Social work field education: believing in students who are living with a disability

This paper is an exploration of social work placements with students who are living with a disability. The paper discusses hurdles including censoring placements and opportunities, equal access, strategies for building a belief in ability and self-esteem. Field education is a significant part of the social work degree internationally. It allows social work students to further develop their social work identity and to apply their knowledge to professional practice through real-life learning. The paper broadens the conversation on social work placements and ability, adding some personal narratives and sharing some insights from an Australian university context.     

Social work and resettlement

Summary

This paper describes counselling in a social work agency that provides hostel accommodation for single homeless women, and works to resettle them into permanent accommodation. Given that the Barclay Report described the practice of social work as made up of the two elements of counselling and social care planning, the paper explores the way counselling is influenced when carried on in an agency with a specific ‘social care’ function. This is contrasted with counselling in agencies that offer a counselling service alone. Examples will be given of people using an attachment to a hostel, and to a worker, as they cope with change and make psychological growth. The power of such workers can only be exercised if they are true to the agency function, and gear their interventions to the task of resettlement. If workers do this they may find that as well as resettling people into accommodation, they are resettling them into life.     

Sources of variation in work disability assessment

The assessment of work disability due to health problems is a difficult task because there is no straightforward relationship between disease and disability. As a result, there is wide inter-rater variability between physicians in assessing work disability. The aim of this paper is to discuss the sources of the inter-rater variability and to describe possibilities for its reduction. A model is presented in which the process of disability assessment, the instruments used and the role of the assessor is addressed. On the basis of this model, the causes of inter-rater variability and suggestions for improvement are discussed.     

The challenges of a hidden disability: Social work practice in the field of traumatic brain injury

Abstract

Traumatic brain injury (TBI) has become an important area for social work practice. Children and adults sustaining TBI often undergo hospitalisation, rehabilitation and face the prospect of lifelong cognitive and psychosocial impairments. Families are profoundly affected by the consequences of the injury. TBI is a ‘hidden disability’ because there are typically no physical markers indicating a person has brain damage. This paper aims to provide some guidelines for social work practice in the area, in particular, outlining options for social work interventions at individual, family, community, service system and policy levels. Social workers need to acquire specialised knowledge about brain injury, reformulate traditional models of grief counselling to address the adjustment challenges and utilise community education and service innovation to address the social stigma and reduced level of community participation associated with brain damage. Finally, social workers aim to nurture a sense of hope in the face of the tragedy.     

Social work and the penal state

ABSTRACT

The Criminal Justice System (CJS) has historically been a key site of social work intervention. Wacquant argues that the growth of social insecurity and the expansion of the penal state are endogenous features of the neo-liberal political project. The key premises of neo-liberalism have been accepted by parties of both the left and the right. This shift alongside an increase in inequality had led to increasing social anxiety and mistrust. One manifestation of these trends is a decline in the belief that the rehabilitation of offenders is a realisable goal of social and penal policy. The expansion of the penal state: the increasing numbers, poor conditions and the over-representation of minority groups mean that it should be a core social work concern. The paper outlines the ways, in which, risk and managerialism have side lined core social work values in the CJS. It concludes penal policy and conditions can only be reformed if the inherent dignity of offenders is rediscovered and placed at its centre.     

Social work and management in Germany

Within the context of social modernization, social work has increasingly moved towards the perspective of economics. This development is based on the realisation that social work can only be preserved through the appropriate management of its organizations as providers of social services. What are the reasons for this? This question will be approached from two different angles, first from that of political economy and second from a business managerial perspective. After this, implications for the improvement of the competences of leadership in social work organizations will be introduced.     

The implications of disability protests for social work practice

This article examines the demands which have been made in the over 800 US protests this author has analyzed. Some demands are cross-disability, meaning they could apply to people with all types of impairments; these include demands for rights and accessibility in all domains. Other demands are disability-specific: they apply to people with specific types of impairments, ranging from mobility impairments to developmental disabilities. Many demands have been related to services, which can be either cross-disability or disability-specific. The paper examines the implications of these demands for social work practice. These include that disability be de-stigmatized by practitioners, that people with disabilities have choices, that they have control over their services, and that all aspects of social work practice be accessible to people with any type of disability.     

