The Social Work Regulator and Professional Identity: A Narrative of Lord and Bondsman

Since the early 2000s, in a development since mirrored throughout much of the Anglophone world, social work across UK jurisdictions has been subject to external regulation. Whilst a key justification for regulation was to enhance professional identity, there is little evidence that it has done so. Indeed, a growing literature points out conflictual and unproductive relationships between the social work profession and its regulators, within which...