An afterword : from personal retrospectives to future activism

The chapters in this book represent a broad range of activism and issues. It is not a 'balanced' selection, and represents in part the vagaries of the process of producing a collection such as this. Some potential authors were unable to contribute to the collection, because of work or personal commitments, and had they been included the range of topics would have been different. In addition, authors were given the freedom to choose their topics; some chose to tell the story of their career, including several different issues for activist engagement, while others chose to concentrate on only one or two aspects of their work; again, different choices would have led to a different coverage of topics. This has resulted in a collection where some issues are perhaps over-represented, while others are less well covered. The selection of topics also reflects the period of which we are writing, and the topics that were seen as important, engaging the attention of social workers, at the time. So it is worth a more detailed reflection on the issues covered in this selection, and more significantly perhaps on the issues that are absent, as we look back on the period 1970-2000 with the advantage of hindsight.