Transformative Disruption? Reflections on Care in Social Work under a COVID-19 Pandemic Lockdown

This chapter focuses on the possibilities for sustaining care in social work with vulnerable families during a pandemic lockdown and discusses if disruption of normal practices can be a source for learning and transformation. First, we outline a concept of care and argue that a pandemic lockdown can disrupt professional care but may also reveal structural weaknesses and offer paths for critical reflective transformation. Next, we introduce structural challenges in Danish social work with vulnerable families related to expectations of cost-effectiveness and efficiency and analyse how social workers experience and reflect on the possibilities for sustaining care during the lockdown. The analysis shows that prioritising scarce resources to enable care becomes paramount. While the social workers experience moments of enabling and (re)discovering the ‘essence of social work’ and a sense of community with families, they also feel ‘worn out’ and wonder what will be the future possibilities for care: Will management acknowledge and prioritise resources and time for care in the aftermath of COVID-19, or will conditions during the lockdown become ‘the new normal’? Based on this, we discuss the possibilities for transformative disruption in terms of recognising the caring purpose of social work.