Planning Other Families: Negotiating Population and Identity Politics in the Peruvian Amazon

This article examines the ways in which globally driven population policies are experienced by rural, indigenous women in Amazonian communities on the periphery of formal, political power. As with other global development processes, population programs are actively resisted, accepted, and modified by the women who are their intended "targets." Through a nuanced exploration of the interface of indigenous identity with the discourse of empowerment and reproductive rights, this article traces the impact of internationally funded population and development programs on local identity politics in the Peruvian Amazon.     

The space between us: feminist values and humanitarian power dynamics in research with refugees

ABSTRACT

International humanitarian and development agencies striving to promote gender equality and women’s empowerment sometimes neglect to recognise the power hierarchies present in their own engagement with communities. Drawing on research on Syrian refugees and humanitarian workers in Jordan, this article explores the research and monitoring and evaluation practices of international humanitarian agencies. It suggests that the emphasis on generating evidence has resulted in more transactional and less relational engagement with refugees. This paper asks how feminist values can inform research with refugees, and explores how these values may provide less-extractive ways of engaging with displaced populations.     

Social Work and Sustainable Development: Local Voices from Mauritius

Abstract

Sustainable development is much more than an ecological and economic concern; it requires social workers to analyse and understand its impact on the broader social and cultural aspects of human life. Mauritius has been branded as ‘Maurice Ile Durable’ (Sustainable Mauritius) by its current government. Within this context, Mauritian social workers are often called upon to engage in sustainable development programs through community empowerment and development activities. This article uses the eco-critical social work theoretical approach to analyse a subset of qualitative data generated by a larger study conducted in 2008 and 2011, which included focus groups and semistructured interviews. Based on the findings of this research, the article focuses on discourses related to concepts such as control, power, and exploitation. It considers three areas as influential to eco-critical social work in Mauritius: antioppressive practice, promotion of social justice, and critical thinking by exploring related concepts such as control, power, and exploitation. The author concludes that within the context of sustainable development more attention should be paid to promoting social justice through tackling the marginalisation and oppression of certain sections of its population.     

Early African American Social Welfare Pioneer Women

Abstract

This article uses selective aspects of the careers of Ida Bell Wells-Barnett, Lugenia Burns Hope, Elizabeth Ross Haynes and Janie Porter Barrett to provide a critical overview of the ways that African American women addressed the needs of their communities through social welfare services during the early part of the twentieth century. Furthermore, the article also shows how individual and collective forms of empowerment helped to build private social institutions to address the community's needs.     

Sharing Power

Abstract

This article discusses the notion of partnership as it relates to co-production and co-responsibility, and thus to community building and re-building. It begins with a brief review of the evolution of the role of helped/helper to that of consumer/producer of services. It argues that identifying professional services as complementing those services offered in the community by kith and kin facilitates power sharing, and can lead to stronger partnerships and stronger communities. Complementarity is understood as involving the division of labor or of tasks, which is essential to effective partnerships. The article contends that an empowerment oriented approach has a better probability of influencing the practice of social work when social work organizations integrate the notion of partnership and when social work education provides opportunities for students to experience partnerships, co-production and co-responsibility in the building of knowledge. An illustration from the author's application of power sharing in the classroom is provided.     

Strengths and Pathological Perspectives in Community Social Work

ABSTRACT

Current social work theory distinguishes between the traditional pathology-oriented perspective and the strengths perspective. This paper posits that the working model of community social workers is grounded in a strengths perspective, which, in relation to community work, is compatible with and supplementary to empowerment models, providing a methodological base for the values and practice of the macro method of social work. The current study aimed to assess the prevalence of each of these two perspectives towards community activity, and to examine the differences between them regarding the sense of empowerment and professional skills acknowledged by community social workers in Israel. The findings revealed that while the majority of community social workers adopt a strengths perspective in their work, they experience a greater sense of empowerment and of professional skills when adopting a pathology-oriented perspective.     

Power play: the use of space to control and signify power in the workplace

ABSTRACT

The findings of this article emerge from an eight-month study examining career identity practices amongst a select group of fitness professionals in the U.K. We examine how the inter-relationship between physical and social space can denote how power is acquired, displayed, and used by individuals interacting in a shared space. The findings show that power is signified through spatial practices as individuals negotiate through triadic space, creating an identity of space and place for both trainer and client that identifies power, and signifies who has power. Fitness professionals with high levels of symbolic power are able to subvert organizational spatial norms to better serve themselves and their clients, while those with lower levels of symbolic power are forced to, or choose to, negotiate or abdicate space to others. These findings are relevant to a wide range of occupations where self-employment and contract workers interact in shared space.     

