We live in the times that characterize deep inequality and successive social crises – from housing to energy poverty, from the aging of the population to the increase in employment. In this context, the role of social workers should be recognized as a completely central. But the truth is different: in Portugal, this profession still reduces its value and invisible and often misunderstood by society.
Social professionals deal daily with the raw consequences of inequality. They are the ones who accompany families without income, the displaced elderly, the victims of domestic violence, the children at risk, and the immigrants without support, institutional youth. You often do this in unstable working conditions, with Fragile links And with salaries that do not reflect the lack of complexity of the job or its social impact.
However, this secret is not just an opportunity. Social service works behind the scenes of the system, as the state failed or chose not to interfere politically. Its mission often to fix cracks of an economic model is excluded without the tools necessary to change the structure that produces these exceptions. Political power prefers that this work be silent – because it condemns, in its practice, the fragility of the social agreement that they want to make us believe in.
But it would be unfair to direct the finger to the state or dominant structures only. It is also necessary to recognize the internal responsibility: the professional class itself failed to organize it, in its political filling and general assertion of its value. For a very long time, social professionals accepted the role of technicians who warn of secrecy and cases managers, instead of assuming themselves as political agents with the ability to transfer. The silence of the profession, albeit involuntarily, contributed to its marginalization.
Academic composition, in turn, is still in the process of critical maturity. Despite important developments in some institutions, there are curricula that are preparing for technical intervention, but not for the political confrontation. The content that challenges neoliberalism, which merges Marxism, feminist, flavor, which constitute professionals with clear class awareness and struggle behind each position of social weakness.
What is at stake is not just an appreciation of the profession. Acknowledging the social service as a comprehensive democracy and redistributing it at stake. Therefore, it is necessary for social workers to be organized, fill and hearing. It is time to demand decent wages, stability of work, institutional representation and media vision. It is time to reject the role of the subjects who are subject and assume the identity of the critical and liberated professionals.
The dignity of the profession will not come with respect – it will come through conflict. This battle now begins, with every student, every professional, every institution. Social work is not a charity: It is social justice in work.
