In this webinar Dr. Jessica Toft presents findings from the only statewide study in the United States on the working conditions of social workers under neoliberalism and the challenges it poses to professional discretion. Her team undertook a statewide anonymous survey and confidential interviews on the effects of intensified business management on social workers’ practice and working conditions in Minnesota. Findings show that social workers experience considerable pressure to work quickly, take on more clients, often labor under commission-based structures, and more. Under such conditions, respondents reported their practice discretion is markedly limited. Yet, social workers are resisting, and Toft discusses the many ways social workers are doing this.

Toft then presents the political action of the Minnesota Chapter of the National Association of Social Workers as a means of leveraging a social work association to engage large- and small-scale political resistance. Examples include letter writing to all social workers in the state, advocacy boot camps, political campaign action committees, annual Social Work Day at the Capitol events, Legislative Town Halls, Protecting Democracy Forums, and legislative lobbying against Board of Social Work licensing fee hikes. Toft brings her experience of teaching policy practice courses for 25 years and how new social workers can be brought into the fold of social work political practice.