Compounding the trauma: the coercive treatment of voice hearers

For more than a hundred years, voice hearing has been treated as a symptom of serious mental illnesses with biological origins. Pharmaceutical companies have expanded the range of products targeted at treating these illnesses and the diagnosis of schizophrenia now underpins a multi-billion dollar, world-wide business. Throughout the western world, nation states have vested an authority in psychiatry to compulsorily treat people who meet a set of diagnostic criteria that is widely discredited. There is considerable evidence that more effective ways of responding to people experiencing psychosis can be provided without coercion. These approaches differ in essence to traditional Kraepelinian psychiatry in that they acknowledge the role of people's life experiences in creating the problems they face, and the professionals work in partnership with the service users. The approaches recognise that people have histories which often include considerable trauma and social workers are in an ideal position to work with voice hearers to help them understand their experiences and to develop ways of coping. The authority vested in psychiatry is not static and within Europe mental health professionals can contribute to changing what is meant by ‘unsound mind’ and extending the right of liberty to voice hearers. In doing this, social workers can ensure that they do not compound the trauma by devaluing and discrediting people's experience.     

Sustainable Social Work: An Environmental Justice Framework for Social Work Education

Environmental degradation is not experienced by all populations equally; hazardous and toxic waste sites, resource contamination (e.g., exposure to pesticides), air pollution, and numerous other forms of environmental degradation disproportionately affect low income and minority communities. The communities most affected by environmental injustices are often the same communities where social workers are entrenched in service provision at the individual, family, and community level. In this article, we use a global social work paradigm to describe practical ways in which environmental justice content can be infused in the training and education of social workers across contexts in order to prepare professionals with the skills to respond to ever-increasing global environmental degradation. We discuss ways for social work educators to integrate and frame environmental concerns and their consequences for vulnerable populations using existing social work models and perspectives to improve the social work profession's ability to respond to environmental injustices. There are significant social work implications; social workers need to adapt and respond to contexts that shape our practice, including environmental concerns that impact the vulnerable and oppressed populations that we serve.     

Preparing social work students for policy practice: an Australian example

This paper presents an innovative approach to the teaching of policy skills across the two years of an Australian Social Work degree programme. It argues that placing policy back into practice and teaching the skills involved provides social work practitioners with a better capacity to effect change. Australian Catholic University, School of Social Work is located in Australia's capital city. The policy units have a clear framework within which to understand policy development and provide students with real hands‐on policy experience combining an experiential based learning approach with traditional teaching methods. The second year subject is structured around a number of policy workshops. Each workshop deals with a current policy problem and examines a different stage of policy development. It has as a consultant to the process a social worker who works as a policy practitioner providing a role model of practice in a policy area. Feedback from students has been extremely positive reporting increased confidence in policy skills and a recognition of the importance of these skills in social work. This teaching experience reinforces the need to focus on the educational considerations in teaching a subject where conceptual, theoretical and skill components are equally important if policy practice is to effect change.     

Practice Learning and the Development of Professional Practice

The development of professional practice is based on practice learning, yet there is no consensus about its definition. The currently evolving use of the term ‘practice learning’ provides us with an opportunity to consider the nature of learning for professional practice at initial entry through to post qualifying stages of development. A number of streams of thought are influencing the understanding of practice learning and we aim to consider some of these and how they inform those involved in supporting and guiding practice learners at different stages of their professional development.

In presenting our conceptualisation of practice learning we argue against oversimplified dualities of classroom‐based academic learning concerned with theory and workplace‐based practice learning concerned with practice. Additionally we make explicit the career‐long nature of practice learning which is as embedded in continuing professional development as it is in the requirements for qualifying programmes.

Having established what we mean by ‘practice learning’ we consider the impact of organisational learning theory on the management of practice learning. The consideration of the characteristics of organisations which learn leads to a brief examination of approaches to teaching and learning which promote knowledge creation in a way which is meaningful to practitioners. We will argue that the development of understandings of organisational learning and knowledge creation should become part of the knowledge base for those supporting and guiding practice learners, in addition to the traditional knowledge base of adult learning theory.

Before exploring the nature of practice learning it would be helpful to consider briefly what we mean by professional practice for which practice learning is preparing people.

