Moreover, it's not the place of the social worker to be judgmental. In intervening in people's lives to achieve change, social workers must recognise the interrelationships of structural and individual factors in the social context in which services operate, and the need to address their impact on the lives of children and adults. Some service users might think so. And no one could pretend that all social workers abide by these golden rules. But, while not every doctor or nurse sees only a walking disease to be cured as opposed to a whole person, differences in organisational structures, training and a body of knowledge and professional ethos can and do affect the way that service users are treated.
Mental health is one key area.
If you allow others to fulfil that role, you get a much more overt medical model and you weaken the safeguard, where you look through another prism. A psychiatrist will see signs and symptoms, whereas an ASW will look at this woman as a mother who has a job. Sectioning may become too easy, a little less challenged. And the dilution of the ASW role is seen in many quarters as an attack on social work values. It's very worrying.