A Systemic Lifecycle Approach to Social Policy Practice in Social Work: Illustrations from Irish Child Welfare and Parenting Research and Practice

The aim of this article is to outline a systemic lifecycle approach to social policy practice in social work. Evidence from the field of parenting and child welfare within an Irish context will be used for illustration. We avail of the work of Nancy Fraser to provide the theoretical framework. Drawing from approaches used mostly in public policy education, we demonstrate how social workers can engage at different stages of that policy lifecycle. In the discussion, we outline possibilities for and challenges to embedding social policy practice in social work education by reflecting on the processes of mediating between recognition, redistribution and representation. We argue that social policy practice should be a constant in social work. This approach should favour parity of participation and collaborative leadership from social work with regard to networking and promotion of different levels of participation with multiple ‘public spheres’. We conclude that the development of social policy practice work as a constant in social work will lead to greater ability to mediate between policies and the individuals affected by them. This would, we believe, enhance greatly the potential for social work to achieve its laudable but still illusory aims of promoting social justice.