‘Baptism of Fire’: The First Year in the Life of a Newly Qualified Social Worker

This paper describes research commissioned by Skills for Care South West to identify and track the learning and development needs of newly qualified social workers through their first year of employment. The perceptions of 22 newly qualified social workers based in statutory settings are reported concerning the effectiveness of the social work degree (England), their induction and probationary periods and their progress towards post-qualifying social work education as part of their continuing professional development. The perspectives of line managers, people who use services and carers are also discussed. Findings from the research suggest that the social work degree has been well received by most newly qualified social workers and highlights the perceived importance of a statutory placement for social work degree students. Key social work practice skills that require further development are identified and a rationale is presented for greater investment in the induction and probationary periods of newly qualified social workers.     

Migration of Professional Social Workers: Reflections on Challenges and Strategies for Education

International migration of social workers has had, in recent years, a substantial influence on the political agenda of different countries in the world, and is fraught with challenges. In some countries, recruitment of internationally qualified social workers has even become an important strategy to meet staffing demands and to fill shortages in the social work profession. This paper aims to promote debate on the key role of social work educators in assisting social work students and practitioners to practise within both a national and an international context, by reflecting on specific practice examples from Canada, England and South Africa. We explore challenges, as well as possible strategies for adaptation in new contexts, such as the facilitation of additional training, globally comparable social work programmes, and the development of a stronger professional identity, based on integrated social work values. We conclude that by enabling a stronger professional identity through the development of professional virtues, social workers will be empowered to become more confident practitioners and internationally more adaptable.     

Danish and Norwegian hospital social workers’ cross-institutional work amidst inter-sectoral restructuring of health and social welfare

Starting in the 2000s, Denmark and Norway have undergone extensive restructuring of their health-related social benefit programmes, including how they are governed. Several reforms have sought to enhance inter-sectoral collaboration. Aiming at ensuring patients’ faster return to work, policy-makers have instituted economic incentives to both individuals and the health and welfare organisations who handle them. Through an institutional logics approach, this paper explores how hospital social workers in these countries are experiencing these changes. The ‘social’ part of post-treatment care and rehabilitation receives more attention in the Norwegian institutional set-up than in the Danish, and whilst challenges are experienced in both countries, in group interviews Danish social workers in particular express concerns about the implications of the accelerated return-to-work focus. In both countries, they report increasing difficulties in ‘making their way through’ the state-municipal bureaucracy. However, by drawing on the formal health knowledge derived from medical settings and the symbolic capital it bestows on them, they often manage to negotiate the work-and-welfare services, thereby transforming the social context for the patients.     

Fit for Purpose? Post-Qualifying Social Work Education in Child Protection in Scotland

Recommendations for post-qualifying training and education in child protection social work consistently form part of the political response to child abuse scandals. The influence of child abuse politics upon the push towards post-qualifying training and education has been consistent across the United Kingdom. Within Scotland educators have been quick to respond to the market demand for programme provision and there is now a growing number of academic programmes being offered by higher education institutions. Yet despite post-qualifying training and education achieving the status of ‘panacea’ there is little in the way of a national dialogue about what post-qualifying training and education in social work child protection should look like. The parameters of this have not been subject to any kind of national debate and the Scottish academic community has not entered into a professional dialogue on these issues. More crucially, educators have not engaged in any level of identifiable evaluation of their provision and there is an absence of engagement with the scholarship of teaching child protection at the post-qualifying level. This paper connects with these issues to question whether the post-qualifying training and education delivered by Scotland's universities can be considered fit for purpose.     

From the Mouths of Mothers: Can Drama Facilitate Reflective Learning for Social Workers?

