First and last and always: Streetwork as a methodology for radical community social work practice.

This conceptual paper aims to introduce and explore the practice of social streetwork. Streetwork is located as a historical professional discourse that has contemporary relevance fora rapidly changing and globalised world. Streetwork as a practice discourse occurs across a range of community based helping professions including social work, youth work and community work. The social work profession is increasingly becoming clinical and situated within statutory organisations placing a greater emphasis on outcome based targets, rather than building relationships; and as a result of austerity, traditional youth workers are becoming invisible, often moving into statutory education settings and complex needs welfare agencies. This paper will argue that for the broad helping professions to remain relevant we must engage with vulnerable and complex populations where we find them: at a street level - promoting a direct practice of social justice at a micro level. Within this discussion, we will define and explore a streetwork approach by examining the methodologies and objectives of street work practice. We will argue that by keeping to its origins of using informal and non-formal education as its primary tools, street work as an intervention works to combat poverty, social exclusion and discrimination. The paper articulates a foundation for practice based on the promotion of low threshold interventions with complex and hard to reach social populations. One of the key themes we will explore is how to locate streetwork practice as a form of social support, accompaniment and as a tool for promoting social inclusion and social democracy.