Comparative Hypothesis Assessment and Quasi Triangulation as Process Knowledge Assessment Strategies in Social Work Practice

Summary Despite a debate lasting some decades, there has been littleor no clear resolution about the way knowledge may be relatedto practice. To a considerable degree this is because of anassumption that knowledge is ‘knowledge as product’:given knowledge, researched and applied to practice. In recentyears, the concept of ‘knowledge as process’ hasemerged, focusing on knowledge of rigorous ways to think aboutpractice situations. This has generated a focus on hypothesisgeneration, testing and falsification, as well as lessons tobe learned from rigorous methods of qualitative analysis insocial research. Rigorous social workers, it has been suggested,would behave like ‘practical qualitative researchers ofthe individual instant’. However, there is little empiricalresearch on the matter. This paper evaluates process knowledgeforms used by social workers. It presents findings that socialworkers vary considerably in the extent to which they develophypotheses about the whole case, or aspects of it, in the depthwith which they analyse cases, and the systematic way they pursuean information gathering strategy. The paper concludes thatthere is clear evidence of social workers behaving as practicalqualitative researchers, but the rigour with which they do sovaries, with fundamental implications for the training process,and the extent to which rigorous strategies, along the linesof research methodology, should be taught.     

Looking Back: The View from Here

This article considers key developments in social work in thelast decade. From the vantage point of Australia, British socialwork (and the British Journal of Social Work) is seen in a particularperspective. However, some international comparisons are possible.Thus, the article focuses on two apparently contradictory developments:the ‘search for uncertainty’ in post-structuraltheory and the ‘search for certainty’ in evidence-basedpractice. It concludes that both, in different ways, describesocial work in the early twenty-first century.     

'Low Key Practices' in Social Work. Towards a Socio-historical Method

Summary In this article a ‘socio-historical’ method of analysisand intervention in social work will be developed, illustratedby an example drawn from social work with families, the programknown in France as Action Educative en Milieu Ouvert. Our purposeis to support and encourage what we call ‘low key practices’,which refers to practices in which social workers within theexisting structures of so-called ‘individual social work’attempt to explain the social struggle taking place in the situationsthey are dealing with.     

Practitioner Research: Evidence or Critique?

In this paper, I revisit some of the origins and more recentdirections in practitioner research in social work, seeing itas a phenomenon that—rather than being special or narrowlyassociated with social work—manifests a pervasive clusterof concerns about good professional practice in contemporarysociety. Drawing on some general conclusions of a recent studyof practitioner inquiry, I indicate ways in which the widersystems of which it is a part frequently hamstring the potentialof such research to operate as more than a fringe operation—a‘street market’ version of mainstream research.I outline four ways in which social workers, service users,agency managers, academics, government departments and universitiesshould work to a transformative agenda for practitioner research—transformativefor both practice and research. This will involve refashioningthe interface between the methodology and methods of practiceand research; generating practitioner research capacity; recognizingthe subtlety and critical potential of a genuinely ‘practical’agenda in practitioner research; and rescuing practitioner researchfrom a simply technical information-providing function, thatby-passes the challenge to promoting critical practice.     

Risk and Supervision: Social Work Responses to Referred User Problems

Correspondence to Peter Burke, Department of Social Work, University of Hull, Hull HU6 7RX Summary This study examines social work responses to users followingcase allocation of the initial referral. The aim of the studyis to demonstrate the need for supervision of social workersdealing with cases which have in common an inherent quality,described as ‘risk’. The study also links referralsto other practice responses identified as ‘service delivery’and ‘advisory’ work. The relationship between theseparticular responses is tested against the outcome decisionreached on case closure. All referrals were allocated betweentwo fieldwork teams over a one-year period and a total of 312referred cases was allocated within the categories mentioned.Findings are indicative that more ‘risk’ type referrals,however defined, are resolved with additional supervisory inputthan without, and that lower status workers favoured ‘middleground’ decisions of outcome when compared to their seniorcolleagues. A consideration resulting from this research isthat agency definitions of risk are different to the type ofrisk which requires crisis intervention. The question of riskto the user or to the agency requires the workers concernedto be able to discriminate between such cases. The implicationfor team training is that supervisory input should clarify thenature of risk, if any, and the task required of the workerfollowing case referral. The matching of skills which wouldultimately be the objective of this type of research cannotbe finally determined until a more comprehensive set of parametersfor practice is identified. This study shows that the responsecategories used demonstrate some basic supervisory needs ofthe worker.     

