解嚴後台灣社會工作者的政治參與在社福運動歷史中消失的社聯工作室

The Political Participation of Social Workers in Taiwan The Case of the Council of Social Services

社會工作者本身溫暖的專業形象，加上台灣的社會運動鮮少看到社工的身影，社工普遍被認為是保守且不熱衷參與政治，但社聯工作室的歷史推翻了這樣的論述。本文透過文獻歷史檔案分析與當事人訪談，試圖勾勒社聯工作室這段尚未被學界記錄的歷史，並分析社聯工作室的政治參與方式。社聯工作室的歷史反映了解嚴後的社工面對正在成形的代議民主政治，積極地透過各種政治參與方法，試圖改變國家資源分配的模式。社工文獻中所提及各種政治參與方式幾乎在社聯工作室的歷史中都曾出現，可見社聯工作室政治參與的廣度。社聯工作室對於台灣社會福利運動的影響有二：社聯工作室所催生的各種福利使用者組織與聯盟團體，奠定了現有社福倡議組織的基礎；其次，社聯工作室所發展的對預算監督與立法倡導成為後續社福組織影響政策的主要模式。但隨著社福運動的成功，個別倡議組織進入體制所獲得的政治資源造成社聯工作室所期待的合作與共享難以維繫，在1998年停止運作。

The political participation of social workers in Taiwan is generally considered low. However, the Council of Social Services, organized by a group of social workers from the voluntary sector, challenged this assumption. The history of the Council is documented and analyzed in this essay through document analysis of the Council’s publications and in-depth interviews and focused group interviews with its key participants. The history of the Council shows social workers of that time were aware of the advent of representative democracy and were actively learning various kinds of political skills to be politically effective. The Council tried to form grass-root organizations and conduct administrative lobbying, legislative advocacy and electoral campaign. The findings show that the scope and depth of political participation of the Council covered almost all the political skills of social workers that had been mentioned in social work literature. The coalition model among grass-root groups developed by the Council has laid the foundation for social welfare movements in the current representative democracy of Taiwan. The capacity to influence and monitor the budgets and legislations of the state, developed by the Council, has been proved to be the key to the effectiveness of advocacy. However, the tension between political involvements with the state and the autonomy of advocacy groups remains uneasy to balance.