Empowerment revisited—social work,resistance and agency in black communities

The struggles of black communities in Britain are well established in modes of empowerment that shape and direct their social welfare activities. This legacy of empowerment continues to be expressed in social action orientated strategies found in many black community based groups and organisations. The introduction of anti-racist and multicultural approaches in the empowerment process has been useful in highlighting the ways in which black communities have been disempowered through social work policies and practice. However, the experiences, values and interpretations instituted by black communities themselves are often marginalised in the public realm. These considerations draw attention to the ways in which empowerment is largely defined by professionals and policy makers who have considerable influence in shaping and directing the life chances of black families and communities. These insights provide important ways to address marginalisation through publicly affirming and recognising the specific experiences, cultures, social realities and contributions of black com­munities. This paper examines concepts of empowerment in social work and maintains that the profession has ignored black communities’ interpretations, cultural antecedents, experiences and values as a source of new perspectives and ideas for practice. These new approaches can assist social workers and policymakers in responding to the changing needs of black communities.     

Caregiver Engagement in Religious Urban Elementary Schools

ABSTRACT

This article examines how school leaders in a religious school serving traditionally marginalized students improve their school communities through constructing space for caregiver engagement. This study suggests how counter-narratives of critical care can inform social justice leadership in schools. The results, from a case study of a Catholic urban elementary school that uses innovative and effective strategies to engage caregivers, show that educational leaders create spaces for engaging caregivers by developing relationships with them and systematically reducing barriers to their participation in the school community. Analyzing these results through the critical care theory lens illuminates how these spaces value diverse forms of social and cultural capital are strengthened by alliances with nontraditional support structures. This research contributes to our evolving understanding of caregiver engagement by presenting a textured analysis of a case study as viewed through a critical care conceptual framework.     

Rethinking Girls “At-Risk”

Abstract

This conceptual article critically analyzes influential theoretical frameworks concerning adolescent female development, including psychosocial identity stage theory, person-in-environment theory, and feminist psychology. Based on the strengths and limitations of these approaches, the author introduces social workers to an emerging framework that addresses the gender, race, and class intersections that contextualize adolescent girls' developmental experiences. This perspective also discusses young women's capacity to resist norms and stereotypes in their search for an authentic identity. This innovative theory complements a strengths-based approach to social work and can be used to guide research andpractice with this population.     

Photovoice as a Tool for Social Justice Workers

Abstract

This article considers the use of Photovoice as a tool for social justice workers. Photovoice is a technique that affords diverse populations of oppressed individuals the opportunity to take social action by raising awareness in the community and with policy-makers through use of a photographic process. The theoretical underpinnings, goals, and uses of Photovoice are reviewed in relation to social work contexts and values. In addition, the inclusion of empowerment theory and group work literature is explored as a natural expansion of the current theoretical underpinnings. Photovoice is a prime example of participatory research, assessment, and social action. The relevance of Photovoice to social work theory and practice is considered and possibilities for use as an integrated practice tool are explained.     

Insights on Professional Identification and Licensure from Community Practice Social Workers

ABSTRACT

This article describes a qualitative study designed to explore both how community practice social workers identify professionally and to examine their view towards professional regulation. Thirty-five MSW-level social workers in a large metropolitan region who self-identified as community practice social worker participated in in-depth interviews. The respondents shared their views regarding professional identification as social workers and the impact of professional identity on their work as community practitioners. Approximately half of the respondents indicated that they only sometimes or never identify as a social worker. The respondents were generally critical of the licensing burden placed upon them as community practice social workers.     

Computer Diffusion and Worker Empowerment

Abstract

Much anecdotal material describes various human impacts of computer adoption within the social work profession, however, there is scant research which confirms or challenges these assumptions. This article describes a study which investigates the diffusion of computers into the social work profession in terms of empowerment as an individual outcome for workers. A questionnaire returned by 520 social workers provided data on organizational computer diffusion, organizational centralization, and the Social Worker Empowerment Scale. Workers in organizations where computer diffusion was more advanced, and those in more decentralized decisionmaking environments were found to be more empowered.     

Responsibilisation,social work and inclusive social security in Finland

ABSTRACT

In this article responsibilisation in social work is studied by analysing two Finnish state-level policy documents (called final report and research report) which concern a current activation initiative called inclusive social security (ISS). It is asked how social workers and clients are constructed as responsible subjects in these documents. Responsibilisation refers to the advanced liberal mode of governmentality, which aims to strengthen citizens’ abilities to self-governance through various techniques that include the intertwined elements of surveillance and empowerment. It is demonstrated that the policy documents construct the social workers’ and the clients’ responsibilities partly in different ways. The final report leads activation to be based on shared responsibility and social work to be more community-based, whereas the research report strengthens more individual-based responsibility of clients and social workers. For the clients, the interpretation of ISS based on shared responsibility would probably be less stigmatising and paternalistic than the one based on individual responsibilities, i.e. approaching long-term unemployed citizens as being personally ‘at risk’ and thus a justified target group of individualised techniques for activation. For social workers and clients, future activation appears to be a wide mix of different techniques, moral expectations and possible ways of being a responsible subject.     

