On April 12, 2017 the regulatory body for social workers and
social service workers in Ontario--The Ontario College for Social Workers and Social
Service Workers in Ontario--posted a news update on their website, announcing
an imminent change to their regulations. The change in part provides "the College with the authority to request
information and documents related to the Continuing Competence Program at any
time". [bolding in original] It further notes, "Members are
already required to make a declaration in the CCP [Continuing Competence Program]
at their annual renewal of registration…This addition to the Registration
Regulation allows the College to request information and documents related to a
member’s CCP at any time. (italics in
original) (see https://www.ocswssw.org/2017/08/02/changes-to-the-registration-regulation-what-you-need-to-know/)
It goes on to state, that it is "improving
language in the current regulation so that all applicants are required to
indicate whether or not they suffer from any physical or mental condition or
disorder that would affect their ability to practice social work or social
services work in a safe manner." [bolding in original]. Drawing on
what is at this point a frightening easy-to-recognize code word--unfit to
practice--finally, the College states, "The new wording furthers the College’s
public protection mandate by ensuring that members are fit to practice in a
safe manner."
Looking at what is written uncritically, on the surface the
direction being taken here may seem like a good idea. After all, who would want
"incompetent" social workers out there practicing? People say, lacking in communication skills,
practitioners who commonly exhibit poor judgment, people hopelessly
Eurocentric, or worse yet, sexually predatory social workers. A far closer
look, and more critical eyes, however, are needed to discern what is really happening
here. For the most part the college is not looking for predatory social
workers. They are not on the lookout for racist social workers. Despite the
addition of the words "physical illness", nor are they particularly
weeding out people too physically ill to manage their job (though obviously,
the physically ill and physically disabled are likewise in jeopardy). They are on
the hunt for social workers who in the eyes of the establishment have a "mental
illness". In the process, they are in essence requiring any professional
who has ever been given a psychiatric diagnosis (as most everyone who has ever
seen a psychiatrist has been) to declare that diagnosis. Correspondingly, they
are reserving the right to require data and information about this, in their
words, at any time.
Is this general direction new? Alas, it is not—just an
intensification of a direction already in place. What is being called here "unfit
to practice" is becoming an ever-increasing feature in regulatory
governing not only for social workers but for most of what is known as the "regulated
professions". Perfectly capable professionals routinely lose their
professional standing and livelihood by just such regulations. By way of
example, in their ground-breaking research into current regulation in nursing, Chapman,
Poole, Azevedo, and Ballen (2016)
document just how such information, regulations, and processes are being used
against perfectly capable nurses, with the professionals in possession of such
information using it to harass these colleagues, to place their colleagues under
hyper scrutiny, with the inevitable result being that all actions of the thereby
jeopardized nurses end up being interpreted as signs of mental illness and many
highly capable nurses eventually lose their right to practice.
Let there be no mistake about it. This is a loss to society.
At the same time, this does unnecessary and irrevocable damage to the
professionals so treated.
The critical point to keep in mind here is that, whatever
credence you do or do not afford the concept, "mental illness" has
nothing to do with safety, despite the regulatory bodies so naming it. There is
no proof whatsoever that professionals with psychiatric diagnoses are any less
safe than any other professional. By the same token, despite the facile
conflation of "mentally ill" with "incompetence", it has nothing
to do competence. Someone with a psychiatric diagnosis may or may not be
incompetent, just as any other professional may or may not be. What we are witnessing
in short is prejudice and oppression pure and simple. We are witnessing
ableism. We are witnessing "sanism". We are likewise seeing incredible short-sightedness--for
the truth of the matter is that people in touch with their own personal difficulties
have a tendency to be better helping professionals—not worse ones.
I would add that it is not only the helping professions that
are taking systematic measures to weed out people whom they see as mentally ill. Just as the helping professions are calling
such practitioners "unfit to practice" and creating regulations which
make it easy to get rid of them, institutions of higher learning (universities
and colleges) are calling students deemed mentally ill "unfit to study"
and progressively placing them on "mandatory leave". Hundreds of
universities around the world have just such polices and most of those that do
not are aggressively considering them (see,
for example, University of Toronto’s recent "mandatory leave" proposal
at http://www.governingcouncil.lamp4.utoronto.ca/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/a1005-6i-2017-2018ab.pdf;
for an in-depth critique of University
of Toronto’s proposal, also see https://www.madinamerica.com/2017/11/creeping-fascism-university-unfit-to-study-policies/)
And it is all of this together which I am dubbing "creeping fascism."
