Internationalizing Women's Struggle against Discrimination: The UN Women's Convention and the Optional Protocol

Correspondence to Dr Kwong-leung Tang, Department of Social Work, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shatin, Hong Kong. E-mail: kltang{at}cuhk.edu.hk Summary In the face of rampant violations of women’s human rights,women’s activism for change has extended beyond the nationalboundary. This paper discusses the importance of the UnitedNations Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discriminationagainst Women (Women’s Convention) in the promotion ofwomen’s rights. Adopted by the UN General Assembly in1979, this Convention has been ratified by over 170 nations.As an anti-discrimination treaty, it has both strengths andweaknesses. Recently, it has been strengthened through the introductionof an individual complaint mechanism (the Optional Protocol).It also provides for the conduct of special inquiry into violationsof women’s rights. To draw benefits from the Convention,women across the world must understand and act upon its keyprovisions. Social workers should support and facilitate itsimplementation by educating women about its main provisions,assisting them in the complaint procedure and overseeing states’full compliance with the Convention.     

Social Work, Sectarianism and Anti-sectarian Practice in Northern Ireland

Correspondence to Dr Jim Campbell, Department of Social Work, The Queen's University of Belfast, 7 Lennoxvale, Belfast BT9 5BY, Northern Ireland. Jim Campbell lectures in the Department of Social Work, The Queen's University of Belfast. His doctoral thesis was on the concept of violence in social and political thought. His current research interests include social policy in Northern Ireland and mental health social work Summary This paper addresses a subject relatively unknown to the Britishand international social work audience—that of trainingfor anti-sectarian practice. In doing so, it points to someof the complex, even dangerous issues raised by such trainingfor social work students and practitioners in Northern Ireland.The paper comments upon the limited but significant ways inwhich social work educators and practitioners have tried tochallenge sectarian discrimination in Northern Ireland, andproposes methods in train ing and research which might facilitatea better understanding of these processes.     

Making Judgements about parenting: The Example of Freeing for Adoption

Correspondence to Malcolm Hill, Senior Lecturer in Social work, University of Glasgow Department of Socail Administration and Soical work, Lilybank House, Bute Gardens, Glasgow G12 8RT. Summary Social workers frequently are involved in assessments aboutparenting. Thes issues are posed in a particularly Sharp formjudgements need to be made which may transfer parental rightsand reponsiblities permanently, as in cases of freeing for adoption.This article draws on a wider evaluation of freeing to identifythe key dimensions of parent child relations which influencedsocial work and work court decisions. In the majority of cases, there were requests to dispense withbirth parents' agreement to adoption. The principal corcumstanceswhich seen to warrant this involved inital neglect and/or poorbonding following by failure to respond to social work helpafter childern were in care. In most instances, the Courts endorsedthe local authorities position and granted freeing order. However,serveral judgments were in parents' favour. This was relatedsometimes to different perspectives on the relationship betweenfamily circumstances and the precise legal grounds for freeing.Also the lengthy precedures involved menat that in a few instancesthe parents had apperaed to imporve thier situation and so strengthenedthe legal case against freeing.     

An Evaluation of Family-based Intervention with Schizophrenia Using Single-system Research

Correspondence to Dr K. J. Bentley, Assistant Professor, School of Social Work, Virginia Commonwealth University, 1001 West Franklin Street, Richmond, V A 23284-2027, USA. Summary The purpose of this study was to determine the effects of ashort-term model of intervention on schizophrenic out-pattentsand their relatives. The author implemented an in-home ten sessioneducational and skills training programme adapted from existingmodels. The intervention's effects on patient's clinical statusand social functioning, relative's attitudes, and family stresswere evaluated using a multiple baseline acroos four cases,as well as pre, post, and follow-up data.     

Working in Partnership in Child Protection: The Conflicts

Correspondence to Dr Margaret Bell, Department of Social Policy and Social Work, University of York, York, UK. Summary This article critically examines the work of twenty-two localauthority social workers undertaking child protection investigations.The findings suggest that, while the social workers were committedto being (and believed their practice to be) participative,the dual tasks of making risk assessments for the conferenceand working in partnership with the families concerned producedconflicts of interests and rights. The impact of these on socialworkers' engagement with family members, on their assessments,and on the decision making process is explored. It is concludedthat the difficulties identified limit opportunities for participativepractice, and that these difficulties are endemic to the presentsystem. It is argued that these findings point up the need fora more broadly based child-care service which more appropriatelymeets the families' welfare needs, and that the contradictorynature of the conference task should be addressed by clarifyingthe legal base of the intervention and developing other modelsof decision making. Some ways forward are suggested.     

'The Social Worker as Bad Object': A Response to Marguerite Valentine

Correspondence to Nigel Thomas, Department of Social Policy and Applied Social Studies, University of Wales, Swansea, Swansea SA2 8PP. Summary Valentine's article in the British Journal of Social Work (Vol.24, No. 1, February 1994) examined the processes whereby socialwork agencies defend against feelings of blame introjected bysocial workers as a result of public projections of fear andanxiety about child abuse. One of these processes is claimedto be the increasing regulation of practice, exemplified bythe Childrens Act 1989. While welcoming Valentine's generalargument, this article argues that it contains a fundamentaland serious misreading of the Children Act.     