Re-Uniting African American Scholars,Practitioners and the Community

ABSTRACT

That African American communities are too often desolate places where it seems, in Hurston's words, “life has been and gone,” argues for increasingly creative community development strategies. This paper presents an historically-based, corporate empowerment model designed to address the desolation, by re-uniting scholars, practitioners and other community stakeholders for collective benefit and empowerment. Through an African-centered evaluative discussion, the authors assume the professional risk of sharing an outcome that may be viewed as a failure. The efficacy of the model, juxtaposed against the continued powerlessness of African American scholars, practitioners and communities, is explored. Practice challenges and implications are discussed.     

Not the “Other” Mother

SUMMARY

This paper presents findings from recent Australian qualitative research with lesbian co-parents where study participants' fluid narrative identities are deconstructed in order to better understand how language constructs relationships within private and public domains. Language used to define, describe and give meaning to roles and relationships of lesbian co-parents within social and kinship networks and wider community is explored. Through claiming language and telling their stories lesbian co-parents give meaning to their lives; affirm their identity; and present their relationships as visible and valid.     

A National Survey of Graduate Education in Psychopharmacology: Advancing the Social Work Perspective on Psychiatric Medication

ABSTRACT

Social workers’ unique skills and professional perspective can contribute to improved practices in psychopharmacology, yet it is unclear how social work programs prepare students for this area of practice. This study examined instruction of psychopharmacology through a national Web-based survey of MSW program directors and instructors of psychopharmacology content (n = 171). Nearly two-thirds (63.7%) reported their program integrates psychopharmacology usually into one or two existing courses, whereas 20.5% indicated their program offers a stand-alone course. Lack of faculty expertise and having no room in the current curriculum structure were identified as the top barriers for programs not offering any psychopharmacology content. The profession’s critical, social justice, empowerment, client-centered, and systems perspective appears to ground the teaching of psychopharmacology in social work programs.     

Dual language contexts in social work practice: the Gaelic in the Comhairle nan Eilean Siar region (Outer Hebrides,Scotland) and Spanish in the Southwestern United States

This paper addresses the complex historical/political scenarios of Spanish-speaking people in the Southwestern USA and of Gaelic speakers in the Outer Hebrides. It examines (1) the historical background and current status of Spanish in the Southwestern USA and Gaelic in the Outer Hebrides; (2) comparative issues in relation to the use of dual languages; and (3) the challenges that communication in more than one prevalent language present to social work service providers. It is based on field research in the Southwestern USA (primarily Arizona) and the Comhairle nan Eilean Siar region (Outer Hebrides, Scotland). While these two areas might appear totally different, the commonalities created by English as the default but not always the primary language of clients in both settings make the comparisons intriguing.     

Agency Practices Affecting Social Workers Who Treat Substance-Abusing Clients

Abstract

This study interviewed 115 MSWs with substance abuse training working in general social service agencies to determine if they viewed their settings as facilitating or hindering their work with substance-abusing clients. This study builds on the work of Lightfoot and Orford (1986) who found that social workers were more hindered than helped by their agencies' practices regarding substance-abusing clients.

Results: A majority of workers viewed their agencies as facilitating substance abuse-related work through support from supervisors and administrators, availability of substance abuse training, workers' freedom to choose clients, and opportunities to supervise others on substance abuse-related issues. Supervisor data corroborated these findings. This is a hopeful sign for the profession contrasting with considerable social work literature documenting the profession's historic ambivalence toward substance-abusing clients.     

Sariling Gawa Youth Council as a Case Study of Youth Leadership Development in Hawai'i

SUMMARY

This article describes Sariling Gawa Youth Council as a case study of youth leadership development in Hawai'i. Since 1980, thousands of young people-primarily Filipino youth-have participated in Sariling Gawa activities which have developed their leadership skills. Many of them have continued to lead the organization and utilize what they learned with numerous local organizations and state agencies. The authors examine Sariling Gawa's growth, structure, and other factors that contribute to its longevity. The model includes (1) youth empowerment through building their leadership skills, (2) fostering and strengthening peer social support and social networks, (3) promotion of positive ethnic identity, and (4) community capacity building by involving youth in civic and community affairs.