Social Work and the City

Charlotte Williams Editor

Social Work and the City

Urban Themes in 21st-Century Social Work

ISBN 978-1-137-51622-0 ISBN 978-1-137-51623-7 (eBook) DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-51623-7

Library of Congress Control Number: 2016940593

© Th e Editor(s) (if applicable) and Th e Author(s) 2016 Th e author(s) has/have asserted their right(s) to be identifi ed as the author(s) of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. Th is work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifi cally the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfi lms or in any other physical way, and trans-mission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. Th e use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specifi c statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. Th e publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made.

Cover illustration: © Zoonar GmbH / Alamy Stock Photo

Printed on acid-free paper

Th is Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by Springer Nature Th e registered company is Macmillan Publishers Ltd. London

Editor Charlotte Williams School of Global, Urban and Social Studies RMIT University Melbourne , Victoria , Australia

v

Part I Making Sense of the City 1 Charlotte Williams

1 Social Work and Th e Urban Age 15 Charlotte Williams

2 Beyond the Soup Kitchen 43 Charlotte Williams

3 Reconstructing Urban Social Work 71 Charlotte Williams

4 Social Work Research and the City 97 Charlotte Williams

Contents

vi Contents

Part II Social Issues and the City: New Directions in Practice 121 Charlotte Williams

5 Superdiversity and the City 127 Dirk Geldof

6 Ageing in Urban Environments: Challenges and Opportunities for a Critical Social Work Practice 151 Chris Phillipson and Mo Ray

7 Disabling Cities and Repositioning Social Work 173 Michael J. Prince

8 Care, Austerity and Resistance 193 Donna Baines

9 Homelessness in Western Cities 215 Carole Zuff erey

10 Living on the Edge: New Forms of Poverty and Disadvantage on the Urban Fringe 235 Sonia Martin and Robin Goodman

11 Educating for Urban Social Work 259 Susie Costello and Julian Raxworthy

Conclusion: Urban Themes in Twenty-First Century Social Work 281 Charlotte Williams

Index 289

vii

Editor’s Biography

Charlotte   Williams , OBE is Professor and Deputy Dean Social Work at RMIT University, Melbourne, Australia. She is a qualifi ed social worker and has over 25 years of experience in social work education. Her research is underpinned by an interdisciplinary body of theory drawing largely on comparative social policy, critical race theory, social geogra-phy, social development, and theories of migration and multiculturalism. She has extensively theorised issues of place, locality and nationhood as they impact on welfare practices, particularly in relation to the racialisa-tion or exclusion of minoritised groups. Her most recent publications include: Social Work in a Diverse Society: Transformatory Practice with Ethnic Minority Individuals and Communities (with M. Graham) (Policy Press, 2016); the Special Issue of the British Journal of Social Work entitled ‘A World on the Move’: Migration, Mobilities and Social Work (2014) (co-edited with M. Graham); and Race and Ethnicity in a Welfare Society (2010) (with M. Johnson), Open University Press.

Notes on Contributors

viii Notes on Contributors

Contributors’ Biographies

Donna   Baines is Professor of Social Work and Social Policy at the University of Sydney. Professor Baines has published extensively on man-agerialism and restructuring social service work under neo-liberalism, and now under austerity. She also publishes in the area of anti-oppressive and critical approaches to social work practice. Professor Baines has published recently on care work in the Journal of Social Work , Critical Social Policy and the Journal of Industrial Relations , and is working on the third edition of her best-selling (in Canada) edited collection Doing Anti-Oppressive Practice, Social Justice Social Work (Fernwood, 2017).

Susie   Costello is a Senior Lecturer in Social Work in the School of Global Urban and Social Studies at RMIT University in Melbourne, Australia. Her practice background was in family social work in child protection, family support, disability and psychiatry in health and institutional set-tings. Her last role as a social work practitioner was with the City of Yarra in Victoria, where alongside where responding to the welfare needs of families, council social workers contributed to the planning and infra-structure of the city, for example, participating in the implementation of the Disability Discrimination Action Plan to upgrade streets and services across the city and advocating for safety for vulnerable residents as part of the city’s Community Safety Strategy. Susie’s publication and research interests include violence against women, indigenous homelessness, cross-cultural education and international social work. She leads RMIT’s initiatives in contributing to urban planning in cities in Myanmar.

Dirk   Geldof is Professor at the Faculty of Design Sciences of the University of Antwerp (Belgium), lecturer and researcher at the Higher Institute for Family Sciences (Odisee University College, Brussels) and lecturer in Social Work at the Karel de Grote-University College (Antwerp). He holds a PhD in Political and Social Sciences from the University of Antwerp. In 2013, he published Superdiversiteit. Hoe migra-tie onze samenleving verandert (Acco, 5th edn, 2015). Th e English edition Superdiversity in the Heart of Europe: Th e Belgian Case will be published in January 2016 (Acco).