Selection for Professional Training: The English and the American Experience

Summary Of the many issues arising from the Vyas case in England andthe Bakke case in the United States those of positive discrimination,selection on racial grounds, the nature and purpose of professionaltraining and the nature of fairness in selection for such training,are considered.     

1998 Human Rights Act: Social Work's New Benchmark

Summary The 1998 Human Rights Act makes the European Convention on HumanRights directly enforceable by the United Kingdom's courts andtribunals. This represents a major constitutional change andwill allow statute law and common law to be assessed, or reassessed,according to the rights laid down in the Convention. This hasmany implications for social work policy makers, managers andpractitioners. It will require the Convention rights to be atthe heart of social work practice. The ability of service usersto challenge decisions by social services departments will nolonger be dependent upon the traditional approach to judicialreview. Compliance with the Convention will now feature in legalchallenges. It is essential that the practice of social workembraces the principles outlined in the Convention. In manyrespects, they are rights that practitioners and others recognizeas being basic expectations of service users, and making themdirectly enforceable can only be for the good. However, we shouldnot underestimate the effect that the legislation will have.This article outlines the legal effects of the 1998 Human RightsAct and illustrates them by reference to examples from socialwork practice.     

Managing Assessment. Quality Planning in Assessment Procedures of the Dutch Child Protection Board

Correspondence to Carolus van Nijnatten, University of Utrecht, Department of General Social Sciences, P.O. Box 80140, 3508 TC Utrecht, The Netherlands. E-mail: C.vanNijnatten{at}fss.uu.nl Summary The Child Welfare and Protection Board (CP), which plays a centralrole in Dutch child welfare is an agency of the Dutch Ministryof Justice. The CP may present petitions to the juvenile courtfor their judgement regarding the custody or guardianship ofchildren. The Board presents petitions concerning legal propositionsfor custody, suspension of the execution of custody, provisionalguardianship, and dispossession and restriction of custody.These petitions are based on an investigation of the socialconditions of the child and the family. In the past, the qualityof these investigations has often been questioned, the maincriticism being the lack of any systematic procedure and thestrong intrusion of personal opinion. Nevertheless, social workersof the CP Board often regarded potential changes to these investigationswith some apprehension because they feared the assessment proceduresmight lose their human character. More recently, the CP Boardhas experimented with a system of testing hypotheses in itsassessment procedures. In this article, we present the resultsof an evaluation of this new procedure. The results are presentedin the context of the recent debate, published in the BritishJournal of Social Work, between the advocates and opponentsof making social work more scientifically rigorous.     

Race, Self-identity and Social Work

Correspondence to Dr J. Owusu-Bempah, School of Social Work, University of Leicester, 107 Princess Road East, Leicester LE1 71, A. Summary Many people seem to accept, as self-evident, the notion thatblack children harbour unfavourable cognitions about themselvesand their racial group, and that they would rather be white.The present study investigated the prevalence of this notionamongst social work students, and also the extent of the influenceof this view on professional practice. The study involved 102postgraduate social work students at two British Universitiesin separate regions of the country. The respondents respondedindividually to three randomly distributed vignettes, whichwere identical except for the racial/ethnic origin of the principalcharacters: a white child, a child of ‘mixed-race’parentage and a black child. The respondents were required toassess the causes of the children's behaviour, as well as theirsocial and psychological needs. The results were analysed accordingto the number of respondents who mentioned particular causesof the children's behaviour and particular courses of actionto meet their needs. The analyses revealed significant differencesbetween the respondents' perception and interpretations of thechildren's behaviour. The analyses also revealed that the childrenwere differentially treated according to their race or ethnicorigin. The results are discussed in the light of assumptionsabout black self-concept, mainly derived from the social scienceliterature. The implications of the findings for the socialwork profession, individual practitioners, and their black clientsare also highlighted.     

A Study of Post-Adoption Contact in Compulsory Adoptions

Correspondence to Murray Ryburn, Department of Social Policy and Social Work, University of Birmingham, Edgbaston, Birmingham B15 2TT Summary This study examines post-adoption contact between adopted childrenand their birth relatives where adoption orders have been madeagainst the wishes of birth parents following contested courthearings. This area of adoption practice has received very littleresearch attention and the results of this study are surprising,indicating unexpectedly high levels of post-adoption contact.     

