This article investigates: (1) attitudes among social workers and social work students toward privatisation in general and private practice in particular; (2) the extent and types of activities being performed privately; (3) the motives whether or not to choose self-employment; (4) the differences between public and self-employed social workers in terms of professionalisation.
Data are based on surveys of 1,000 Swedish social workers and 801 social work students. The results show ambivalence among professionals toward privatisation. The authors discuss the reasons for this at an individual and collective level. Although the share of social workers in private practice in Sweden is low, between 6 and 8%, more than one third of Swedish social workers expect to be working in private practice within 10 years. The circumstances faced by self-employed social workers, who rank higher on almost every professionalisation indicator (i.e. formal education, attitude toward research, internal status, wage level, autonomy), support the hypothesis about profession-driven privatisation. 相似文献
In 1992, the management of the social work organisation in The Hague concluded a controversial agreement with the municipal social services. Under this contract, clients referred to the social work organisation by the municipal social services would be made eligible for regular jobs on the labour market. The clients who were referred had obligations of their own: their benefits would be reduced if they did not cooperate. The social work organisation guaranteed contractually a success rate of 60% within a pre-determined period. For this ‘product’, the municipal social services paid a fixed amount of money each year.
The article describes the professional manner in which the social workers in The Hague dealt with the contract. 相似文献
The development of a new distance learning MA social work programme in which units are studied alongside part-time placements afforded opportunities for innovation in curriculum delivery, alongside increasing connections with learning on placement. Practice educators were invited to respond to an online mixed methods survey exploring their perceptions of the programme and views as to how greater integration of academic and practice learning can be achieved in social work education generally. Analysis of the results identified the important role which supervision with the practice educator can play in integrating learning on placement with the academic curriculum. The paper concludes that a greater focus on learning from practice may offer opportunities to maximise the learning potential of the placement as social work's signature pedagogy. 相似文献
‘Street-level bureaucracy’ is the theoretical reference framework for interpreting the interviews. Assessments and decisions of the child welfare service in custody cases vary from one service to another. It is relatively difficult to predict whether the notifications will be investigated or dropped. Decisions are the result of a jigsaw puzzle of risk assessment, interpretations of legislation, cooperative procedures and an understanding of the county social welfare board. Notifications concerning violence and notifications from family counselling offices stand out since generally they result in investigations.
Child welfare services' handling of notifications regarding custody questions is challenging as these cases are in the grey zone between the Children Act and the Child Welfare Act. Child welfare workers want clearer guidelines for the cases on which they are to work. However, new rules cannot replace the professional and ethical assessments the child welfare service workers have to make in each individual case. 相似文献
IMPLICATIONS
Human service organisations in Australia are subject to change and uncertainty with new models of funding and increased accountability.
Social workers employed as managers are under pressure to lead sustainable and accountable services, while still holding to social work principles.
Social workers who manage organisations face a challenge of how to integrate business, management, and finance skills with the values and mission of social work.
The Swedish ‘woman friendly’ welfare state was built on the recognition, through social policy, of the interrelationship among care, material resources, and public voice. The interrelationship was embodied in what I call the ‘social individual’, and articulated in public child care and other policies and collective services. The adequacy of those universal policies and services was frequently judged by the situation of lone mothers, who ceased being ‘deviant’, and often became a model for understanding the interrelationship. Cross-class solidarity among women was a prerequisite for, and was built on, the social individual. This solidarity is now threatened by neoliberal economic and social policies that fragment care, resources, and voice, and therefore the social individual.
It is possible to challenge the downsizing of welfare states by moving the terms of discussion away from the poor as deviant other, acknowledging that all women have much in common with the targets of current policy making. This involves the creation of concrete social policies that embody the relationship among care, resources, and voice, and recognize the inseparability of community, work and family. 相似文献
IMPLICATIONS
More social work literature on the coercive powers under mental health legislation is needed as well as more guidance on using these powers for social workers in practice.
In some circumstances, these coercive powers may be better exercised by social workers than by other professionals.