A model system: Integrated work injury prevention and disability management

Effective and cost efficient work injury prevention and disability management requires an integrated process that involves a number of components. Each component needs to be linked into a continuum or system. Components by themselves will not provide satisfactory solutions. This article addresses some of the key components that need to be included in an effective work injury management system. The goals of a management system are discussed and how each component plays a part in achieving these goals.     

Social work through collaborative autoethnography

This paper discusses a research project involving five MA Social Work Students and one member of Social Work Academic Staff. Using narrative and taking a collaborative autoethnographical approach, this project highlights some of the feelings that students articulated following a 70-day placement experience. Findings include anxiety, powerlessness and frustration, together with growing confidence, recognition of their skills and a deeper understanding of the role of ‘self’ in social work. Raising issues of preparedness for practice placement, this paper has implications for both social work practice and social work education. Autoethnography (AE) is both a method of carrying out research and a methodology, specifically a qualitative methodology linked to ethnography and narrative inquiry. AE results in highly personalized narrative accounts of the researcher’s engagement with specific sociocultural contexts in the pursuit of knowing more about a phenomenon. Applying such a methodology to explore collaboratively issues of student lived experience of placement is a new and innovative use of this method.     

Social work supervision in Germany

Social work supervision came to Germany from the USA after 1950. Since the 1970s it has developed very differently there from its Anglo-American origins. Supervision in the German-speaking countries has, in part, become a new profession; it offers its services to social work, the health system, pedagogical services, administration and even to the commercial field. This article describes the development of social work supervision as a discipline.     

Social work organizations-constructive or destructive

Abstract

Are social work organizations constructive or destructive? What can they, or could they, be? I assume that the conference theme of loss and growth has been addressed in relation to work with children and families. That theme is present in my thoughts, too, some of which I hope to share with you. Social workers work within an organization, whose nature must inevitably affect how they can work with children and families. This is an underlying assumption of this paper, although you may find it elaborated at times. At a very simple level, for example, if the organization is suffering loss - loss of resources, personnel, of value, regard or esteem, loss of security or conviction or direction - any worker will have a different task when working with a child suffering loss than if the organization was secure and optimistic. The inner self would have a different, internalised core to receive projections, distortions or rejection.     

Social work and a love of humanity

Abstract

The idea of a ‘love of humanity’, though largely absent from social work literature, is a potent concept for challenging the dominant discourses of individual material wealth, greed and power. It can be associated with the postmodern agenda of emancipation from oppressive discourses of professional ‘expertise’. Love, or a ‘love of humanity’, has the same intent as formulations of social work grounded in postmodern critical theory, but it uses a different language. It uses a language of lived experience and personal commitment - a language that appeals to our hearts -a language passionate about, and incorporating, human rights and social justice.     

Social networks and support in social work

Following the recommendations of the Barclay Report for a move on the part of social work towards supporting helping networks in the community, it is necessary to look more closely at the components of ‘social support’ and to be clearer about which social networks social workers are being asked to support. It is suggested that sociology, although criticised for its remoteness from the daily experience of the social worker, could offer through social network analysis some useful measures of the support networks of social work clients.     

Social work,postmodernism, and marxism

This article sets out to question two dominant trends in social work theorizing: ‘pure postmodernism and those attempts to revitalize emancipatory social work by combining elements of postmodernism with elements of a broadly Althusserian Marxism. The article starts by addressing the foundations of postmodern theorizing in social work, rejecting its claims for emancipatory theory. It proceeds to look at the concern with language and identity within this paradigm and suggests that, as formulated, neither offers an adequate understanding of the material hardship and oppressions facing clients. Writing from a classical Marxist perspective, the authors argue that the influence of postmodernism is a backward step in trying to understand the poverty, oppression, and inequality facing the majority of social work clients.