Professional practice in social work is a complex set of activities which involve direct work with service users, and their families, as well as work with other professionals and agencies. A range of knowledge and skills are used with a firm value base which recognises diversity and oppression as key elements in UK society.

Such professional practice is learned and developed in a range of ways over time through training, practice, understanding, analysis and reflection. However, the nature of just what practice learning is and where it occurs has become a focus of debate in the UK as a result of recent developments in initial professional education and training for social work.     

Young people leaving care in Scotland

This paper presents the findings from the first national study of young people leaving care in Scotland. The research involved a policy study of all 32 social work departments and a survey of 107 young people from three authorities, 61 of whom were followed up over a six month period. In exploring the implications for policy and practice, it suggests that although the law and national policy context have been strengthened, improving outcomes for young people leaving care will require responses to more enduring problems, as well as the development of more comprehensive local policies.     

Practice standards in Australia: implications for social work education

In 2003, the Australian Association of Social Work launched Practice Standards that define minimal expectations for all social workers. The Practice Standards are outcome focused and specify what social workers are expected to achieve in the areas of Direct Practice, Service Management, Organizational Development and System Change, Policy, Research, and Education and Professional Development. This paper outlines the rationale for developing the Practice Standards, the process undertaken and the need for social work educators to build a curriculum that prepares students to be competent and effective in a complex working environment.     

Thinking ‘Outside the Box’: A New Approach to Integration of Learning for Practice

The integration of learning is a central goal for all professions. The question of how to bridge the gap between theory and practice, and between the classroom and the field, is one which has preoccupied social work education since its very beginnings in universities in the United Kingdom and the United States in the early twentieth century. Between 2003 and 2005, the Scottish Institute for Excellence in Social Work Education funded a project which piloted a new approach to the integration of learning for practice. This paper reports on the findings of that project, and suggests ways of taking its findings forward in the future.     

Raising the Titanic: Rescuing Social Work Documentation from the Sea of Ethical Risk

Abstract

One of the most contentious issues in social work practice concerns what should be written about people who access social work services, how comprehensively, and in what format social work assessments, interventions, and outcomes should be documented. The present paper describes a structured approach linked to an action research project that was undertaken by hospital-based social workers to identify and minimise problems associated with documentation in the medical record. The Social Work Ethics Audit provided social work staff with a risk-management tool that highlighted documentation as a key area of ethical risk. Through a process of evaluating existing recording practices, social workers were able to meet the challenge of improving social work recording in medical records, returning it to its proper place as a vital component of clinical and ethical practice rather than an administrative task submerged beneath competing priorities. It was anticipated that the social work documentation proforma that resulted from the ethics audit process would have applicability in other health care settings.     

Implementing evidence-based practices and programmes in the human services: lessons from research in public administration

The development of evidence-based practice and programmes (EBP) has led to increasing interest in implementation issues in the field of human services, and specifically how to bridge the gap between scientific knowledge and actual practice. However, because EBP are usually connected with social policies, which are political, implementation problems arise concerning resource allocation, ethics and power. Such implementation problems in the field of public administration have been extensively researched. The aim of this paper is to investigate whether and how research into policy implementation in public administration may benefit ongoing research on EBP in the human services to understand, explain and manage common implementation problems. This paper is based on a broad review and comparison of the literatures on policy implementation in public administration and implementation of EBP in the human services. Analysis shows that human services could learn from public administration research to develop a broader theoretical approach for understanding and managing implementation of evidence-based practice and programmes.     

The Theory Circle: A Tool for Learning and for Practice

Social workers have grappled for many years now with the tension between theory and practice. The struggle may be to bridge a perceived gap between the academic knowledge base of social work and the complex realities of practice. Equally, it may be to move from common‐sense interpretations of human need and professional responses, towards a more informed and accountable approach to practice. In recognition of the challenges faced by social work academics, practitioners and students, in relation to applying theory to practice, two of the authors of this paper developed a model, which aimed to facilitate productive discussions between practice teachers and students about the nature of theory and its link to practice. In addition, the model was designed to promote partnership approaches where service users participate fully in identifying their own issues and in shaping the services they receive. This paper describes the model—The Theory Circle—and reflects upon its effectiveness, based on the views of 19 practice teachers from central Scotland. The findings suggest that the pictorial model is one that practice teachers and students find accessible and valuable; it helps them to build a theoretical understanding of service users' situations and to work alongside service users to agree the most appropriate methods of intervention.     