To quote in regard to these phenomena from a previous
publication of mine (see https://www.madinamerica.com/2017/11/creeping-fascism-university-unfit-to-study-policies/):
There is a historical
echo here that is unmistakable. While I am well aware that the people applying
these policies are not intending this echo and indeed would be shocked at the
suggestion of it, I cannot but notice that "unfit to study" and "unfit
to practice" are on a continuum with "unfit to live"—or to use
the more common designation, "life unworthy of life"—a concept that
ushered in the systematic murder of Jews, "mental patients" and
others during the Nazi era, with the eradication of "mental patients",
significantly, coming first, paving the way for the others. (For one of the
earliest and most influential articulations of this fascist concept, see
Binding and Hoche,1920; for an analysis, see Lifton, 1986.)
Now to be clear, I am
in no way equating these measures or in any way comparing them—for the
differences are enormous. Nor am I imputing what might be called "intent". However, I am suggesting that they exist on a
continuum. I am likewise suggesting that with this extension of psychiatric
rule into areas like academia and into professions like social work and nursing
(both, not coincidentally, "regulated professions"), what we are
witnessing is creeping fascism—hence the title of this piece.
Alas, it is all too
easy for the fascistic nature of such measures to go undetected for it is not
the blatant fascism that we hear about on the streets in Charlottesville. It is not hatred. It is rather, to coin a
phrase, "respectable fascism".
Indeed, it bears all the marks of being kindly as well as responsibly
intended. All the more reason we need to be on the alert.
That noted, to return to the proposed changes with which
with this blog article began:
Since the news of the regulatory change in question was
posted on the website of the College of Social Workers and Social Service Workers,
an ad hoc group has coalesced to oppose what is happening. When one of the members
of this ad hoc group contacted the College to talk, his objection was
purportedly trivialized and put down to mere miscommunication (as if the very
knowledgeable social work professor in question was not fully capable of deciphering
what he was reading). By the same token when another professor associated with
this group talked to a representative of the college and asked about the
mandatory reporting, she was advised purportedly (in a tone that suggested that
the information being given should be reassuring) that there was no problem
here, that the College was just keeping this information on file in case it
became of use later. Interesting! And just how long are they intending to keep
it? It would seem indefinitely.
Question: Does anyone feel reassured by the clarification
provided by the College? Does anyone believe that this information which
College is allowing itself to keep indefinitely will not substantially bias and
bias indefinitely how the practitioners’ actions and words are interpreted? And
with whom might this highly sensitive information be shared? Given that people
of colour are disproportionately diagnosed as mentally ill, is not the
reporting that the College is requiring going to lead to even less social
workers of colour practicing, ergo, more social workers dealing in colonizing
ways with groups and cultures that they do not understand? Is not the very act
of compelling the self-reporting of personally sensitive and prejudicial
information a flagrant invasion of privacy? If this is how officials at the
College treat their colleagues, how do they
treat their clients? How is that folks
with criminal records can have their record expunged in the fullness of time,
while these practitioners who have committed no crime whatever have to live
with a record that sits in the computer and can be trotted out and used against
them at any time? How can a society which places a value on freedom tolerate
such ongoing and intrusive scrutiny?
If at this point, you too are becoming alarmed, I would
invite you to protest what is happening here. Do consider giving the College
and pivotal members of the legislature a shout and letting them know that when
the College resorts to measures like this, they are not safeguarding the
welfare of public--rather, they are eliminating some of our best workers,
placing all workers under surveillance, and in the process making the lot of us
complicit in oppression. Correspondingly, if you are someone who advocates for
human rights, do think of getting involved for human rights are blatantly at
stake.
Finally, if you are social worker, or indeed, a member of
any of the other "regulated health professions", whether or not your
profession or provincial professional association has yet formally adopted policies
of this ilk, a word to the wise: beware, be prepared, organize.
REFERENCES
Binding, K.
and Hoche, A. (1920). Die
Friegabe der Vernichtung Lebensunwerten. Lebens.
Leipzig: F. Meiner.
Chapman, C.
Poole, J., Azevedo, J., and Ballen, R. (2016). A kind of collective freezing
out. In B. Burstow (Ed). Psychiatry Interrogated (pp. 21-40). New
York: Palgrave.
Lifton, R.
(1986). The Nazi Doctors. New York:
Harper and Row.
