Beyond Balancing Competing Needs: Embedding Involuntary Treatment Within a Recovery Approach to Mental Health Social Work

The recovery model of mental illness has become increasingly influential over the past two decades and while the synergies with social work are strong, there has been no examination of how social workers manage working within a recovery framework with involuntary clients in risk management-oriented settings. In this paper we report on a qualitative study with 10 mental health social workers exploring how such tensions are managed in everyday practice. While the social workers identified numerous dilemmas, they drew on a combination of recovery principles and social work values and practice approaches in an effort to move client agency closer to the centre of multidisciplinary interventions. We conclude that while the implementation of a recovery approach in the Australian mental health system has been at best uneven, its official embrace lends social workers a sense of legitimacy in advocating for client rights in the complicating context of involuntary community treatment.