Social workers should carefully consider their legal and ethical obligations to use these powers in some circumstances.
The importance of maximising upon the symbiotic relationship between agencies and educational institutions is stressed, in order to ensure that the rhetoric of partnership is translated into action. 相似文献
IMPLICATIONS
Service system reform is increasing engagement of social workers with people with disabilities, yet disability has a low profile in the profession.
Social work disability research has strengths in understanding service systems, social relationships, and strategies for social and civic participation, particularly with adults with cognitive disabilities.
Increased attention to disability in qualifying and higher degree programs will better prepare students for complex practice and develop the distinctive contribution of social work research in this interdisciplinary field.
IMPLICATIONS
It is incumbent on social work to respond to the mounting evidence related to the environmental crisis.
Social work is well placed in terms of theory, values, and skills to lead the way in developing an eco-social paradigm of potential relevance across disciplines.
Social work educators need to educate students about emerging issues, such as environmental degradation. Embedding material in already existing courses, as per examples provided in this paper, provides one way of doing this.
IMPLICATIONS
Supervised placements are designed to integrate practice and academic learning but their future use as the single means for achieving this integration will be unsustainable.
Drawing on an ecological orientation enables social work educators to position sustainability as a key consideration and response to current constraints in higher education and the field.
Focusing on sustainability across policy, practice, and regulation contexts has potential to generate transformative change that enhances our effectiveness in futureproofing the design of integrative learning in social work.
Utilizing a constructive narrative approach, eight experienced EAP mental health practitioners participated. Two semi-structured, face-to face, individual interviews were used to gain their perspectives. Qualitative software assisted thematic analysis. The findings included a main theme identified as participants’ concrete strategies used in EAP with two subthemes. The second main theme identified abstract strategies with six subthemes.
EAP provides a holistic framework as social workers incorporate horses and natural environments in practice, which is consistent with systems theory. The findings inform experienced mental health practitioners to be effective therapists and educators, as well as to instill confidence in novices. Recommendations for the application of the findings in social work practice, education, and research are explained. 相似文献
Poverty and social exclusion affect many different aspects of people's lives. They exist when people are denied opportunities to work, to learn, to live healthy, active and fulfilling lives …
Department of Social Security, September 1999, p. 3 相似文献
The article draws upon the PhD thesis entitled The Genealogy of Social Work: The Struggle to Turn the Poor and Marginalized into Free Persons by the author. 相似文献
The main findings are the following. The majority of referrals concern adolescents, which indicates that addressing youth problems—such as delinquency—is a substantial part of Swedish child welfare work. In the younger age group, it seems that the referral rate in Sweden occupies a medium position in an international context. The level of personnel resources designated to process these referrals is remarkable high, indicating that the Swedish child welfare system operates differently from the system in, for example, the USA. Mandated reporters submit the majority of the referrals, which holds particularly for the adolescent group. Despite relatively high referral rates in Sweden, reported conditions are markedly vague and rarely concern the abuse and neglect dimension. Results are discussed with particular attention to the Swedish child welfare context and the concept of child maltreatment.
Föreliggande artikel behandlar ett svagt utforskat område inom svensk barnavård, nämligen omfattningen av och egenskaper hos anmälningar till socialtjänsten där barn misstänks fara illa. Fyra frågeställningar avhandlas: (1) anmälningsfrekvens; (2) socialarbetares arbetsbelastning; (3) vilka som anmäler, samt; (4) vilka typ av problem som anmäls.
