We Do the Best We Can: Accounting Practices in Social Work Discourses of Asylum Seekers

This study explores linguistic strategies that are deployed by social workers in their attempts to justify and defend their practice with asylum seekers. Using discursive social psychology, social workers' accounts are examined for the action orientation of their accounts; what are the respondents doing in their accounts? This involves exploring the various ways in which the social workers' accounts achieve specific actions such as blaming, justifying and excusing. A key concern of the study is highlighting veracity or factual status as a concern for the social workers who were interviewed for this study. As such, the interest is in how such accounts of practice are constructed by social workers in their attempts to render their versions credible and difficult to undermine. The study provides an insight into some of the ways which social workers use to produce accounts of competent social work practice and how this is an integral part of a defensive social work discourse.