SWAN Conference 2013

In 2012, while society becomes increasingly unequal and social protection is being severely eroded, the neoliberal consensus around austerity is starting to falter and fracture. Social workers and care employees work with parents who are forced to choose between feeding their children and paying the rent, young people who are out of work or forced to onto ‘workfare’ programmes and disabled people who are vilified as unproductive scroungers while having support for their independence and employment snatched away. Meanwhile, the immoral spectacle of Newscorp’s collusion with the UK government, rate-fixing by Barclays bank and reduction of the top rate of tax on the rich all highlight social injustice and feed the anger of people already enslaved to paying for an economic crisis caused by the global financial system. Social workers and care workers have also witnessed and participated in the fight back to defend the welfare state and the rise of social movements developing alternative visions of social care and welfare based on collective interest and mutual benefit. Join social work and care practitioners, service users, carers, educators and students in 2013 to defend, debate and create.

We will regularly update the SWAN website with information about speakers and methods for booking places as this becomes available.

In the meantime, please email swanconf2013 (at) gmail.com for further information on the conference.

Join Swan Now

We want to develop a network of service users, practicitioners, academics and students to support radical and progressive social work. We need a social work that is ready to challenge oppressive practice, that means working collectively across the country and internationally to advance Social Work.