Pamela Trevithick
is the Visiting Professor in Social Work at Buckinghamshire New University. Her best-selling 3rd edition text, Social Work Skills and Knowledge: A Practice Handbook (Open University Press, 2012), is available in six additional languages: Chinese, Japanese, Spanish, Swedish, Korean and Serbian!

Dr Trevithick lectures extensively in the UK and Australia and is a regular speaker at international conferences on the importance of integrating knowledge and skills in social work, relationship-based practice, and the devastating impact of managerialism on social work practice and service provision. She is a feminist, a Labour Party and health/NHS activists.
Pamela Trevithick
Can managerialism,be humanised and replaced?

Abstract

Managerialism, as a key operating system of neoliberalism, reifies facts, figures and data at the expense of understanding the complexity of human experience. This presentation will look briefly at the origins, ideology and defining features of managerialism and its pervasive and damaging presence in everyday life, particularly its indifference to the importance of emotions. The example of social work will be used to illustrate its devastating impact and failures, and to explore the challenges and objections to neoliberalism and managerialism that have emerged in recent years.