition and the problem did indeed disappear.

However if we all treat organisational problems, problems in communication and problems in management as if they were acne and hope that time will make them pass into oblivion then we are doomed from the outset.

ACTION is what is required in cases like this.

Social Action is a form of social work activity and one that members of the Association would be well advised to consider. Read a little Saul Alinsky and learn again about what techniques exist out there to nobble even the most 'powerful' organisational structures.

Perhaps that's what social workers in Australia need to learn again - how social action can be used to change things that you don't like.

Practice makes perfect. But to get perfect you actually have to have some practice.

So my advice is - read the theory and then start to put some of it into ACTION.