Care Management and Professional Autonomy: The Impact of Community Care Legislation on Social Work with Older People

Correspondene to Mark Lymbery, Centre for Social Work, School of Sociology and Social Policy, University of Nottingham, University Park, Nottingham NG7 2RD, UK. e-mail: Mark_Lymbery{at}nottingham.ac.uk Summary The 1990 National Health Service and Community Care Act appearedto herald a new dawn for social work with older people, whichhad previously been a relatively neglected and undervalued areaof social work practice. The legislation proposed a new rolefor social workers as ‘case managers’, with considerableautonomy and flexibility about the way in which the ‘casemanager’ responded to need. By the time community carepolicy was implemented, the role of ‘case manager’had been transformed into that of ‘care manager’,with a focus which emphasized procedural and managerial requirementsrather than a more flexible professional practice. This paper explores the extent to which this shift has substantivelyaltered the nature of social work practice with older people.It outlines key theories of professions and their applicabilityto social work, and critically analyses the impact of the ‘newmanagerialism’ within social services departments. Thepaper also examines the nature of social workers' practice witholder people following the impact of community care legislation,and concludes that the impact on the social work professionhas been to locate an increasing control of practice with socialwork managers, with potentially serious consequences for thecontinuation of a distinctive social work role in relation toservices for older people.     

Euthanasia: Israeli Social Workers' Experiences, Attitudes and Meanings

Correspondence to Dr Ronit D. Leichtentritt, Bob Shapell School of Social Work, Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv, Israel. E-mail: ronitl{at}post.tau.ac.il Summary Sixteen social workers in Israel were interviewed about theirexperiences with and attitudes towards various forms of euthanasia,as well as the meanings they ascribe to them. Using phenomenologicalanalysis, seven themes were identified, emphasizing individual,interpersonal, organizational, social and therapeutic considerations,and suggesting a holistic and integrative structure of the phenomenon.The themes were arrived at by identifying distinctions and similaritiesbetween different forms of euthanasia. Two themes suggestingsimilarities were revealed: ‘diminishing the value oflife’ and ‘a call for help’. Three themeswere found to distinguish between passive euthanasia (withholdingand withdrawing life-sustaining treatment) and active forms(active euthanasia and assisted suicide): ‘legality’,‘social acceptance’ and ‘concern for the sickand dying’. The last two themes distinguished betweenwithholding treatment and assisted suicide, on the one hand,and withdrawing treatment and active euthanasia, on the other:‘the involvement of others as executor’ and ‘thepublicity of the act’. Further research and training isrequired to better inform social workers in this ethical area.Given their unique position, social workers should activelyparticipate in legal, social and therapeutic discussions concerningend-of-life decisions, for the benefit of clients, their familiesand health-care providers.     

A Role for Anyone? A Description of Social Work with the Elderly in Two Area Offices

Summary This article analyses information from Case Review Forms completedby social workers on 199 allocated elderly clients. These peoplewere very frail, most were considered to be ‘at risk’and to require regular, reliable and frequent care. The questionof the client moving to a tafer setting arose in two-thirdsof the cases, concerning which there was often some dispute.It is argued that social workers require a high level of professionalskill in dealing with clients, and others involved, faced withsuch questions and that this requirement will remain with thedevelopment of ‘community social work’.     

The Sound Of Silence: Listening to What Unaccompanied Asylum-seeking Children Say and Do Not Say

Unaccompanied asylum-seeking children are noted at times tobe silent or circumspect about their origins and circumstanceswhen faced with authority figures, including social workers.Using some key ideas from ethnography and narrative therapy,this article examines existing literature on silence in thelives of unaccompanied minors, and on how the choices they makeabout talking and not talking can hinder or facilitate resettlement.It then describes a small research study within which interviewswere undertaken with local authority social workers to elicittheir responses to unaccompanied minors in such circumstances.These revealed that practitioners understood the children’ssilence in varied ways, and that they could be practically helpful,therapeutically minded and reliable companions, accompanyingthe young people towards resettlement, with or without knowingthe detailed ‘truth’ about their past     

Direct Payments and Social Work Practice: The Significance of 'Street-Level Bureaucracy' in Determining Eligibility

Sponsored both by governments intent upon fiscal restraint anduser movements keen to extend choice and control, ‘cash-for-care’schemes are replacing direct services across mature welfarestates. Recent legislation on direct payments, which has enactedthe UK version of cash-for-care, has attracted considerableresearch interest in the UK. Previous studies point to a numberof tensions for social workers in the implementation processwhich give rise, in turn, to considerable uncertainty, evenhostility, on the part of front line staff. This article, whichdiscusses the findings of a study of assessment and care managementpractice in one English council, seeks to make sense of socialworkers’ approach to the allocation of direct paymentsby reference to Lipsky’s (1980) theory of ‘street-levelbureaucracy’. The author concludes that despite ten yearsof managerialism, in the course of which professional practicehas been routinized and regulated, Lipsky’s work is stilluseful in analysing front line behaviour around direct payments.     

