Social Work in the Opaque
Let's start with truth.
Let’s start with truth. It could be argued (and often is) that there is an objective reality out there. There are things we can touch and feel, there are ideas embedded in structures and in the mechanisms that make things happen. Our access to these ‘truths’ is often only partial, is always situated in environments, and in personal perspectives, identities we could say. The truth we observe is fallible, that is, capable of been proven wrong, or mistaken in some way.
This is crucial for social work as we often engage in situations where truth is contested, somewhere in the messy stuff, to quote the authors of ‘Social Work, Cats, and Rocket Science’. Truth is shaped by emotion, memory, often fear, and culture – to name but a few. Yet we are still tasked with trying to make decisions, assess risk, intervene, and support change.
Truth is out there, but it is accessed through opaque and often contradictory human interpretations of experiences. Surely as the ‘professional’ we are the objective one and the client is the subjective one. Not so. We are subjected to our own biases because of all the same things – emotions, memory etc – and our role within the profession and agency. We bring ideas of eligibility, harm, vulnerability, adequate parenting, and more with us for the ride.
So, if all the views are subjective, then, rather than seeing subjectivity as an obstacle to truth, critical realism views it as a layered part of the truth itself. A client’s subjective experience is real even if it doesn’t map directly onto objective events. The practitioner’s perspective is also shaped by training, culture, power, and emotion and equally may not map easily onto those events.
When social workers are “in the opaque,” they are working with multiple perspectives searching for underlying causes or mechanisms that explain or generate these perspectives, and remaining open to complex, emerging truths rather than simplistic explanations. Here we need to consider reflexivity - we become aware of our lens while still searching for a deeper understanding.
Critical realism gives us some insight and a language for this.
Roy Bhaskar, a British philosopher, is the main thinker behind critical realism. He wanted to find a better way to understand the world, especially how we can explain what happens in both nature and society. He suggests there is a real world out there, even if we can’t see everything about it. Pointing out that just because we observe something happening doesn’t mean we understand why it’s happening. And posing that to understand the world we need to look beneath the surface and ask, what’s causing this?
He suggests there are three levels of reality, three layers. Firstly, the Empirical - what we experience and observe (e.g., in social work we might see someone missing appointments). Secondly, the Actual - what happens, even if we don’t see it (e.g., missed appointments happen even if we’re not there and don’t know about them). And finally, the Real - the deeper causes or structures that explain things (e.g., poverty, trauma, or mental health issues might be behind the missed appointments).
Critical realism helps us ask deeper questions like - what’s going on beneath the surface? What are the social or structural reasons behind someone’s struggles? How can we understand causes, not just symptoms? It encourages social workers to look at the bigger picture while still recognising each person’s unique situation.
In social work, assessments often focus on what is observable, for example, a child not attending school, an adult in crisis, or a carer being overwhelmed. Critical realism encourages us to look beneath the surface and ask:
What structures or mechanisms might be generating this situation?
What is happening at the level of the real (unseen), not just the empirical (seen)?
For example, a child’s behaviour might be linked to the unseen. Things like domestic violence, poverty, or racism – not just “poor parenting.” A person with a learning disability might struggle to access services due to institutional barriers, not just “lack of engagement.” Assessment needs to become an inquiry into the mechanisms that generate the response not simply about the response.
Critical realism might suggest we offer ‘support’ or interventions on multiple levels. We might offer immediate help (addressing the empirical), we might work to change patterns or routines (addressing the actual), and we should challenge or influence structures (addressing the real). Get radical! We need to accept that social workers should act as agents in complex systems - not just “fixers” of surface issues.
Critical realism recognises that our knowledge is partial and influenced subjectively from our standpoint. As social workers we are not neutral, objective, observers - our background, beliefs, and the frameworks we use, shape how we see things. Ask yourself:
What assumptions am I making?
What isn’t visible or being named in this situation?
How is my position shaping how I interpret this situation?
Social work, I’d argue should engage in the critical practice of identifying, understanding, and working to transform the generative mechanisms (to use the theoretical term) that shape human suffering and limit flourishing (Aristotle’s Eudaemonia – you can always find a way to mention the Greeks!). This must include exploring, in our practice, structural inequalities (poverty, racism, sexism, ableism), institutional failures (underfunded services, punitive systems), and relational patterns (intergenerational trauma, systemic neglect).
Social work is a practice grounded in the belief that human problems are born out of complex, layered realities shaped by individuals and their actions and powerful societal structures. Our assessment, intervention, and advocacy, should absolutely aim to alleviate immediate suffering, but it should also operate in a way that challenges and attempts to transform the deep social mechanisms that restrict human flourishing.
Practice questions to ask:
What might be generating these experiences?
What patterns or structures might explain this person’s story?
What remains unseen, unspoken, or structurally silenced?
Remember:
We can only ever hold a working, fallible hypothesis of what’s going on,
We must be prepared to revise our understanding as new information or perspectives emerge.
Social work, through a critical realist lens, is the practice of examining the opaque. Exploring those partial truths (including our own), understanding that perspectives are layered, and that suffering is shaped by deep social structures. It requires us to be humble about how fully we can ever know anything.