Dismantling Addiction Services: Neoliberal, Biomedical and Degendered Constraints on Social Work Practice

BACKGROUND: This research was conducted in response to concerns reported by social work practitioners to a Canadian College of Social Work which indicated that their practice was constrained by ideological and system limitations in publicly funded mental health and addiction systems. METHOD: The dislocation theory of addiction which posits globalization and neoliberalism is linked to addiction rates worldwide, serves as an analytical frame to examine findings from fifty interviews, three focus groups and an online survey with one hundred and fifteen respondents. RESULTS: Themes specific to social work practice in addiction services referred to neoliberalism, stigma, biomedicalization, trauma and addiction, elimination of women services, shrinking services and privatization. CONCLUSION: Social workers expressed a dissonance between their training rooted in relational approaches and biopsychosocial models of practice and system expectations. Our findings indicate concern about the erosion of core social work values within addiction services, the reduction of state funded programming and need for further research.