Rights to research: utilising the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities as an inclusive participatory action research tool

For those labelled disabled, disability rights are synonymous with human rights, not merely a sub-category. In this paper we consider disability rights in terms of the right of people labelled with learning difficulties to be actively involved in research. Examples from an inclusive participatory action research project undertaken in partnership with people labelled with learning difficulties demonstrate how the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities was operationalised using photo-voice to facilitate accessible research, analyse findings and promote social change.     

Adults Rule? Children,Advocacy and Complaints to Social Services

This article sets out results from a Welsh Assembly government‐funded study of complaints involving children and their use of advocacy services commissioned by local authorities in Wales. As this is the first study of its kind in Wales there is no baseline against which to compare the findings, hence we discuss the data in the context of a wider UK research literature and in relation to two key themes. These are (a) the number of complaints to social services involving children and the main characteristics of these complaints, particularly the involvement of an advocacy service and (b) the views of children about making a complaint and their experience of independent advocacy. The article reveals the adult‐dominated nature of the children's complaints system and the limited involvement of advocacy in supporting children who make a complaint. The pressing need for a more child‐focused approach that gives authentic voice to children and their rights is the key conclusion drawn from the evidence gathered in this study.     

Social Work Field Educators' Views on Student Specific Learning Needs

Each year a significant proportion of students withdraw from placement in time to avoid penalty, while others fail. This article reports on a small field education research project that identified common learning issues for first placement students. Eighteen experienced supervising field educators (FEs), participated in semi structured focus groups, and identified repeat areas of difficulty in student learning that they had managed as supervisors. They also identified strategies that had been efficacious in supporting student learning. The research undertaken in 2010–2011 identified three specific themes relating to difficulties in student learning: specific student characteristics that required additional support; the university/FE partnership; student proficiency in using supervision. The findings suggest that a students' right to privacy must be considered in the provision of educational support, and that support is most effective when there is a strong partnership between the FE and university. In addition, further development of field education pedagogy may be needed to embed theory and skills related to the use of supervision and reflective learning.     

Ethical challenges of community based participatory research: exploring researchers’ experience

Community-Based Participatory Research (CBPR) has been proposed as an equitable, empowering partnership approach to collaborative research. International literature about the ethical implications of CBPR suggests a continuing strong interest in the topic. However, there is a notable lack of research that captures the experience of ethical challenges of researchers from different countries who engage in CBPR. The aim of this research was to address this lack of evidence by exploring researchers’ experience of ethical challenges in CBPR at an international level. An innovative data collection method was designed utilising a purpose-built blog. Balancing participant protection and autonomy, partnership tensions, and enduring impacts of the researcher role emerged as the main themes. These findings illustrate the specific conflicts faced by researchers engaged in CBPR. This is largely as a result of the complexities of CBPR coupled with rigid ethics committee review that does not always take into account the more fluid nature of the approach.     

Whose Project is it Anyway? Sharing and shaping the research and development agenda

The NHS and Community Care Act 1990 (NHSCCA) requires that local authorities should consult with service users in their review and planning of services. This requirement is open to various levels of interpretation. The exercise becomes more complex when planning and review are based on a funded research project, in which the voice of users can easily be lost or their participation only nominal. This article examines some of the key issues and dilemmas in partnership research, through critical evaluation of a research project in which the authors were involved. Paradoxically, it is issues of power, control, expertise, authority and accountability which emerge as recurrent themes in examination of the practice of partnership.     

Forms of advocacy in social welfare work with homeless women

The article examines the practices of social welfare work with homeless women. The question asked is, what forms of advocacy can be identified in these practices, especially from the perspective of welfare rights? The research is conducted in a support point open to all homeless women, located in a large Finnish city. The data consist of a diary kept mainly by three practitioners between 21 August 2000 and 21 September 2001. The analysis, which focuses on 359 entries, shows that the diary contains elements of four different forms of advocacy: best interest advocacy; self- and consumer-controlled advocacy; partnership and personal advocacy; and citizen advocacy. The conclusions from the research have relevance to work with the most vulnerable groups in general and are of three kinds. Firstly, all forms of advocacy are significant, for they complement each other and make up for the deficiencies in other forms. Secondly, the support point functions as a refuge for the homeless women, from which contacts with other service systems are organised and negotiated. Thirdly, this kind of advocacy is needed, because vulnerable groups have the greatest risk of being excluded or mistreated in different service systems.     

