Critical social work and competency practice: a proposal to bridge theory and practice in the classroom

Social work education in North America is increasingly focused on competency criteria and micro skills training for future practitioners. Market forces are transforming the nature of social work practice in Canada, and social work regulators are concerned about the lack of evidence-based competencies in social work education. Since the Controlled Act of Psychotherapy was proclaimed in 2017, social work practitioners are in a position to offer psychotherapy services; as a result, universities are under greater pressure to shift to competency-based learning that meets the requirements of a regulated profession. This has raised concerns about the narrowing focus on critical social work theory in preparing students for practice. The divergence between anti-oppressive and direct practice schools is widening with the result that many students have difficulty bridging the gap between critical theory and competency-based practice. This paper attempts to integrate both traditions by offering students a course that directly links critical analysis of structural barriers and client centered interventions. The course is part of a developing critical competency curriculum that focuses on methods of facilitating empowerment and change in the helping process by articulating key relational components between service user and practitioner from a critical-competency perspective.     

Chronic pain,pain severity and analgesia use in Australian women of reproductive age

Background

The increasing prevalence and adverse outcomes associated with opioid analgesia use in women of reproductive age have become a significant public health issue internationally, with use during pregnancy potentially affecting maternal and infant health outcomes.

Resilience,mental health and Assertive Community Treatment

Clinicians try to promote resilience by building an effective therapeutic relationship with their clients. Assertive Community Treatment (ACT) is an established approach for providing services to individuals with severe mental illness who have not fared well in the regular mental health system. This work underscores the importance of a resilient therapeutic relationship in preventing relapse and assuring adherence to therapeutic outcomes. Persistent psychiatric illness takes a toll on the resilience of the client, while the relationship work takes a toll on the resilience of the clinician. This article explores the concept of relational resilience between clinician and client as a dynamic process of shared success and failure, progress and regression through cycles of crisis, stabilization, relapse, and partial recovery. This is a qualitative study exploring how ACT clinicians promote and sustain resilience and is based on interviews with social workers, nurses, occupational and recreational therapists, coordinators, and psychiatrists.     

A review of the evolutionary approach to the study of entrepreneurship

A number of more contextual and process‐oriented approaches have been followed recently in entrepreneurial research, including the cognitive approach, the learning approach and the evolutionary approach. This paper reviews the evolutionary approach to the study of entrepreneurship. This includes an overview of evolutionary theory and the arguments behind its relevance to the study of socio‐economics systems, as well as a review of the application of evolutionary theory to the study of entrepreneurship at both the population level (population ecology) and the organizational level (strategic choice). The reconciliation of these two perspectives is discussed, and comparisons are made with the cognition‐based and learning‐based approaches. It is argued in this paper that an evolutionary approach to the study of entrepreneurship leads to more theory‐driven research with a strong focus on process and context. In addition, it offers more than both the cognition‐based and learning‐based approaches because it allows for multi‐level analyses of the new venture creation process, encompassing both the population ecology (population level) and strategic choice (organizational level) perspective, and the resultant interactions between both hierarchies, giving valuable insight into the same overall evolutionary process.     

Researching paramilitary violence in Northern Ireland

This paper examines methodological challenges in researching paramilitary violence, with particular reference to the author's examination of paramilitary 'punishment' activity in Northern Ireland. The author notes the dearth of published work on methodological issues in social science research of violence generally. The range of major qualitative studies on paramilitary violence is presented and discussed. The paper explains the context of conducting such research in Northern Ireland in terms of the broader political conflict. It then examines several key challenges in researching paramilitary violence based primarily on the author's research. These included maintenance of political sensitivity, good faith and cautious security protocols. Potential legal and ethical difficulties were addressed through design of interview schedules that minimized risk of disclosure of the names or identities of those subject to 'punishment' or the perpetrators of offences. Those subject to paramilitary 'punishment' proved 'hard-to-reach', requiring greater time and effort in meeting the initial target sample, and a consequent need to research across a wide range of voluntary and community-based organizations. While risks of physical injury were minimal, successful research in the field was achieved through transparency about the impartiality and funding independence of the researchers, and a strategic sensitivity towards community and political backgrounds.     

Equivalence class formation in non-hearing impaired children and hearing impaired children

The relationship between verbal behavior and stimulus equivalence was examined using three sets of children differing in chronological age and verbal ability: (1) non-hearing impaired three and four year olds who had verbal skills generally consistent with their chronological ages; (2) partially hearing (severe to profoundly deaf) children who were rated with verbal ages of above 2 years; and (3) partially hearing children (also severely to profoundly deaf) who were rated with verbal ages of below 2 years. All children were taught a series of four conditional discriminations using unfamiliar stimuli. The children were then tested to determine whether classes of equivalent stimuli had formed. Although all the children were able to learn the conditional discriminations equally well and all the verbally-able children (normal and partially hearing) formed equivalence classes, only one of the verbally-impaired children reliably demonstrated stimulus equivalence formation. These results are consistent with the suggestion that stimulus equivalence and human verbal behavior are closely related.