OPINION at the SHARP end A USERS VIEW This years World Social Work Day on 17 March will focus on Promoting the worth and dignities of peoples. The International Federation of Social Workers poster features people holding up placards which call for Freeing silenced voices, Upholding human rights for all, Respecting voices and valuing diversity. These are pleas that we often associate with people living under tyrannies, emerging nations and countries with extremes of poverty and inequality. Worryingly, though, these are demands that are increasingly heard in the UK as inequalities grow and problems of poverty and want are evidenced to be intensifying. We also know that the politics of austerity have hit the poorest and most disadvantaged people hardest, the very individuals that social workers are most likely to be engaging with. Social workers I know say that they have to spend more of their time trying to help the people they work with deal with problems in the benefit system. These range from its slowness and inefficiency due to funding cuts, to supporting people to appeal against decisions to cut their benefits or make them available for work. We know that, for claimants who have an advocate, the decisions are much more likely to go in their favour and the proportion of successful appeals is very high. But it is not just service users who have been having a hard time in recent years. So has social work itself. Social work has long been a handy target for tabloid media and populist politicians. But more recently this has translated into cuts in social worker numbers, increasing privatisation and outsourcing, growing numbers of unfilled posts, questioning of the social work role and particularly of education and the quality of entrants to the profession. Theres also a new kind of challenge. Social workers and service users have often felt unsupported by senior managers more concerned with the bottom line than supporting the rights and needs of the most disadvantaged people. It appears that senior leaders are themselves becoming caught up in the politics of privatisation, commercialisation and neoliberalism. Frontline is a case in point. Such concerns raise questions about how these developments connect with social works traditional empowering values and really make it possible to advance the commitments of this years World Social Work Day. Peter Beresford is chair of Shaping Our Lives and professor of social policy at Brunel University PETER BERESFORD Senior leaders are becoming caught up in the politics of privatisation, commercialisation and neoliberalism