How Children and Young People Influence Policy‐Makers: Lessons from Nicaragua

This article describes a participatory research project, which explored four case studies of children and young people's successful political advocacy in Nicaragua. The analysis combined a human rights‐based approach and a human development approach, and included concepts of multiple settings and levels, interrelated participation spaces, children and young people's citizenship, inclusion and exclusion, democracy, advocacy and empowerment. The main problems faced by children and young people seeking to influence policy‐makers were identified as adultism, dependency and lack of accountability. The research identified pre‐conditions, participation spaces and ways of organising for effective advocacy, and facilitation methods that had proved effective. It concludes that children and young people who achieve effective advocacy are generally self‐empowered, but can count on effective adult support and facilitation. They work through coordination with the authorities and not by clashing with them, but need to ensure effective follow up if they want politicians to keep their promises.     

What Drives Advocacy? An Exploration of Value,Mission, and Relationships

How advocacy is interpreted and how it fits into an organization’s strategy are areas in need of additional study. Moreover, because nonprofit organizations are believed to have advocacy-based missions that drive their activities and services, the connection between an organization’s mission and its advocacy activities also needs further study. In an effort to address these issues, the purpose of this qualitative study was to explore how advocacy is interpreted in the context of an organization’s mission and how advocacy activities are viewed within human service NPOs. Five themes were identified, all providing support for findings in previous advocacy research.     

Parents Making Meaning of High‐Conflict Divorce

This article reports on the findings of an empirical study conducted with 25 parents in British Columbia, Canada, who experienced a high‐conflict divorce and later came to see the experience as having been transformative despite the difficulties they faced. While considerable research and policy initiatives frame high‐conflict divorce as an individual and interpersonal problem, there is less reference to the fact that these disputes occur in a social, political, and legal context that also changes over time and across generations. There has been little research examining long‐term divorce outcomes, and no research to date examining how mothers and fathers who experienced a high‐conflict divorce process overcome their difficulties and make meaning of their experiences retrospectively. This interdisciplinary study starts to fill these gaps. Following an overview of the study findings, the article highlights common themes arising from parents' narratives with a particular focus on agency, voice, and meaning‐making across the life course. I argue that by taking a long view of the challenges participants faced, it is possible to move away from decontextualised understandings of high‐conflict divorce.     

The challenges of child welfare involvement for Afro-Caribbean families in Toronto

There is a growing and robust child welfare literature on service users' perspectives. However, little attention is paid to the experiences of Afro-Caribbean mothers and youth as service users. The author argues that this lack of attention is problematic given that the literature consistently shows an overrepresentation of Black children in the child welfare system. This article reports on some of the findings of a study that was conducted in Toronto with Afro-Caribbean service users about their experiences in the child welfare system. Findings reveal themes that are common to both groups of service users: mothers and youth, though some themes are unique to each group. Themes generated from interviews with service users show the challenges of structural inequalities and the complexities of racism, classism, sexism and cultural differences on child welfare involvement for Afro-Caribbean families in Toronto. Interviews with child welfare workers also revealed themes that supported service users' perspectives. The article concludes by arguing that research is needed to explicate the relationship between structural inequalities, including culturally different parenting practices on the experiences of Afro-Caribbean services users in the child welfare system in Toronto. Such exploration has the potential to reduce the number of Afro-Caribbean children entering the child welfare system.     

Care networks in play: Understanding death of a parent as a contributing factor to homelessness

Offering an understanding of specialized service needs of those becoming homeless because of the death of a parent or parental figure, this project is set in Detroit’s urban context, where residents face economic hardship and intergenerational poverty. In this study, we analyze the voices of practitioners (n = 5) and men (n = 5) who have experienced parental death as a contributing factor to homelessness in Detroit, Michigan. Findings include the following: (1) the impact of death and dying experiences on these men and (2) the role of care networks in these men’s lives, particularly when these men have and lack “default” caregivers after death of a parent. This community-based research project was a result of a partnership between a local agency serving persons experiencing homelessness, where the practitioner initiated the project with the researcher. The paper concludes with implications for social work practice.     

