'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.     

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’.     

A New Structure for Intake and Allocation in a Field Probation Unit

Summary From a background of practice and a post-qualifying fellowship,the author draws on the experiences of other Senior ProbationOfficers, as well as his own and his team members. In this article‘intake’ within the probation setting is taken asinitial agency impact as well as that part of team strategywhich has a bearing on allocating new work. Allocation and theconsequential deployment of resources are then seen as centralto the professional lives of team members. A structure is presentedwhich in practice pervades the totality of the team's life;most radical is the author's notion of allocating ‘workepisodes’. The model provides a structure for team membersto specialise in different forms of social work, and at thesame time allowing clients choice to be supervised without being‘sentenced to social work’. It also depends uponthe active use of a team as a group of interacting, interdependentprofessionals who share their work.     

Informal Networks of Care: Issues Raised by Barclay

Summary In calling for the creation of ‘community social work’,the Barclay Report argues that social workers should aim todevelop informal caring networks. This entails exploiting anindividual's informal social contacts, such as kin, friends,and neighbours, to provide care. This paper firstly examinesthe assumptions and thinking behind the concept of informalcaring networks. It then assesses the feasibility of using differentinformal relations in care provision by analysing the normativepatterning and exchange content underlying them. It concludesthat strategies like Barclay's are unlikely to be successfulbecause they entail a transformation of these relationshipsthat is incompatible with their normal organisation.     

Evaluation with One Eye Closed: The Empiricist Agenda in Social Work Research

Please address requests for reprints to Peter Raynor, Centre for Applied Social Studies, University College of Swansea, Singleton Park, Swansea SA2 8PP. Summary This paper was originally presented at a conference on ’theeffectiveness of social work‘ at Swansea in 1981. It arguesagainst a narrowly empiricist model of evaluation in socialwork, suggesting that while such a model may help to improvethe technical efficacy of methods, it can tell us little aboutthe desirability of the goals towards which our methods aredirected, or the social functions which they serve. The finalsection points to some possible resources for rational discussionof areas which ’scientific‘ models of evaluationtend to neglect.     

Implementing Community Social Work from a Social Services Department: Some Issues

Summary The proposal in the Barclay Report on the role and tasks ofsocial workers for ‘community social work’ as astrategy for social services departments is assessed The writerargues that the voluntary sector has significant roles and prioritiesoutside the social services, that government priorities forencouraging the voluntary sector emphasise other areas of workand that involving voluntary groups in official initiativesmay be seen as going against the independence of some groups.The motivation of groups and individuals in the voluntary sectorwill be important, but various research and practice shows thatindividuals, informal groups and mutual aid groups may be difficultto involve in a substantial programme. The climate of opinionin the field of volunteering and the social background of clients'neighbours may provoke hostility. Experience of community worksuggests that official initiatives may lead to resistance andconflict rather than involvement, and there may be ethical problemswith compulsion.     

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.     

Community Work with Immigrants

Summary The paper emerges from community work with an immigrant organizationin a government-sponsored Community Development Project overa two-year period. It discusses the various approaches to workingwith immigrants, including that of the local Community RelationsCouncil, reports an action research survey of immigrant need,and in particular assesses the ‘non-directive’ communitydevelopment approach to working with an immigrant organization.The implications of this study are discussed in relation tothe general potential of community work with immigrants     

The State of Welfare

Summary The word ‘welfare’ is difficult to define becauseit combines within it a range of ideologies and actions. Twoconclusions are drawn from this: first, that social servicesshould be regarded as contributors to, but not providers ofwelfare; second, that the study of social work and social administrationshould be concerned not only with the relationship of ‘service’to ‘need’ but also with societal movements and pressureswhich determine the emergence of both. The article reviews theprofessed values of the welfare state, particularly ‘socialequality’ and the problems associated with its achievement,namely public attitudes, and the discontinuity between intentionand practice in the welfare services. The implications for socialwork education and practice are considered.     

Yes Minister: Reviewing the 'Looking After Children' Experience and Identifying the Messages for Social Work Research

Correspondence to Paul Michael Garrett, Centre for Social Work, School of Sociology and Social Policy, University Park, Nottingham NG7 2RD, UK. E-mail: paul.garrett{at}nottingham.ac.uk Summary The heavily promoted Looking After Children: Good Parenting,Good Outcomes (LAC) project continues to exert a powerful influenceon social work in the UK and elsewhere. Despite the repeatedassertions that the documentation associated with LAC is embeddedin ‘objective’ research, this not sustainable onaccount of the failure of the researchers to interrogate theirown normative assumptions and judgements. Specific criticismscan also be levelled at the ‘community study’ connectedto the evolution of the Action and Assessment Records (AARs)which are the key part of the scheme. The system should alsobe viewed in the context of wider pre-occupations about ‘outcomes’.In addition, the project needs to be politically situated andthe researchers' relationship with the Department of Healthshould be more fully explored. In conclusion, it is suggestedthat the LAC experience contains important ‘messages’for the future of social work research.     

Beyond Social Constructionism: Critical Realism and Social Work

Summary Theories within the social and psychological sciences continueto shape social work practice. However, recent debates withinthese sciences on the shortcomings of ‘social constructionism’,and the attempt to overcome them through a critical realistposition, have so far failed to capture social work's attention.This paper provides a critical overview of these theoreticaldebates, highlighting the shortcomings of social constructionismfor social work. The critical realist challenge to social constructionism,as articulated by the British philosopher Roy Bhaskar, is consideredand its relevance to social work formulated in terms of a returnto ‘depth’ in practice.     