This article explores and evaluates a cross-disciplinary small-scale project using applied theatre in social work education. The aim was to provide an ‘Affective Encounter’ where students could practice empathic engagement, understanding of the needs of children who have been sexually abused and their protective parents/carers and engage in the complexities of working with family members who may be resistant. The workshop took place five times over a period of three years and was attended by children and families social workers on a one year post-qualifying graduate diploma course. While the use of verbatim theatre does not offer a guarantee of factual truth, it provided the students with some performed moments of personal testimony which was taken word-for-word from mothers whose children had been sexually abused. This allowed the social workers to hear the marginalised narratives of the protective mothers and to practice without a negative impact on the service user. The evaluation identified from self-report the development of emotional and practical skills and knowledge of available resources. This paper focuses on the emotional skills reported and two emerging themes are discussed: learning for humane practice, and the use of this pedagogical approach to encourage affective reflection.     

Beliefs in child care: social work consensus and lack of consensus on issues of parenting and decision-making

This paper describes the results of a study that explored social worker's beliefs and opinions about ‘good enough’ parenting and about decision-making in child care and protection. Subjects were qualified social workers from throughout Scotland who were students on post-qualifying courses. Q sorts were used to gather data about significant clusters of opinion. Subjects were asked to rank statements that covered issues of parenting environments, children's needs, damaging environments and decision-making. The findings indicate confidence in the child care system and a consensus about damaging environments. Issues about which there is disagreement suggest where further practice guidance could be helpful. Copyright © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Promises and Pitfalls: Involving Service Users and Carers in Social Work Manager Education

Partnership working occupies an increasing amount of social work managers' time and budget, requiring skills and abilities not always developed previously within social work programmes. Much discussion around partnership working centres on building collaborative inter-agency and inter-professional relationships with less emphasis on the need to ensure good working relationships with service users and carers, despite their being the ultimate recipients of the process. This article explores efforts to develop a focus on service users and carers within a module for social work managers as part of post-qualifying (PQ) social work education. It documents a process where, initially, service users and carers provided personal testimonies of being recipients of services and then subsequently occupied more authoritative roles within teaching, to the current position when they are again less actively involved.

In describing these developments it explores possible reasons why involving service users and carers within this module has proved challenging. The article acknowledges that there is relatively limited literature about the involvement of service users and carers in PQ education. It suggests that lessons learned from involving service users and carers in qualifying social work training cannot directly be transposed to the post-qualifying context.     

Poverty,exclusion and child protection practice: the contribution of ‘the politics of recognition&respect’

The affective dimensions of poverty, including the impact of wider policy discourses and services that ‘other’ and shame people in poverty, are increasingly recognized. In response, Lister [(2013). Power, not Pity: Poverty and Human Rights. Ethics and Social Welfare, 7(2), 109–123] advocates for ‘a politics of recognition&respect’ that centralizes the voices, participation and lived experiences of those who live in poverty. This paper considers how applying Lister’s theory could improve child protection (CP) social work in England, from a human rights and social justice perspective. The paper draws on findings from an ATD Fourth World participatory research project aimed at updating the course content for a pre-existing social worker training module on poverty awareness. The project brings together families with experience of poverty and CP interventions, social work practitioners and academics.     

Post-Qualifying Education for Social Workers: A Continuing Problem or a New Opportunity?

Between 1990 and 2012 there was a national system for regulating post-qualifying social work education in England. Since then social work has been expected to take a more flexible approach to continuing professional development (CPD) which recognises the contribution played by work-based and self-directed learning alongside higher education awards. While universities can continue to offer post-qualifying courses, it is envisaged that they will work more closely with employers in deciding what should be taught and how. This article is based on a scoping review of post-qualifying social work education in England which highlights the paucity of knowledge about the topic. Although achieving a post-qualifying award is associated with improved knowledge and confidence, little is known about the long-term effects on individuals, organisations and service users. There appears to be a complete absence of evidence on cost effectiveness. As yet, we know very little about the extent of self-directed CPD among social workers and current funding constraints are likely to limit the resources that organisations invest in CPD for their workforce. In a rapidly changing context, the article seeks to provide a baseline from which an agenda for future research into CPD among social workers can be shaped.     

