Opiate Dependent Women and Their Babies: A Study of the Multidisciplinary Work of a Hospital and a Local Authority

Correspondence to Patricia Kearney, 11 Wickham Gardens, London SE4 1LY. Summary The study examines a multi-disciplinary approach to the treatmentof opiate dependent pregnant women and their babies, with particularregard to statutory child protection responsibilities. It reviewsthirteen births with a follow up period of three years.     

Nearest and Dearest? The Neglect of Lesbians in Caring Relationships

Correspondence to Jill Manthorpe, Social Care Workforce Research Unit, King's College London, 150 Stamford St, London SE1. E-mail: jill.manthorpe{at}kcl.ac.uk Summary The article argues that caring within lesbian relationshipshas been ignored in social and health care studies and practice.It critiques the dominance of caring debates by relationshipsbetween parents and children and partnerships, but with theunspoken presumption that those involved are heterosexual. Thepaper concludes that social workers should engage with lesbiancarers in supporting individuals and networks. It draws outa range of implications for policy, practice and research agendas.     

Factors Predicting Admission of Elderly People to Local Authority Residential Care

Correspondence to Dr Ian Sinclair, Director of Research, National Institute for Social Work. Mary Ward House, 5–7 Tavistock Place, London WCIH 955 Summary Successful community care may partly depend on identifying thoseat risk of entering residential homes and targeting servicesto them. This article is concerned with how this identificationcan be achieved. It considers a sample of old people livingalone. in touch with home helps or social workers and followedup for between two and four years. The research examined thefactors likely to produce admission, and used discriminant analysisto predict it.     

An Innovative Project for Young People in Care Who have been Sexually Abused

Correspondence to Willm Mistral, The Mental Health Research and Development Unit, 3 East, 2.10, University of Bath, Bath BA2 7AY,UK. E-mail W.Mistral{at}bath.ac.uk Summary Professional awareness of child mental health problems and sexualabuse has increased greatly over the past 20 years, and thisis especially true for young people under the care of socialservices. The current paper provides an overview of the researchliterature on needs and service provision in this area. It goeson to describe an innovative interagency project in Dorset whichoffers flexible, fast track intervention packages to lookedafter young people with a profile indicating sexual abuse, whohave been reluctant to engage with conventional child and adolescentmental health services. The paper includes preliminary resultsfrom an evaluation of this project and discusses the implicationfor future service provision.     

Aspects of Social Work on a Cancer Research and Treatment Unit in a London Teaching Hospital

Summary With the rapid growth of technology and science in society today,an increasingly large number of people are becoming patientsin specialized research and treatment units. The reorganizationof social work support to the health service is upon us, andgreat care must be taken to ensure that this important groupof clients will receive the social work help it needs. The paper is based on work in a cancer unit in a London teachinghospital and seeks to illustrate ways in which the work is specialized     

Understanding Adolescent Female Prostitution: A Literature Review

Correspondence to Dr Jill Jesson. Aston Business School, Aston Triangle, Birmingham B47 7ET. Summary Sexual behaviour and sexuality are currently topical issuesof concern for child care social workers. Social workers arespending more and of more of their time with children who comeinto care because of sexual abuse, or who have an involvementin the ‘rent’ scene or Prostitution. In additionmany teenage young women come into care because of social orparental concern over their lsquo;promiscuous’ behaviour.The review of research on adolescent prostitution offers severalexplanations for involvement in prostitution. which vary accordingto the discipline of the author. Explanations vary from pathologicaland personal psychology factors to the wider social aspectsof the family and local environment. This literature reviewwas used as a basis for research which examined the incidenceof female prostitution for a social services department. Thisis a relatively new field of interest and consequently thereis very little British research published on the issue of adolescentprostitution, or on under age (16) prostitution. There is nopublished research on girls in care and prostitution. We needto know much more about the reality of young people's livesbefore social workers can offer a meaningful response.     

Slovenian Social Work: A Case Study of Unexpected Developments in the post-1990 Period

Correspondence to Dr Shulamit Ramon, London School of Economics, Department of Social Policy and Administration, Houghton Street, London WC2A 2AE. Summary The paper contextualizes Slovenian social work in terms of thepolitical, social, economic and cultural changes which Sloveniahas gone through recently. The frame-work of social work educationand services is then outlined. Two major examples of unexpectedinnovative social work projects are outlined and analysed. Theimplications of these examples to Slovenian social work practiceand theory are looked at in the conclusions.     