Keyworkers Re-examined: Good practice, quality of care and empowerment in residential care of older people

Correspondence to Rosemary Bland, Department of Applied Social Science, University of Stirling, Stirling FK9 4LA, Scotland Summary Social work definitions of ‘good practice’ in residentialcare which were originally developed in work with children andyoung people have also been applied to residential settingsfor other user groups, including older people. However, anylink between such elements of practice and positive outcomesfor users has not always been demonstrated. The introductionof market principles and orientations into social welfare inthe 1980s re-defined the social work ‘client’ asa ‘consumer’ with the associated power to make choicesin the area of social care. The success with which such an approachcan be applied to services for people who are very often, notin a position to exercise much choice, is debatable. Alongsidethe notion of the ‘consumer’ or ‘user’of services has grown the ideology of ‘empowerment’of people who use social work services. Drawing on findingsfrom a recent study, this article explores the contributionof the keyworker role to good practice and the empowerment ofolder people living in residential homes. It concludes that,because their understanding of the concept and practice is largelyundeveloped, the role as currently interpreted is not consonantwith good practice and tends rather to reinforce the power ofstaff.     

Regulation or fragmentation? Directions for Social Work under New Labour

Summary This article reviews the modernizing agenda of New Labour forsocial work which has been articulated in the various changesfor social work and social care announced in the ‘QualityStrategy’. Focusing predominantly on arrangements foreducation and training, the article argues that, rather thanpresenting a coherent strategy, the structures and proceduresare fragmented and unco-ordinated at many levels. A major weaknessis that New Labour has failed to clarify where it places socialwork in the structures of a ‘modernized’ welfarestate.     

The Impact of the First Term of the New Labour Government on Social Work in Britain: The Interface between Education Policy and Social Work

Summary This paper considers how far the New Labour educational policyrepresents a clear shift in focus from the policies of the Conservativeadministrations of the 1980s and 1990s. As in other areas ofsocial policy, the paper concludes that current government policyowes as much—if not more—to ‘New Right’ideology than to that of the ‘Old Left’. With anew emphasis on social inclusion, the paper considers the contributionof, and implications for, contemporary developments in educationpolicy and practice for child and family social work in general,and education social work in particular.     

Social Networks and Social Service Workers

Correspondence to Peter Sharkey, School of Law, Social Work and Social Policy, Liverpool Polytechnic, 98 Mount Pleasant, Liverpool, L3 5UZ. Summary ‘Networks’ is a word often used in the discussionof social work practice and within social services departments.It was a word which was central to the Barclay Report (1982)and important within the more recently published Griffiths Report(1988) on community care. It is a word also known to sociologistsand anthropologists through the development of ‘networkanalysis’. There is, however, a fairly wide gap betweenits use within social work and its use within social science.This article tries to explore this gap and the ways in whichsocial science ideas might have some use and relevance to socialservice workers. It does this by using some illustrative datafrom a study done of the personal networks of thirty elderlypeople who were all clients of a social service district office.     

Social Work Responses to New Labour' in Continental European Countries

Summary The re-emergence of a majority of centre-left governments incountries of the European Union was associated with the hopethat, after the neo-liberal attempts at its marginalizationand de-institutionalization, social work could regain a morevalued position in society. There are indeed indications thatthe growth of the profession continues and that social workis returning to a more explicit and official role in nationalsocial policies. However, this tends to be associated with anexpectation that social work would play its part in ‘activating’the recipients of welfare benefits in the context of the NewLeft project of shifting from social rights to social obligations.The practical and political effects of this new agenda are,however, modified greatly by the prevailing ‘welfare cultures’as well as the professional and academic discourses. This paperexplores the dilemmas and opportunities for the social professionsin Europe associated with the ‘pull’ to become incorporatedinto these new social policy agendas.     

From Hollis to the Orange Book: Developing a Holistic Model of Social Work Assessment in the 1990s

Correspondence to Margaret Lloyd, School of Social Work, University of Manchester, Dover Street, Manchester M13 9PL. Summary Amidst questioning of its essential identity, social work iscurrently developing new procedures and training programmesin assessment, traditionally one of its core activities. Thedemand for this redevelopment has been created by the changingprofessional climate in both probation and social work practice,in particular the response to legislative changes such as theNational Health Service and Community Care Act 1990. This paperexamines the established model of social work assessment inhistorical context and identifies its shortcomings for practicein the 1990s. It argues that despite the apparently diverserange of assessment tasks now undertaken by social workers andprobation officers, there remains an identifiable, common setof skills. Moreover, unless social work anchors these assessmentskills in a conceptual framework, retaining a sense of its ownhistory, the essential character of social work assessment willbe lost amidst mechanistic procedures and competing philosophies.This paper suggests a typology for making sense of the rangeof assessment tasks in current practice, arguing that this mustbe rooted in a holistic theoretical and philosophical model.The term ‘social work’ is used in its generic senseto include probation practice.     

The Trouble with Harry: Why the 'New Agenda of Life Politics' Fails to Convince

via e-mail: paul.garrett{at}nottingham.ac.uk Summary Harry Ferguson (2001), referring largely to Britain and Ireland,maintains that social work should be committed to a ‘newway of thinking’ which is rooted in ‘life politics’.This idea, uncritically grounded in the ideas of Anthony Giddensand Ulrich Beck, fails to convince because: the assertion thatwe are now living in a ‘post traditional order’is undermined by the resilience of key historical forms of regulationand control which continue, for example, to limit women's choicein the sphere of reproductive rights; identified changes inthe texture of family relations are not evidenced by research;the ‘life politics’ perspective places too greatan emphasis on human agency, choice and volition and not enoughon structural constraint; the structural location of the ‘lifepolitics’ proponents is not interrogated; the analysisis too stridently dismissive of the idea that ‘emancipatorypolitics’ should be social work's primary orientation.