Notes on contributors

Ethics is a central area for professional education in social work. The main educational strategies for the ethics component in social work programmes are often a combination of explicit attention to principles and implicit grounding in practice examples (such as ‘case study’ vignettes). These approaches equip students to recognise and respond to the complexities of ethics in practice. However, they may also encourage students to understand ethics as ‘rules of conduct’, in which there are ‘correct answers’ that can be learned and applied. This paper advances the view that it is more helpful to consider ethics as a ‘framework for thinking’ about the means/ends relationship in practice. It is argued that, as a consequence, the goal of ethics education should be to enable student social workers to grasp the inherently moral nature of practice and the ambiguities that follow from this. Such a position points to the paradox of social work education, that it involves teaching about things that cannot ‘exist’ separately from their being created in action. To explore this paradox in teaching ethics, the paper considers inductive approaches in learning as a way of responding to the ambiguities that are inherent not only in the subject but also in the experience of professional education.     

Acknowledgement of client diversity and oppression in social work student supervision

An enduring theme of social work literature and education has been the need for workers to recognise and challenge oppressive structures and develop competence in working with diverse client groups. This paper reports the findings of a qualitative research project where student and field educator supervision sessions were recorded, with the view to examining how oppression and diversity were addressed in these sessions. The authors have used the term 'difference' to describe the breach between the student and client experiences. Examples of anti-discriminatory practice were identified in the recordings, however on occasions supervisors had difficulty in assisting students to acknowledge diversity and oppression in supervision. Four factors that related to addressing diversity emerged from the supervision material. These were: the struggle to unmask subtle themes of oppression; the use of questioning to raise student awareness and development of self-knowledge; using student biography to facilitate learning on 'difference'; and field educator use of self-disclosure during discussions on diversity. Successful approaches to anti-oppressive practice and responding to diversity are outlined.     

The Love Ethic: A Radical Theory for Social Work Practice

Love is marginalised in professional social work codes of ethics in Australia and internationally. Yet, reflecting the emancipatory imperative of social work, feminist bell hooks promotes love as a political process to transform systems of injustice such as capitalism, patriarchy, and racism. Analysing the works of hooks and other relevant literature, this article discusses “the love ethic”, a model of relationship-oriented activism encompassing dialogue, nonviolence, interconnectedness between people and between people and nature, reflexivity, shared power, and solidarity. It provides some practical suggestions for love-based social work practice, such as self-forgiveness, pursuing gender-equal relationships, upholding fair workplace conditions, honouring Indigenous peoples, supporting oppressed people to assert their rights, connecting local and global action, nurturing symbiotic relationships with nature, and supporting empowering spiritualities. The love ethic supports radical social workers to engage in activism, and necessitates further exploration within academia and practice.     

Linking Practitioners' Attitudes Towards and Basic Knowledge of Immigrants with Their Social Work Education

Based on a survey of 1,124 social workers in the United States, this article examines how practitioners' attitudes towards immigrants and their general knowledge of immigration varied according to the content of their social work education. Although the majority of practitioners reported receiving coursework on practice with immigrants, this showed no effect on their attitudes or knowledge. In contrast, coursework on immigration policy predicted more favorable attitudes towards immigrants. Considering the mounting anti-immigrant sentiment and retrenchment of immigrants' rights in the United States, the results suggest the need to further explore what course work content is needed to prepare social workers for the current needs of the field. We argue that social work education must expand upon existing cultural competence models of practice with immigrants, to better prepare social workers to address the deepening social exclusion of undocumented immigrants in the United States.     

Developing cultural competence for social work with families living in poverty

Social workers need to have a good understanding of the cultural contexts within which the families they are working with are living. Whilst each context will be unique in many respects, the majority of families involved with social workers will share the experience of living in impoverished circumstances. At a time when levels of family poverty are rising rapidly in the UK and many other European countries as a result of a global financial crisis followed by economic recession and major cuts in public spending, it is particularly important that social workers understand the impact of poverty on the lives of the adults and children with whom they are engaged. One of the best ways of developing an understanding of any aspect of culture is to listen to people talking about their lives. Using a combination of research evidence based on the first-hand accounts of parents and children, and analysis of selected practice examples drawn from anti-poverty social work in England, the key elements of culturally competent practice for social work with families living in poverty are identified.     

