Where Is the Love? : Promoting a Rights-based, Person-centred and Relational Approach to Social Work Practice

Squires, Becky and Morgan, Hannah (2024) Where Is the Love? : Promoting a Rights-based, Person-centred and Relational Approach to Social Work Practice. In: Mental Capacity Law, Sexual Relationships, and Intimacy :. Bristol University Press, Bristol, pp. 93-117. ISBN 9781529235623

Abstract

Social work practice has been rightly criticised for failing to adequately promote and protect the sexual rights and wellbeing of people who use adult social care. Too frequently, practice has been risk averse, focused on regulating the intimate lives of people supported by services and adopting a reductionist understanding of what constitutes sex and intimacy. This has particularly been the case in the lives of people who are assessed as lacking capacity to consent to sexual and intimate activities or where there are concerns about this capacity (whether well placed or not). Despite some progress, social work practice has yet to fully embrace the potential of person-centred and relational practice, despite the promise created by the Mental Capacity Act 2005, the Care Act 2014 and the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. This chapter advocates an approach that draws on a blend of literacies for practice, notably an integration of legal, relational, ethical and emotional literacies that is grounded in disability studies and the claims of the disabled people’s movement. The chapter concludes with a number of vignettes that demonstrate the impact this approach can and should have and outlines how the underpinning principles can be implemented in practice.