Commonality and Diversity in Feminist Social Work

Correspondence to Vicky White, Department of Applied Social Studies, University of Warwick, Coventry CV4 7AL. Summary The relationship between feminist social workers and women serviceusers is a central concern in the feminist social work literature.The literature's discussion of feminist social worker/womanservice user relationships, along the dimensions of commonalityand diversity, is compared with the experiences and understandingsof feminist social workers who participated in a small-scalequalitative study. Two main themes are considered: first, commonalityin feminist social worker/woman service user relationships;secondly, diversity amongst women service users. Issues forfuture work are drawn out of the discussion of these themes:the problematic nature of feminist social worker/woman serviceuser commonality; the impact of social divisions other thangender on women service users' lives; the importance of unpackinggeneralizations about both women service users and feministsocial workers; the need to explore the intersections of thestatutory context and feminist social work identities. It isargued that in addressing these issues future work would beenriched if greater prominence were given to feminist practitioners'perspectives, experiences and understandings.     

Differential Assessment of Residential Group Care for Children and Young People

Summary Twelve qualitative variables frame the production of outcomesin residential group care for children and young people. Theseare used to examine contemporary themes in social care practicewith children and families. This assessment typology offerssocial workers, managers, researchers and policy-makers bothvalid and reliable baseline measures for use in evaluating residentialservices for children and young people. The typology also providescomparative interval measures for use in longitudinal evaluationsof quality. Close attention needs to be given to the impacteach of these variables has on the quality of residential groupcare services offered to children, young people and their familiesor significant others.     

A Bedroom for Sheila Cooperton

Summary A series of interviews with a young West Indian girl livingin London reveals the profound effect of housing conditions,and the architecture of poverty generally, on the psychologicaldevelopment of the adolescent. In the reported interviews, whichhave been reconstructed, one begins to appreciate how not havingsomething as simple as one's own bedroom may influence a child'sfeelings about sexuality, sex role distinctions, family, intimacyand the emergence of her very identity. Most significantly,perhaps, is the fact that the child herself (her name has beenchanged) recognizes the relationship between environmental deprivationand the substance of conscious and unconscious materials.     

Adolescents in Care and their Social Workers: A Research Note

Summary There has recently been an increasing concern that young people,and especially those in residential care, should be encouragedto express their views, and that the views expressed shouldbe used in improving the care which they receive. The publicationof the Who Cares? booklet (Page and Clarke¹), and the emergenceof ‘Who Cares’ groups and the ‘Voice of theChild in Care’ organisation, is evidence of this concern.In sympathy with these developments has been a study of adolescents'perceptions of social workers, and a part of this research hasincluded a pilot study of the views of adolescents living intwo family group homes.     

Informal care in farming families in Northern Ireland: some considerations for social work

Summary This paper is the result of a study of the dynamics of care-givingwithin farming families in Northern Ireland. It is argued thatwhilst much is known about informal care, existing knowledgeis largely urban based and quantitative, and therefore limited.Following in-depth interviews with 'farm wives' it is concludedthat for these women care-giving patterns are dependent on aparticular set of cultural expectations and norms. Within farmingfamilies there is much resistance to becoming involved withformal social services. Outside help with the care of one'selderly relatives is often seen as an admission of failure,as there is a pride in being able to look after one's familymembers. Users of social services, which still evoke associationswith the Poor Law, are highly stigmatized. It is claimed thatfor these women the concept of 'carer' has no bearing on theirlives and is not something to which they can relate. The paperchallenges the depiction of caring as a one-sided difficultrelationship where the person being cared for is a passive recipient.It is suggested that caring is not necessarily oppressive butmay be rewarding and positive. It concludes that if social workersare to support and facilitate informal care they must be awareof and fully understand the diversity of care provision andthe different contexts in which care is undertaken. If interventionis to take place then it must be sensitive to the deeply embeddedideas and perceptions that exist within farming families.     

Ambiguity and User Involvement: Issues Arising in Assessments for Young People and their Carers

Correspondence to Peter R. Day CRSP, Department of Social Sciences, Loughborough University of Technology, Loughborough, Leicestershire LE 11 3TU. Summary Issues for service users and professional staff arising fromcontemporary community care policies emphasizing user involvementare reviewed. Against the background of a key expression ofthese policies, the Disabled Persons' Act of 1986, methods ofproviding assessments involving young people with learning disabilitieswere analysed. Problems identified for further study includeddifficulties arising for young people due to lack of experienceand immaturity, the low expectations of their parents or carers,problems arising from the culture of services and how assessmentsmay be developed which provide seriously disabled users themselveswith ways of expressing their wants and needs.     