Aboriginal Practitioners Speak Out: Contextualising Child Protection Interventions

Abstract

One month before the June 2007 Federal Government Emergency Intervention in the Northern Territory some 55 West Australian Aboriginal child protection workers attended a 3-day summit in Fremantle. Their purpose as front-line practitioners from across the State was to identify how more nurturing and healing communities could be developed and supported in a climate of despair. This paper reports on how the summit was designed and on some of the ideas and concerns that emerged within this dialogical space of cooperative inquiry. The project was a partnership between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal representatives of university, government, and community-service bodies. Aboriginal practitioners identified the complexity of what was happening in their experience and where changes were needed. Integral to this participation and coproduction of knowledge by Aboriginal child protection workers was the provision of a safe space for the articulation of reflected experience. Implications for policy, practice, and curriculum of both process and outcome dimensions to considering Aboriginal views on this contentious issue are discussed.     

Toward working hypotheses of effective management: Conditions,thought processes,and behaviors

The purpose of this article is to develop a set of working hypotheses about the conditions, thought processes, and behaviors that define managerial effectiveness. The Deacon and Firebaugh model of managerial behavior is extended to form the basis for the hypotheses developed. The overall hypothesis is that differences in managerial effectiveness are specifically linked to the timing, completion, frequency, and duration of particular thoughts and actions performed by the manager that are focused on the allocation of resources to meet value-based goals and events. If it is assumed that meeting demands is an appropriate measure of managerial effectiveness, then validation of the hypotheses, the next logical step, can occur by correlating the conditions, processes, and behaviors thought to represent managerial effectiveness with objective and subjective measures of demand responses.An earlier version of this paper was discussed at the annual meeting of North Central Region Project 116, Family Resource Management, April 20–21, 1982, Columbus, OH.Deanna L. Sharpe is Assistant Professor, Department of Consumer Sciences, University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa, AL 35487. Her research interests are focused on the effective allocation and use of time and money through the family life cycle. She received her Ph.D. from Iowa State University in 1988.Mary Winter is Professor, Department of Human Development and Family Studies, Iowa State University, Ames, IA 50011. Her research interests include family resource management in the U. S. and Mexico. She received her Ph.D. from The Pennsylvania State University in 1970.     

Gearing Up for Personalisation: Training Activities Commissioned in the English Pilot Individual Budgets Sites 2006–2008

The transformation of social care in England is taking place though changes affording greater choice and control for people using services. Individual budgets were one key element of these changes and were piloted in 13 local authorities in 2006–2008. This article reports on interviews with training leads in these local authorities that took place in 2008 as part of an independent evaluation of the individual budget pilots. The aims of the interviews were to explore the role of training as part of the processes of transformation, the use of resources and establishment of training strategies within the local authority. Participants revealed that the subject of training was acquiring higher profile within their authorities, although uncertainties remain about the extent of local authority responsibilities for training. Within local authorities, training resources were yet to be determined and models of training were not fully developed. The article concludes that training will remain a central issue when implementing personalised social care services and that models of training for such changes should be shared and evaluated over the long term.     

Controversy and Its Implications for the Practice of Contemporary Social Work in Intercountry Adoptions: A Korean–Australian Case Study

Abstract

Korean–Australian intercountry adoption has been practiced for 30 years. This longevity provides unique opportunities to develop critical perspectives on a complex, global practice. This paper presents understandings drawn from a study that explores Korean intercountry adoption using Actor Network Theory. It argues that the practice of intercountry adoption in Australia has been shaped by adoption-driven influences and characterised by controversy and competing discourses. It concludes that contemporary understandings necessitate a global, contextual, and critical view that is inclusive of emerging voices and alternate discourses. The challenge for practitioners and policy makers is to ensure the complex nature of the phenomenon is understood by all stakeholders. This will involve remaining child-focused, promoting multilevel interventions, incorporating research findings, and resisting wholly positive discourse that promotes singular perspectives. An awareness of how the internet is used to forge networks and promote discourses is crucial in ensuring multiple perspectives are considered in this contentious practice field.