Sexual Abuse by Men who Work with Children: An Exploratory Study

Correspondence to Dr Matthew Colton, Department of Social Policy and Applied Social Studies, University of Wales Swansea, Singleton Park, Swansea SA2 8PP, UK. Summary This paper reports findings from an exploratory study on sexualabuse by men who work with children. As a first step towardsfilling a major gap in the relevant research literature, in-depthinterviews were carried out with a small sample of men servingprison sentences for sexually abusing children in their trust.The paper focuses on their accounts of their life histories,including their experiences of prison treatment programmes,and provides a detailed picture of their thinking, feelingsand motivations. In revealing how the men construct their ownsense of masculine identity within social and professional contextsthat are dominated by a heterosexual, white male hegemony, thepaper challenges purely psychological explanations of why mensexually abuse. It concludes that sexual abuse in organizationalsettings is less likely to be challenged if masculinity is notfocused on as an issue of power.     

Foster and Residential Children's Perceptions of Their Social Environments

University of Oxford, Department of Social and Administrative Studies, Barnett House, Wellington Square, Oxford OXI 2ER. Summary This paper compares foster and residential children's perceptionsof their social environments (placements). The exercise formedpart of a larger examination of care practice in special fosterhomes and Children's Homes. The application of a combinationof quantitative and qualitative techniques showed that the fosterchildren's perceptions of their placements generally comparedfavourably with those of the residential children.     

Defensive Social Work

Correspondence to Nigel Harris, Department of Philosophy, The University, Dundee DD1 4HN. Summary Social workers with child clients face the possibility thatsome mistake or oversight of theirs could lead to a child abusetragedy, for which they may suffer opprobrium and blighted careers.How can they guard against such risks? This paper shows howsocial workers might use different types of ‘defensive’measure to protect themselves. These parallel the types of measureused by some doctors, particularly in the United States, facedwith risks of litigation on grounds of malpractice. Becausedefensive practices have undesirable consequences, it is importantto find ways to eliminate their use by protecting social workersby other means.     

The Impact of Criminal Conviction Disclosure on the Self-reported Offending Profile of Social Work Students

Correspondence to University of Edinburgh, School of Social and Political Studies, 31 Buccleuch Place, Edinburgh, EH8 9JT, UK. E-mail: richard.perry{at}ed.ac.uk. Summary Data gathered at a Scottish institute of higher education between1986 and 2000 indicate a significant reduction in the scaleof self-reported offending behaviour by social work students.The change coincided with the introduction by the Central Councilfor Education and Training in Social Work (CCETSW) in 1989 ofa requirement that applicants for training disclose prior toadmission any criminal convictions recorded against them. Thearticle suggests that more prolific offenders have been deterredfrom applying to DipSW programmes and the social work professionneeds to take steps to create a more positive climate for therecruitment of those offenders who represent no more of a threatto users than non-offenders.     

Children and Literature

Correspondence to Kate Wilson, Senior Lecturer, Department of Social Policy and Social Work, University of York, Heslington, York YO1 5DD Summary The paper draws on a range of fictional and autobiographicalaccounts of childhood to illustrate different aspects of children'sperceptions and responses and to show how they can enhance theadult's ability to understand what a child is experiencing.Three themes, concerning children's perceptions and suggestibility,their sense of helplessness and difficulty in communicatingwith adults, and their responses to loss and change are illustratedthrough the work of nineteenth- and twentieth-century creativewriters. It is argued that literary accounts can work at a consciousand unconscious level in heightening our understanding, andmay also give us a perspective on how childhood experiencesinfluence the adult personality.     

Dying and Bereavement, Spirituality and Social Work in a Market Economy of Welfare

Correspondence to Margaret Lloyd, School of Social Work, University of Manchester, Oxford Road, Manchester M13 9PL Summary This paper examines the contribution of social work practiceto the care of people who are dying or bereaved. It considerscurrent challenges to traditional practice arising from societaland organizational change, reaffirming the importance of thesocial work role but arguing that, in order to face those challenges,social workers must broaden their perspective to incorporatea spiritual dimension. The paper draws on a research study conductedby the author.     

Restoring Power to Social Work Practice

Correspondence to Arnon Bar-On, Department of Social Work, University of Botswana, Private Bag 0022, Gaborone, Botswana. E-mail: bar-on{at}mopipi.ub.bw Summary Largely because they are unacquainted with power theory, socialworkers judge power as an aberration of their intentions toempower their clients and to make organizations more humane.Contrarily, this article, which explicates power and power-in-use,argues that social workers must increase their power and theirunderstanding of its dynamics and adopt a wider range of meansof influence than they currently do if they are to effectivelyhelp those society excludes and makes vulnerable.     

Scientific Management, Bureau-Professionalism, New Managerialism: The Labour Process of State Social Work

Correspondence to John Harris, Department of Social Policy and Social Work, University of Warwick, Coventry CV4 7AL, UK. E-mail: J.Harris{at}warwick.ac.uk Summary An outline is provided of radical social work writers' use ofBraverman's labour process thesis on scientific management toaccount for developments in state social work in the late 197Os/early1980s. The advocacy of a scientific management model in radicalsocial work texts is tested against the existence of a bureau-professionalsocial work labour process in the 1970s/early 1980s. The natureof this bureau-professional labour process is explored and thenused as a baseline from which to chart developments in statesocial work in the late 1980s/1990s towards a new managerialistlabour process.