Social Workers as Change Agents

As social workers, we often define ourselves as being "agents of change", yet this role often comes with a level of frustration. As we try to function as change agents in society we invariably encounter resistance. If people, or social service agencies, or larger social systems wanted to change they would have done so long before we arrived on the scene. So the nature of our job is to try to get people to make changes that at least a part of them resists. No wonder so many social workers get burnt out.

Presumably "the light bulb" is either the client or the social system that affects the client. If the light bulb is the client, then the above statement could be empowering, even though the social worker in this is image is looking rather peeved. If social workers acknowledge that they can't change the client against his or her will, then this would be a basic acknowledgment of the right of the client to self-determination.

But why the petulant look on the social worker's face?

On the other hand, maybe the child in the image is not the social worker. Maybe the child is the social worker's perception of the client. In that case, the image suggests a paternalistic attitude on the part of the social worker. The social worker thinks the client is an obstinate child, who doesn't know what is good for him or her. This paternalistic attitude toward the client may contribute to clients' reluctance to trust social workers.

But maybe the image is of a whole social system that needs to be changed. Some social workers focus mostly on trying to change larger social systems and the agencies that deliver social services. They do this in an attempt to make those social systems, or those agencies, more responsive to the needs of the client. If "the light bulb" is the social agency or system, and it resists changing in order to meet client needs, this can also be a source of frustration for the social worker.

In any case, to say "the light bulb has to want to change," suggests that if the light bulb doesn't want to change then the social worker can wash his or her hands of the whole thing. There is nothing more to be done. Blame the client or blame the system; but the social worker is absolved from any responsibility for the intractable problems the client faces. The social worker cannot be effective until the client, or the system, wants the worker to be effective.

Can this be right?

If the only time the social worker can be effective is when the light bulb wants to change, what do we need a social worker for in the first place? If the social worker accepts credit for clients, systems, and agencies that already want to change then what is the value-added from having a social worker?

Doesn't value come from scarcity -- the kind of scarcity that occurs when one is able to confront, and overcome, some type of difficulty that would discourage most people before the task was completed? Isn't it  the difficulty of the task that makes the social worker's intervention valuable?

So, why is the "light bulb", whether it is a social system, a social service agency, a group, a family, or an individual, reluctant to change, when they know that change would probably be beneficial in the long run?

Maybe anthropologists can help us out on this.

Mary Catherine Bateson, in Peripheral Visions, writes about the narratives we create about our lives. We simultaneously create narratives of continuity and discontinuity; it all depends on the lens we use as we reflect on the course of our lives. We can note the series of events in our lives, many of which were unexpected, that seem to have led us to where we are today -- as if this were our destiny. On the other hand, we can point to the many fits and starts, dead-ends and new beginnings we have had, which suggest that our lives are compilations of random events which appear to be going nowhere.

One the one hand, our lives seem to unfold in ways we never would have anticipated when we were children, teenagers, or young adults. Yet other elements of our lives seem stubbornly familiar and unchanging.

The interesting thing about narratives of discontinuity is that they often engender a sense of fragmentation, which can be unsettling, disorienting and frightening. They can make us feel as though our lives are no longer under our control, if they ever were. We can feel adrift; at the mercy of the winds, the river current, or blind fate.

Why are people resistant to change? Bateson suggests that people fear the loss of the sense of security and groundedness. When social workers ask people to change, we are also asking them to give something up -- something that may be very important to them, even if it is only a memory, or a way of understanding reality. We are asking them to let go of something that is familiar in order to embrace something that has not yet proven itself. Even under the most dysfunctional circumstances, few people are willing to take the risk of change without serious reservations.

We often fear the unknown and the unfamiliar, despite it's potential to give us a new start. We may fear the outcome if we stand still and just allow things to continue to happen to us, but at least we can feel as though we did not bring disaster on ourselves -- something outside of us did it, even though it occurred as a result of our own inaction. If we take the risk of inaction, the risk is based on what other people and things might do to us. If we take the risk of change, the risk is something we incur of our own choosing.

It takes a leap of faith to initiate change. But, as Bateson points out in Peripheral Visions, when we ask people -- or systems -- to change, we should realize that we are asking them to take a big risk. We should not take the suggestion of risk lightly. We should ask ourselves, what I am asking this individual, or this system, to give up that might provide a sense of familiarity and continuity? Why might it be frightening for this individual, or people in this system, to initiate change?

If we want to be effective social workers we have to understand that this means we must be agents of change; and as agents of change we will automatically engender opposition, and we should not be surprised, or petulant, when we find that the light bulb does not want to change, and tries to hold onto the status quo in subtle or not-so-subtle ways.

It is the nature of our job to encounter resistance to change; therefore, we should not be cavalier in the changes we propose, and we should not take suggestions of change lightly. We must begin by spending time trying to understand what our clients and their systems value about the status quo, and what they fear about the discontinuities we are suggesting to them. We must try to fully understand how they perceive what we are proposing as being disruptive of their lives. I would even go so far as to suggest that we must be empathetic toward their fear of disruption. If we can't develop that empathy, we have no business trying to encourage them to change.

Our job engenders resistance. If it were any other way, we wouldn't be needed in the first place.