Responding to Youth Crime in Scotland

Correspondence to Bill Whyte, Director, Criminal Justice Social Work Development Centre for Scotland, School of Social and Political Studies, University of Edinburgh, Flat 1FR, 31 Buccleuch Place, Edinburgh EH8 9LJ. E-mail: B.Whyte{at}ed.ac.uk Summary Scotland’s Children’s Hearings deal with young peoplewho offend within an integrated system dealing also with youngpeople in need of care and protection, on the assumption thatthe difficulties of both groups have similar roots in multiplesocial disadvantage and social adversity (Whyte, 1998a). A government-fundedstudy, one of the first since the system’s inception in1971, was commissioned to examine the social characteristicsof over 1,000 children and young people referred for offenceand nonoffence reasons. This paper describes the characteristicsof 465 of the young people who were referred specifically foroffending. It provides the first ‘official’ datain twenty-five years on young people in the system. The studyfound that most of those referred for offending had characteristicsstrikingly similar to those referred for nonoffence reasons,as predicted when the system was first established, and similarto those present in the general literature on young offendersfrom other jurisdictions. The study poses fundamental questionstaken up by the Scottish Executive’s review of youth crimeon how best to design systems and develop social interventionsthat can address offending and social disadvantage in an integratedway.     

Critical Incident Reporting -- an Approach to Reviewing the Investigation and Management of Child Abuse

Correspondence to Chris Mills, Information and Research Officer, Middlesex Area Probation Service, 4th Floor, Glen House. 200 Tottenham Court Road, London WIP 9LA. Summary It is argued that the technique of critical incident analysiscan profitably be applied to the study of human errors in theinter-agency management of child abuse. Suggestions are madefor a basis on which reporting could take place.     

Care Programming in Mental Health: assimilation and adaptation

Correspondence to Justine Schneider. PSSRU. University of Kent, Canterbury CT2 7NF. Summary Two years after the care programme approach in mental healthwas introduced there is still widespread confusion about itsmeaning and its relation to other changes in the arena of communitycare. This paper looks at how care programmes are being implementedand at whom they are being targeted. It also examines the relationbetween care management and care programming and raises somequestions about future developments in the light of communitycare reforms. It draws on data collected during 1992 from threecontrasting health districts, all of which had made considerableprogress in care programming. Sixty practitioners were interviewedabout the theory and practice of care programming. Their experienceis presented here in the context of a review of community careplans for 1992/93 which characterizes the responses of differentlocal authorities to the approach.     

Abuse of Elderly Men and Women among Clients of a Community Psychogeriatric Service

Correspondence to Gail Wilson, Department of Social Science and Administration, London School of Economics, Houghton Street, London WC2A 2AE. Summary This paper reports on a study of elder abuse among clients ofan outer London community psychogeriatric service. Staff reportedelder abuse in their caseloads over a period of one year. Reportedcases were linked with referrals. Rates of abuse for differentstaff and for different age and ethnic groups were calculated.Women were very much more likely to be abused than men and wereless likely to be abusers. Clients were frequently reportedas abusing their carers. Staff reporting rates varied widely.Training and the time available to win the trust of clientsappeared to be important variables. The staff response was limitedby lack of managerial support and by lack of developed strategiesfor dealing with abusive situations. Separation was the mostcommon response to physical violence in the home. Financialabuse was mainly dealt with by social services. Staff abusewas largely ignored.     

Identification of and Responses to Problem Drinking Amongst Social Services Users

Correspondence to Alan Lawson, Research Officer, Department of Social Services, London Borough of Hounslow, Civic Centre, Lampton Road, Hounslow, Middlesex TW 3 4DN. Summary The NHS and Community Care Act (1990) has required local authoritiesto plan for social care aspects of services for alcohol misusers.Research was therefore commissioned by senior managers of theLondon Borough of Hounslow's Social Services Department to investigatethe effect of alcohol misuse amongst Social Services users onthe work of the Department. Research methods are summarizedand the main findings and their implications are discussed.The importance of relevant training was highlighted, in particularin relation to the identification and assessment of alcoholproblems and to child protection issues.     

Building Care Management Competence in Services for People with Learning Disabilities

Correspondence to Paul Cambridge, Tizard Centre, The University of Kent at Canterbury, Canterbury, Kent CT2 7LZ, UK. Summary This paper examines care management arrangements in servicesfor people with learning disabilities. Its perspective is informedby research on the long-term outcomes and costs of care in thecommunity for people with learning disabilities (Cambridge etal., 1994) and by earlier experimental approaches to care managementin Britain. Building on arguments developed by the author ina position paper in 1992 (Cambridge, 1992), the focus here shiftsto the performance of mainstream care management in servicesfor people with learning disabilities, with an identificationand review of critical dimensions for reviewing competence.Lessons from earlier experimental and demonstration approachesare used to inform the analysis and to construct pointers forcommissioners or providers who are looking to assess the effectivenessof care management arrangements in learning disability withintheir own service systems.