Still in Critical Demand?

Released in 2001 after a five-year research and consultation process, In Critical Demand: Social Work in Canada was a federally funded “sector study” of the profession of social work in Canada (Stephenson, Rondeau, Michaud, & Fiddler, 2001). The report included a labour market analysis, employer surveys, a literature review and consultation with four partnering organizations: the Canadian Association of Social Workers, the Canadian Association of Schools of Social Work, the Canadian Association of Deans and Directors of Schools of Social Work, and the Regroupement des unités de formation universitaires en travail social. Despite its hopeful title, the study identified some concerning signs of erosion of the role of social work in Canada: Unfortunately, it is difficult to assess, 15 years later, the extent to which social work in Canada might indeed be finding its mandate shrinking and its scope of practice being limited to assessment and case management functions. On an anecdotal level, I have heard colleagues and recent graduates express concern about narrowing mandates. There is a sense from many that more and more positions in social, health, and community services are being filled by “allied professionals” and paraprofessionals with on the job training who do not necessarily share the breadth of vision and mission of social work. Getting an accurate picture of possible changes in our profession is a challenge given the federal-provincial/territorial and First Nations division of health and social services. Even at the level of many provinces it can be difficult to obtain trend data about social work jobs. Data from the 1996, 2001, and 2006 censuses and the 2011 National Household Survey provide some sense of overall trends. The long-form census, and its unfortunate and short-lived Harper-imposed voluntary National Household Survey, ask respondents to identify their occupation (open-ended question), and the responses are coded into broad occupation codes, which include “social worker” as well as a number of other related fields. The number of people who describe themselves as social workers has been steadily increasing, from 39,000 to 49,000, a 25% increase over 15 years. As shown in Figure 1, this increase follows similar patterns as documented for psychologists and occupational therapists, although family and marriage counsellors, a field partially occupied by social workers, are declining. While at first blush the slow but steady increase in people who describe their occupation as social work appears to be a positive trend, the category of “community and social service workers” has been increasing at a much faster rate. While publicly available census and National Household Survey data do not break down these categories in sufficient detail to understand who fits in this latter category, the education levels of respondents provides some perspective on this rapidly expanding group. As shown in Table 1, while in 2011 81% of self-identified social workers and 96% of self-identified psychologists had at least a Bachelor’s level university education, this was the case for only 36% of community and social service workers. As is often the case with such broadly designed surveys, interpretation of trends should be done with caution. The publicly available census and National Household Survey data do not give enough information about the specific nature of the broad occupation categories or levels of professional education to draw firm conclusions. More in-depth analysis using related questions might yield a finer understanding, it is also possible that some questions could be explored using the Labour Force Survey; work that we are starting to pursue. Another limitation with Canada-wide trend data is that the context of social work practice varies considerably across the country. Tracking changes at the level of provincial, territorial and …