Researching Admissions: What Can We Learn about Selection of Applicants from Findings about Students in Difficulty on a Social Work Programme?

This paper explores the findings of a small‐scale empirical study of social work admissions data. It is designed to be exploratory in nature and used to illustrate key themes discussed in a previous paper. The study has been designed as a comparator to a Canadian study with the aim of building upon their findings within the current UK/England context. The research examines the relationship between applicants' pre‐admission information and their subsequent performance on the programme. Data relating to a sample of students and available at the pre‐admission stage (from application forms and interviewer report forms) and data relating to students on the programme who had been identified (by faculty) as having difficulties in one or more areas of their learning, are compared to a sample of those not identified as having experienced such problems. The two groups (total sample size = 150) are drawn from one university in southern England and comprise students from both undergraduate and postgraduate programmes. Methodological issues are critically analysed and findings are explored and compared to that of the Canadian study. Key themes regarding the seemingly complex relationships between performance on the programme and academic background, extent of previous experience and a range of other factors are discussed and examined in relation to other available literature. Implications are explored in relation to current practice and development needs within social work education.     

Experiences of health service providers establishing an Aboriginal-Mainstream partnership to improve maternity care for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander families in an urban setting

Australian policy encourages multiagency partnerships between hospitals and Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Organisations to improve the health of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. Service planners remain unsure about how to implement such partnerships in maternity care, and there is a lack of appropriate tools designed to gauge the state of such partnerships for the Australian Indigenous context. In 2013, two Aboriginal health services and a major tertiary hospital partnered to deliver best practice maternity care to Indigenous families in Brisbane, Australia. A participatory action research approach underpinned this study. Semi-structured qualitative interviews and focus groups were conducted with 21 of the partnership staff. All interviewees emphasized the partnership’s commitment to improving long-term health and wellbeing for Indigenous families. Strategic planners were more likely to report a positive partnership than staff involved in service delivery who had diverse views. This highlights the challenges of change management when conducting such a significant service redesign in this cross-cultural context. We detail changes made within the partnership in response to the findings and provide suggestions for future development of an evaluation tool to review the state of Aboriginal-Mainstream Partnerships.     

Which Label? An Investigation into the Effects of Terminology on Public Perceptions of and Attitudes towards People with Learning Difficulties

There is much rhetoric around the damaging effect of certain labels applied to people with learning difficulties. This empirical study investigated the effect of three different labels in current usage on public perceptions of the groups so labelled. The labels contrasted were 'mentally subnormal', 'mentally handicapped' and 'people with learning difficulties'. Three independent groups of subjects were presented with an attitude questionnaire. This included a semantic differential scale to ascertain a stereotype of the labelled group, a social distance scale, and a series of questions to tap attitudes regarding people's abilities and rights. Each group was questioned with reference to one of the three labels only. A total of 111 subjects took part. The main findings supported the view that the term 'learning difficulties' is associated with more positive attitudes than either of the other labels which do not significantly differ from each other. However there was also evidence that people labelled as having 'learning difficulties' were thought to be less deserving of special provision. The implications of these findings are discussed in relation to present and future uses of labels.     

A mixed-method exploration of functioning in Safe Schools/Healthy Students partnerships

This paper presents a mixed-method approach to measuring the functioning of Safe Schools/Healthy Students (SS/HS) Initiative partnerships. The SS/HS national evaluation team developed a survey to collect partners’ perceptions of functioning within SS/HS partnerships. Average partnership functioning scores were used to rank each site from lowest to highest. Sites with the most favorable perceptions of partnership functioning were defined as having average scores in the top 10% (n = 10) and sites with the least favorable perceptions of partnership functioning were defined as having average scores in the bottom 10% (n = 10). Qualitative data for these 20 sites were inductively open coded for emergent themes and analyzed for patterns using grounded theory approach. Six themes emerged that distinguished sites reporting the most favorable and least favorable perceptions of partnership functioning: partner engagement, facilitators, barriers, shared decision making, partnership structure, and sustainability. Sites reporting the most favorable perceptions of partnership functioning effectively utilized collaboration processes that facilitate coalition building, such as shared decision making, effective communication, and developing a clearly defined structure. Qualitative themes from this analysis provide evidence of validity for the partnership functioning scale used and illustrate distinguishing features between sites with the most favorable and least favorable perceptions of partnership functioning.     