Practitioners as Rule Using Analysts: A Further Development of Process Knowledge in Social Work

Correspondence to Professor Michael Sheppard, Department of Social Policy and Social Work, University of Plymouth, Drake Circus, Plymouth PL4 8AA, UK. E-mail M.Sheppard{at}plymouth.ac.uk Summary A new paradigm of ‘process knowledge’ has emergedin recent years, distinct from the dominant ‘product knowledge’paradigm in social work. While the latter refers to existentknowledge, which may be applied, the former refers to the developmentof knowledge about the ‘methodology of practice decisionmaking’, focusing on the processes by which judgementsare made. At its heart is the emerging idea of a reflexivityfor practice, but studies have been, until recently, theoretical.A very small number of empirical studies have begun to identifysome key elements of process knowledge. These have developeda range of concepts relating to critical appraisal, hypothesisdevelopment and hypothesis testing which characterize socialwork process knowledge. These include, for example, focusedattention, querying information, causal inferences, partialcase, procedural, and speculative hypotheses. A process of quasitriangulation is characteristic of social work practice methodology,together with a combination of inductive and deductive thinking.This paper seeks to develop our understanding by focusing onhow social workers develop and appraise hypotheses, and in particularhow the substantive content of hypotheses emerges (these enablesocial workers to make sense of, define, and respond to, situations).To understand this, the notion of rules is used, and socialworkers emerge as analysts employing three types of rules: substantive,application, and practice rules. A significant link betweenprocess knowledge and the content of product knowledge is identifiedin the form of technical language. The concept of ‘probabilisticcausation’ is identified as a key epistemological dimensionin the conduct of rigorous practice.     

Ambiguities in Decision Making: Social Work's Response to 'Glue-Sniffing' in Scotland

Correspondence to Dr Elizabeth Jagger, Social Science Department, Park Campus, 1, Park Drive, Caledonian University, Glasgow G3 6LP Summary This paper examines how social workers make decisions aboutwhich cases of ‘glue-sniffing’ require intervention,in the context of a government policy which construes the problemprimarily within the arena of parental responsibility. Usingdata from interviews with social workers and research on ‘glue-sniffing’,it shows that social workers were frequently reluctant to dealwith cases. It explains that this has to do with factors suchas organizational priorities, lack of resources and, in particular,the ambiguous status of ‘glue-sniffing’ within theirown professional discourse. It concludes that the complex interplayof these factors means that government policy is not translatedinto practice in any simplistic manner.     

Narrating Love and Abuse in Intimate Relationships

via email: heather.fraser{at}rmit.edu.au Summary In this article, I use discourse analysis to explore the relationshipbetween love and abuse. I argue that Anglo-American social workhas been reticent to theorize love; and that when it does, theborders separating love from abuse are usually assumed to berelatively stable and readily apparent. After nominating someof the reasons for and repercussions of dichotomizing love andabuse, I suggest that knowledge about intimate abuse will expandif more attention is given to the study of love. I promote theuse of feminist discourses because they provide valuable insightsabout the operations of power in love relationships. Drawingideas from both structural feminism and post-structural feminism,I encourage social workers to move their analytical attentionback and forth between the micro-politics of intimate relationshipsto the wider cultural contexts within which they are staged.I conclude with the assertion that social workers will be betterplaced to understand the dilemmas that many ‘ordinary’women confront in their everyday lives, if they critically analysethe intersections of love and abuse.     

Irish Social Workers in Britain and the Politics of (Mis) Recognition

The article focuses on the perceptions of Irish social workersworking in ‘children and families’ settings in Britain.These respondents cannot be seen as representative of all Irishsocial workers in Britain, yet they do provide insights intofive significant themes: the approach to ‘race’and ethnicity in social work education; Irish identities inBritain; racism and stereotyping; children and families whoare Irish Travellers; and an agenda for the future. The discussionconsiders some of the issues raised in the context of what hasbeen referred to as the ‘politics of recognition’.     