Artikeln presenterar följande huvudsakliga resultat. För det första rör majoriteten av anmälningar ungdomar. Detta tyder på att tyngdpunkten för svensk barnavård skiljer sig markant från flera andra länder. För det andra befinner sig prevalensen av anmälningar rörande yngre barn i ett mellanskikt vid en internationell jämförelse. För det tredje förefaller svensk barnavård i ett internationellt perspektiv ha markant större personalresurser avdelade för arbetet med de inkomna anmälningarna. Detta tyder på att arbetssätten i svensk barnavård skiljer sig åt i jämförelse med till exempel USA. För det fjärde framkommer att majoriteten av anmälningarna görs av aktörer som omfattas av anmälningsplikt. För det femte är de förhållanden som anmäls—trots en relativt hög prevalens av anmälningar i Sverige—tämligen vaga och rör i låg utsträckning olika typer av misshandel samt vanvård. Resultaten diskuteras med särskilt tonvikt på såväl specifika egenskaper i svensk barnavård som det—i anglosaxisk forskning och praktik—centrala begreppet ‘child maltreatment’. 相似文献
This research-based article presents the results of a study examining job satisfaction among social workers in public social services in Crete, Greece. It focuses on their overall job satisfaction, as well as on their satisfaction or dissatisfaction with intrinsic, extrinsic and organisational work aspects. The results of this study suggest that while respondents experienced a quite high level of overall satisfaction with their job, other indicators of job satisfaction showed that the level of job satisfaction was not so high. The main sources of respondents’ satisfaction were intrinsic work aspects while the main sources of dissatisfaction were organisational and extrinsic work aspects. Respondents’ job satisfaction was found to be significantly correlated with: the years of unemployment before respondents first worked as social workers, the number of social workers working in the organisation, and their intention to leave or change their present job.
With the advent of welfare reform, recipients of Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) are now required to enter the workforce. This workforce entry brings the need for child care. Two problems concerning child care emerge: poor women participating in the workforce at entry level jobs often require child care during hours when care is not readily available (Miranne & Young, 1998); and welfare reform s work requirement will necessitate a predicted ten percent increase in child care services (Maynard, 1989), while only a four percent increase in funding for child care is being mandated by the federal government (Blank, 1997). This essay explores welfare reform and its effect on child care availability by demonstrating its impact at a local level. 相似文献
Methods. University personnel conducted 209 interviews using semi-structured questionnaires.
Results. Family problems were reported to be related to poverty, parents’ alcohol abuse, the child's behaviour, the child's lack of social skills, domestic conflicts and problems getting adequate housing. The view of the majority of the respondents was that social orphanhood depends on poverty, alcohol abuse and the family's diminished role in society. Family incomes have improved but services have become more expensive. The social workers mostly put the child, not the family, in focus. Alcohol abuse was considered to be a greater problem in wealthier regions. Analyses between key groups showed that the respondents ranked problems differently, had similar ways of defining important objectives, but had divergent opinions on what social work could achieve concerning, for example, re-establishing the child's contacts with his/her biological parents.
Conclusions. The respondents seem to be highly ambivalent toward alcohol abuse as a social problem and toward biological parents in vulnerable families. Social work in the regions is a profession in the process of formation. 相似文献
Social work theory and practice emphasises critical appraisal of policy and embraces issues of power, discrimination and oppression. Social work educators should therefore be especially alert to the complex ethical questions which these kinds of collaborations raise, and adept at finding practical solutions or workable compromises. This article explores these ethical and political issues with reference to a project to develop social work practice learning in a Russian oblast’ (region). The project was an ambitious partnership of British, Ukrainian and Russian educators, involving numerous Russian social work and related agencies, and four Russian universities and colleges in one oblast’. The authors use a series of vignettes to help the reader achieve insights into these East–West transactions. The article concludes with a discussion of different interpretations of these dealings, using three prisms: technical assistance, neo-colonialism and mutual trade. 相似文献
This article explores the complex factors, both individual and social, that contribute to the resiliency and academic achievement of six adolescent African immigrant students from Cape Verde and Ethiopia who were enrolled in a small high school in the United States. The school was designed specifically for recent adolescent immigrant students. Using an in-depth qualitative case study research design, this study provides insight into the educational and social issues confronted by these students and the factors that contributed to their resiliency. The competencies and social capital that students acquired in school and at home were major contributing factors to their resilience and academic achievement. Findings show that these students had a supportive social network of family and friends who had encouraged them to succeed in school and provided mentoring, and material and social resources that helped them to succeed. In addition, teachers encouraged and engaged the students by having high expectations and connecting them to the curriculum in meaningful ways. 相似文献