Transition to adulthood and recession: a qualitative study

While the transition to adulthood has been broadly examined, less is known about the impact of economic recession on the well-being and psychosocial functioning of young people. The present study used qualitative interviews with 12 college students to understand their experience. Consensual qualitative research was used to analyse data and develop core themes around young people's experiences. Interviews focused on how young people perceived the impact of the economic recession on their social context and on emotional, behavioural, and interpersonal dimensions. Although students showed a proactive attitude in dealing with the crisis, findings highlighted a negative impact on psychological functioning characterized by feelings of instability and helplessness and by difficulties in planning for the future. Other general themes emerged, including disengagement from community participation expressed by feelings of isolation, lack of interest, and distrust. Directions for future research and implications for practice are discussed.     

Cultural and religious influences in maternal response to intrafamilial child sexual abuse:charting new territory for research and treatment

The role of culture when providing services for families in the wake of child sexual abuse disclosure is a charged issue although surprisingly little attention has been given in the research literature to this. This article reports the findings of a grounded theory study exploring facets of maternal response, and aspects of more and less supportive responses, to children who were sexually abused by the mother's intimate partner. Ten mothers, chosen on the basis of theoretical sampling, provided information through in-depth interviews to understand how they responded emotionally and behaviourally to their child's disclosure. As well, three service providers were interviewed as key informants. The research revealed cultural and religious influences as affecting how mothers made meaning of the sexual abuse and the actions they took. Mothers from cultural backgrounds that adhere to rigid patriarchal norms identified themes of intense value conflicts regarding family preservation, loyalty binds between the perpetrating partner and child victim, and anxieties around being alienated from their extended family and ethnic community. They also reported that their cultural belief systems were not well understood by service providers. In parallel, helping professionals identified cultural issues as presenting barriers for engaging with some clients. Practice implications and research directions are discussed.     

Advocacy with Gloves on: The “Manners” of Strategy Used by Some Third Sector Organizations Undertaking Advocacy in NSW and Queensland

This article examines the strategies used by some third sector organizations in Australia to advocate. The purpose of this article is to identify the kinds of activities that organizations in New South Wales and Queensland use to promote advocacy, the kinds of language that is used to describe these activities, and the reasons given for the particular strategies adopted. The extent to which the organizations adopt “softer” (that is more institutional forms of advocacy) rather than more openly challenging forms of activism is examined, particularly in light of a neo-liberal political and economic environment. In this analysis emergent strategies are identified that are not easily categorized as either “institutional” or “radical” advocacy. The article presents an exploratory analysis of some of the implications of the strategies adopted, in terms of their democratic effects and potential to strengthen the capacity of third sector organizations. The article is informed by the findings of a qualitative research project involving interviews with 24 organizations in the community services and environmental fields.     

Conflicts and empowerment – a processual perspective on the development of a partnership

Partnership working involving providers and users of social services is highly valued as a means to inform research and practice, yet its effectiveness is debated. Frameworks for measuring and evaluating partnerships are developed, but still there is a need to shed light on micro-practices to gain insight in how partnerships succeed or fail to reach their goals. The context for this qualitative study is a Norwegian governmental funded program, where one goal was promotion of structures for equal collaboration between social work education, research, social service providers and users. The study investigates one local partnership project and how conflicts influenced processes and outcomes. Conflicts were related to the leadership of the group. With a particular look at users’ participation, the findings indicate how emergence and negotiations of conflicts were related to their empowering processes as the project developed. The study underscores the importance of acknowledging conflicts and how these may be complex and interwoven with empowering processes when users are involved, as well as the need to critically examine issues on leadership. The study supports the importance of ethnographic studies in order to understand how a partnership might deliver, as this approach enables enhanced understanding of micro-practices and internal power dynamics.