Work–Life ‘Balance’, Recession and the Gendered Limits to Learning and Innovation (Or,Why It Pays Employers To Care)

The everyday challenges faced by workers ‘struggling to juggle’ competing commitments of paid work, home and family remain stubbornly persistent and highly gendered. Reinforcing these problems, many employers regard work–life balance (WLB) provision as too costly. In response, this paper explores the learning and innovation advantages that can result from WLB provision in knowledge‐intensive firms, as part of a WLB ‘mutual gains’ research agenda. These synergies are explored through a case study of IT workers and firms in two high‐tech regional economies — Dublin, Ireland and Cambridge, UK — prior to (2006–8) and subsequent to (2010) the economic downturn. The results suggest that by making available the kinds of WLB arrangements identified by workers as offering meaningful reductions in gendered work–life conflicts, employers can also enhance the learning and innovation processes within and between firms, which are widely recognized as fundamental for firms' long‐term sustainable competitive advantage.     

W(h)ither the academy? An exploration of the role of university social work in shaping the future of social work in Europe

A controversial proposal to pilot the training of child protection social workers through an intensive work-based route in England is being supported and funded by the UK Government. Frontline, the brainchild of a former teacher, locates social work training within local authorities (‘the agency’) rather than university social work departments (‘the academy’) and has stimulated debate amongst social work academics about their role in shaping the direction of the profession. As a contribution to this debate, this paper explores the duality of social work education, which derives its knowledge from both the academic social sciences and the experience of practice within social work agencies. While social work education has traditionally been delivered by the academy, this paper also explores whether the delivery of training in the allied professions of probation and nursing by ‘the agency’ is equally effective. Finally, this paper explores the Helsinki model which achieves a synergy of ‘academy’ and ‘agency’. It suggests that there are alternative models of social work education, practice and research which avoid dichotomies between the ‘academy’ and the ‘agency’ and enable the profession to be shaped by both social work academics and practitioners.     

Earning Their Keep and Keeping What They Earn: A Critique of Organizing Strategies for South Asian Women in the Informal Sector

It is now widely understood that the needs of women workers in the informal sector are not met by the conservative practices of labour organizations and trade unions. While the contribution of women to the economies of developing countries is critical, women rarely find employment in the regulated unionized sectors of these countries, and are found instead in overwhelming numbers in the sector that is variously termed ‘unorganized’, ‘unprotected’, ‘unregistered’ or ‘informal.’ This article addresses the situation of women in the informal economy in South Asia. The author explores the major challenges and opportunities facing women in their efforts to organize and mobilize for change. She also provides a critical analysis of the different types of interventions adopted by the state and civil society organizations in South Asia to empower women in the informal sector. The author concludes with an attempt to identify the mix of interventions and strategies most needed for different social, political and economic circumstances.     

The Experiences of Care Leavers (Post-care Adults) in Social Work Education

This paper explores the experiences of social work students on qualifying degree programmes in the UK who have previously been in care or ‘looked after’. Using a sample drawn from three social work programmes in the North West of England, a semi-structured interview schedule was constructed, with the support of social workers who had been in the care system, to examine the individual journeys of 11 students. This paper aims to explore, with this group of students, how their experiences relate to their decision to apply for a place on a social work course, their experience of admission and the duration of the programme. The paper is of particular relevance to social work educators and makes specific suggestions regarding how current practice in social work education might improve.     

Transitioning from ‘outside observer’ to ‘inside player’ in social work: practitioner and student perspectives on developing expertise in decision-making

ABSTRACT

This paper reports on a six-year qualitative study of social workers’ perspectives on factors influencing decision-making in children and families social work in England. Data collected between 2010 and 2016 reflect frontline practice during a period of substantial change and reform in UK social work. This paper builds on an earlier analysis with data from all three stages of the study capturing the lived experiences of practitioners ranging from student social workers to qualified advanced practitioners in management roles. Data from 9 focus groups comprising 51 participants were analysed using grounded theory. Data analysis generated four representative categories: developing agency in the social work role; troubling emotions; transitions in the development of expertise and the impact of organisational cultures in children and families social work services. An emerging theoretical framework is presented. This identifies the significance of transitions and threshold concepts in the development of the social work professional from the role of students as ‘outside players looking in’ through to the expertise of qualified practitioners as ‘inside players’ within organisations. Recognising periods of liminality, transitional learning and uncertainties in developing decision-making expertise may be of significant benefit to social work education and the profession.     