Notes on Contributors ix

Robin   Goodman is Professor of Sustainability and Urban Planning and Deputy Dean in the School of Global Urban and Social Studies at RMIT University in Melbourne, Australia. Robin holds a BA (Hons) from La Trobe University, and a Masters of Urban Planning and a PhD from the University of Melbourne. She was the Director of RMIT’s Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute (AHURI) Research Centre for three years from 2010, and subsequently the inaugural Director of the Centre for Urban Research. Robin has published widely on issues around planning, public policy, sustainability and housing. She is co-author of a forthcoming book entitled Growing Pains: Planning Melbourne in the 21 st Century .

Sonia   Martin is a Lecturer and Programme Manager in Social Work at RMIT University, where she teaches in the fi elds of social policy and social research. Sonia has previously worked at the Universities of South Australia, Adelaide and Melbourne and the Brotherhood of St Laurence in the Research and Policy Centre. Her work on a large three-year ARC Linkage grant at the University of Melbourne contributed to the award-winning publication Half a Citizen: Life on Welfare in Australia .

Grounded in the discipline of sociology, her research interests include quantitative and qualitative analyses of poverty, inequality and social exclusion; theoretical issues to do with agency, structure and ‘choice’, and contemporary social policy arrangements and welfare reform.

Chris   Phillipson is Professor of Sociology and Director of the Manchester Interdisciplinary Collaboration for Research on Ageing (MICRA), based at the University of Manchester, UK. Before moving to Manchester, Phillipson held a variety of posts at Keele University, including Dean of Research for the Social Sciences and Director of the Social Science Research Institutes. He was also a Pro-Vice Chancellor for the University and founded (in 1987) the Centre for Social Gerontology. He has pub-lished extensively on a range of topics in the fi eld of ageing, including work in the fi eld of family and community studies, transnational migra-tion, social inclusion/exclusion, urban sociology and social theory. He is the co-author of the Sage Handbook of Social Gerontology (Sage Books, 2010), Work, Health and Wellbeing (co-authored, Policy Press, 2012), and

x Notes on Contributors

Ageing (Polity Press, 2013). His present research involves work around the theme of developing ‘age-friendly cities’ where he co-ordinates a research project based in a number of neighbourhoods in Manchester. He is a Fellow of the Gerontological Society of America and a Past-President of the British Society of Gerontology.

Michael   J.   Prince is a Professor and holds the Lansdowne Chair in Social Policy in the Faculty of Human and Social Development, University of Victoria, Canada. Among his books are Changing Politics of Canadian Social Policy (with J. J. Rice, University of Toronto Press, 2nd edn, 2013), Rules and Unruliness: Canadian Regulatory Democracy, Governance, Capitalism, and Welfarism , (with G. G. Doern and R. J. Schultz, McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2014), and Struggling for Social Citizenship: Disabled Canadians, Income Security, and Prime Ministerial Eras (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2016).

Julian   Raxworthy is a Landscape Architect. He has an Honours Bachelor degree and research Master’s degree (by design) in landscape architecture from RMIT, Australia, where he was also a Senior Lecturer until 2004. He was a Senior Lecturer at the Queensland University of Technology (QUT) from 2005 until 2011. He has been a registered landscape architect in Australia and is now registered as a Professional Landscape Architect in South Africa, where he is a Lecturer in the Master of Landscape Architecture programme at the University of Cape Town. Raxworthy completed his PhD with the University of Queensland, Australia, in 2013, concerning the relationship between gardening and landscape architecture, which he is currently adapting into a book to be published by MIT Press in 2017: Overgrowing Landscape Architecture . A co-founder of Kerb , the student landscape architecture journal from RMIT in 2004, he co-edited Th e MESH Book: Landscape & Infrastructure , RMIT Press, and, in 2011, Sun Publishers in Amsterdam published Sunburnt: Landscape Architecture in Australia , co-authored with Professor Sue-Anne Ware.

Mo   Ray is Professor of Gerontological Social Work and Programme Director for Social Work in the School of Social Science and Public

Notes on Contributors xi

Policy at the University of Keele, Staff ordshire. She holds a PhD in Social Gerontology from the University of Keele. She spent many years as a social worker and manager specialising in practice with older people, and remains a registered social worker with an active interest in practice. Her research and writing include social relationships in later life and social work practice with older people. She has developed and delivered a range of inter- disciplinary, continuous professional development courses to support the development of Age Friendly Cities and environments.

Carole   Zuff erey is a Senior Lecturer at the School of Psychology, Social Work and Social Policy. She completed her PhD on social work and homelessness in 2008 at the University of South Australia. Her research interests include social work, social policy and social work edu-cation responses to housing, home, homelessness, children and domestic violence.

xiii

ACGA Australian Common Ground Alliance CBD Central business district COS Charity Organisation Society CRPD United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with

Disabilities EU European Union GIS Geographical Information Systems GNAFC Global Network of Age Friendly Cities IFSW International Federation of Social Work NGO Non-governmental organisation OECD Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development OoH Offi ce of Housing PIE Person in environment QGIS Qualitative Geographical Information Systems RCT Randomised control trial WHO World Health Organization

List of Abbreviations and Acronyms

xv

Fig. 10.1 Housing stress across Melbourne 242

List of Figures