Changes in the Form of Knowledge in Social Work: From the 'Social' to the 'Informational'?

This paper examines the changing form of knowledge in socialwork over the past thirty years and its implications for theoryand practice. In particular, it considers the impact of newsystems related to a range of new information and communicationtechnologies (ICTs) and the shift from a narrative to a databaseway of thinking and operating. In doing so, it attempts to identifya series of key challenges and questions which need to be consideredin order to engage with the changes. In particular, it addresseshow far social work is still primarily concerned with subjectsand their social relationships and argues that social work nowoperates less on the terrain of the ‘social’ andmore on the terrain of the ‘informational’. Suchchanges have implications for the relationship between theoryand practice in social work and the nature of ‘social’work itself.     

Social Work Values: The Moral Core of the Profession

Correspondence to Cynthia Bisman, Graduate School of Social Work and Social Research, Bryn Mawr, PA 19010, USA. E-mail: cbisman{at}ada.brynmawr.edu Summary This paper argues that an emphasis on the profession’sknowledge base has come at the expense of attention to socialwork's values and mission. The discussion examines the relativeimportance of knowledge, values and skills in an effort to understandthe shifting emphases of the profession within a social andhistorical context. The consequences of these shifts for theprofession and for its relationship to society are also considered.Concepts from the intellectual struggles of social work andfrom an interdisciplinary perspective suggest ways to groundthe profession’s skills and knowledge in its values ofhuman dignity, service to humanity and social justice. At itscore, social work must respond to the moral imperative of caringfor the neediest among us. This entails re-claiming and buildingon the commitment of early social workers ‘to work withforces that make for progress . . . to forward the advance ofthe . . . common people’ (Richmond, 1899, p. 151). Thepaper concludes that for social work to have a future, the professionmust take pride in its moral core, define its contemporary meaningand work for the social welfare in ways that are relevant toboth social workers and non-social workers.     

Consistencies and Inconsistencies: Mental Health, Compulsory Treatment and Community Capacity Building in England, Wales and Australia

In relation to mental health, it is clear that medicalized underpinnings,the provision of a clinically orientated evidence base for practiceand the need to contain ‘risk’ continue to be prioritized,particularly when compulsory intervention is considered. Thisis despite the increasing influence of a citizenship and socialjustice agenda which is being promoted by psychiatrists involvedin the development of ‘postpsychiatry’, as wellas by service users/survivors. These drivers are not mutuallyexclusive, but in the context of compulsory treatment, thereare clear tensions. In this article, the policy surroundingmental health and compulsory intervention in Australia and inEngland and Wales is explored. In the context of this discussion,three ways in which current government policy can be interpretedare examined and links made between these interpretations anddifferent ways of viewing the relationship between mental healthand community capacity building. With regard to social workpractice, it is argued that a response to mental ill healthwhich concentrates on an individualized ‘diagnose andtreat’ approach, which particularly comes to the foreat times of compulsory intervention, has limited capacity tofacilitate community engagement, foster social inclusion andgenerate reciprocal dynamics between positive mental healthand community capacity building.     

An Unfinished Reflexive Journey: Social Work Students' Reflection on their Placement Experiences

The fieldwork placement is recognized as one of the major componentsof social work education and a major determinant of its quality.A key aspect of the learning process in the fieldwork placementis the exposition of practice encounters to the students’critical reflection. Given the importance of the process of‘reflection’ or ‘reflective learning’,a qualitative study based on the reflective logs of social workstudents was conducted to explore the meaning of social workfield education and the learning experiences of social workstudents during their placement. The study findings revealedthat disturbing events experienced by students in their fieldworkwere a catalyst to their reflective process. Meanwhile, theirundue concern with knowledge and skills application within acircumscribed knowledge frame suggests the dominant influenceof scientism and competence-based practice in social work, inwhich learning outcomes and instrumental and technical reasoningare highly emphasized. Discovery of ‘self’ was alsothe major premise in the students’ reflection logs, inwhich a majority of them took their prevailing self-identityas a constant state to be verified in interaction with othersin the fieldwork placement. Reflexivity is manifested in askingfundamental questions about assumptions generated by formaland practice theories; it addresses the multiple interrelationsbetween power and knowledge, and acknowledges the inclusionof self in the process of knowledge creation in social workpractice. Its realization in social work education requiresthe social work educators’ reflexive examination of thedynamics that influence the construction of curriculum, whichin turn construct our prospective social workers.