Learning from the ‘Trojan horse’? The arrival of ‘Anti-Social Behaviour Orders’ in Ireland

The Republic of Ireland is about to introduce Anti-Social Behaviour Orders (ASBOs) similar to those introduced in England under the Crime and Disorder Act 1998. Following Bourdieu and Wacquant, it is maintained that England is apt to play the role of a ‘Trojan horse’ transporting American responses to crime and ‘disorder’ into Europe. Moreover, the perspective of Bourdieu and Wacquant provides a more political and complete account of ‘policy transfer’ dynamics than is provided in most mainstream accounts. Nonetheless, there is still a need to recognise the sheer complexity of ‘policy transfers’ and, in the case of ASBOs, the particular Irish and wider European contexts are immensely significant. It is maintained that social workers and associated social professions in Ireland should support the Irish Coalition Against ASBOs as part of a strategy which seeks to promote social policies which are more in keeping with the aims of the International Federation of Social Workers.     

Excluding exceptions: Housing non-affordability and the oppression of environmental sustainability?

This paper explores the provision of homes for less wealthy households in rural England. By allowing ‘exceptions’ to UK planning law to provide low-income housing for local residents, the national government seeks to secure dwellings for the less wealthy and so sustain socially mixed rural villages. This paper explores how the production of homes through the exception policy is not conducive to the construction of many new houses. The particular emphasis in the paper is on how responsible agents are discouraged from being more active in erecting new village homes for low-income households. Empirically, the paper draws on documents, interviews and a social survey in the counties of Bedfordshire, Cambridgeshire and Norfolk to investigate the process of delivering rural exception homes. It is concluded that, despite Government assertions that a socially mixed countryside is desirable, the decision-making criteria that dominate the worldviews of agents in social housing provision work against this outcome.     

The comfort of strangers: social work,modernity and late Victorian England—Part II

This is the second of two related articles on the history of social work in late Victorian England. In the previous article I showed that the emergence of social work was best understood by aligning it with the complex cultural system of modernity. In this paper the influence of modernity on the formation of social work is taken further by focusing on the way that regimes of practice were shaped by material, physical and visual elements. A distinctive set of spatio-temporal elements are identified that have hitherto been overlooked in ‘histories of social work’. The paper shows how the power of place, and the power over place in early social work, relates directly to the modern experience of Victorian England while shaping the remit of contemporary social work. Home visits, for example, meant that social workers could for the first time attempt to ‘regulate at a distance’, and involved what is referred to as the ‘domestication of stranger relations’. The paper further explores the way in which the history of social work can benefit from exploring the experience-content of early social workers and how organizational imperatives for charity relief were often formed from the bottom-up during this period. At the end of the paper there are some considerations about the way in which a European approach to the history of social work can be instructive and beneficial.     

Reflective practice in a process for the re-approval of ASWs: An exploration of some inevitable resistance

In this article a mental health trainer and a group facilitator explore the background to developing a new protocol to manage the re-approval of mental health social workers in an inner London borough. The new procedure involved social workers attending a series of small group sessions in which they were invited to present and reflect on their work with clients. The dynamics of these sessions and particularly some of the transferential material between group members and facilitator are explored here. The significance for mental health social work, post-qualifying learning and the possibilities of reflective practice is considered.     

Social Work and Drug Use Teaching: A Personal View from Lancaster University

This article offers a personal view about teaching the module ‘Social Work and Drug Use’ at a university in the North West of England, UK. It describes the establishment of the module and the development of the module content over the years. It discusses the nature of teaching the subject within a research focused establishment and the problems this presents. This is all contextualized within the campaign to have social work and drug use as a compulsory part of the national social work curriculum.