Social work academic offers insights in new books

The Origins of Social Care and Social Work: Creating a Global Future

The first book is a sole-authored monograph by Professor Henrickson and will be published in July. He has had extensive engagement with international social work, both in the Asia-Pacific region and globally. This interdisciplinary book brings together his background in both theology and social work.

“The book explores the roots of contemporary social work which stretch back before the Code of Hammurabi, circa 1754 BCE, and are shaped by the first century communitarian Christian movement which expected immanent the return of their Messiah,” Professor Henrickson says.

“It is essential that we understand and critique social work’s origins, in order to work out what we want to retain and what must change if we are to achieve the vision of a truly global profession,” he adds.

“Most contemporary social workers and policymakers are unaware of the religious roots of social work, and how thoroughly integrated those roots are into modern social policies and practice. I think we can and must do better.

“By making that history more obvious, I hope we can begin to make decisions and policies less freighted by those ancient theologies and assumptions. We can then be freed up to consider more rational and creative models such as universal basic income and other less punitive approaches to social assistance and protection, and a less colonial, more global future for social work.”

HIV, Sex and Sexuality in Later Life

Professor Henrickson’s second book will be published in October, and is an edited volume of 10 chapters, plus foreword, introduction and afterword. Professor Henrickson led an international editorial team of scholars based in Hong Kong, Ukraine, the United States and Canada, and wrote the introduction and afterword. The book is an edited anthology of all kinds of experiences of people living with HIV around the world.

Prior to being on the editorial board, Professor Henrickson worked for 17 years in HIV and AIDS prevention and care in the 1980s and 1990s before moving into academe. Here he continued research into sex, sexuality, and HIV. In 2019, he and his team completed a three-year Marsden-funded study on the ethics of decision-making about intimacy and sexuality in residential aged care facilities and was particularly interested in questions of sexuality and ageing.

He says this is the first book in the world that specifically addresses experiences of intimacy, sexuality and ageing with HIV to a varied audience.

“Firstly, we want people living with HIV to be aware of the book in order to begin to normalise their experiences of ageing with HIV and intimacy and sexuality. Another audience is the providers of care, so that they can become more aware of and sensitive to the issues of stigma and isolation experienced by people living with HIV, and that people living with HIV can and often do live full intimate and sexual lives. Finally, we would like to see more scholarship in this area, so we hope that scholars will have the courage to take up this challenge. An intention of this book is to lay the foundation of a new area of scholarship in this area.”

Following the development of anti-retroviral therapies, many people affected by HIV in the 1980s and 1990s have now been living with the condition for decades. The book explores the experiences of sex and sexuality in individuals and groups living with HIV in later life (50+). Contributions consider the impacts of stigma, barriers to intimacy, physiological sequelae, long-term care, undetectability, pleasure and biomedical prevention.

Professor Henrickson hopes this book will encourage caregivers and policymakers not to participate in stigma by assuming that the emotional, sexual, and relational lives of people living with HIV in later life are over.

“They are not. The assumption that older people should ‘behave’, that they are not attractive, that people living with HIV in later life are somehow not deserving of love and relationships, merely reproduces ageist and cis-heteronormative assumptions and privileged discourses about how people ‘should’ live their lives.

“I am immensely grateful to Massey’s librarians who continued to provide access to the resources I needed during the difficult period of COVID-19 lockdowns,” Professor Henrickson adds.

The publications can be pre-ordered from Bristol University Press via the links below:

The Origins of Social Care and Social Work: Creating a Global Future

HIV, Sex and Sexuality in Later Life