Social profile,maternal depression and welfare concerns in clients of health visitors and social workers: a comparative study

Research into the practice of health visitors and child care social workers with depressed mothers is limited. This is surprising in view of the known relationship between motherhood and depression, and the association also between child care problems and maternal depression. The study described below is the first which seeks to compare health visitor and child care social work clients/service users in relation to the issue of maternal depression. In particular, it seeks to compare the extent to which maternal depression is a feature of the work of social workers and health visitors, the relationship between maternal depression and the social composition of different client groups, the relationship between maternal depression and welfare concerns—particularly child abuse—and the extent to which such concerns lead to referral from health visitors to social workers. The research shows: (1) interesting similarities between the depressed health visitor clients and social work clients as a whole; (2) the importance of low income and absence of support in the ‘progression’ from health visitor to social work clients status; and (3) an alarming emerging gap in services provided for severely disadvantaged families with child and family care problems.     

Coordinating co-production in complex network settings

This article draws together the concepts of network management and co-production with complexity sciences. So far, these approaches have rarely been connected in research literature. We suggest that this conceptual framework offers new insights for analyzing the challenges of co-production in complex network settings in the local public services. The aim of the article is to find out how complex network structures meet the co-production process in the context of social and health care services. The empirical part of the article presents a Finnish case study of a multiprofessional service network producing social and health care services for youth. Here, the clients, in this case children and young people with a need for social services, often need multiple services from different service providers simultaneously. Our research findings suggest that the outcomes of the service process are not only dependent on the client's needs, but rather on organizational and professional interests. Our research gives new insights for the discussion on co-production; when it is applied as an intended policy to improve and deliver public services, the complexity of interaction among the street-level workers and the detached professional frameworks should be kept in mind.     

Using the NIAAA brief alcohol screener in social work practice for selected prevention targeting youth

ABSTRACT

This article discusses the use of brief screeners in social work practice to identity adolescents in need of selected interventions for alcohol and other drug use problems. Brief screeners can increase access to alcohol or other drug intervention services and promote the diffusion of evidence-based interventions to underserved communities when integrated in Screening, Brief Intervention, and Referral to Treatment (SBIRT) initiatives. The two-item NIAAA Brief Alcohol Use Screener is discussed as a developmentally tailored assessment tool that can be integrated into SBIRT in social work practice to improve detection of early-stage alcohol problems among adolescents who lack routine access to preventative health care. The use of brief, empirically supported alcohol screeners in trainings for social work students and new professionals can enhance their preparation and competence to offer child and adolescent clients appropriate selected intervention options to reduce harms associated with underage alcohol use.     

Transnational social work: using a wraparound model

In this article, we explore the wraparound approach of service delivery as a model for transnational social work. The wraparound model, used primarily within community‐based children's mental health services and child protection initiatives, has been effective when planning services for clients and their families with complicated needs, whose care has to be provided within a multiple provider context. Most social work is delivered nationally or internationally rather than trans‐nationally. In the article we outline how the model could be structured to meet the particular needs of transmigrants, including the involvement of NGOs and INGOs, and identify key obstacles and limitations.     

Outreach social work: from managing access to practices of accessibility

A recurring feature of outreach work is that outreach tries to reach people who are left without care and not effectively reached by existing services. In this article, we discuss the importance of outreach practices in the context of changes in society. We suggest that the pressure on the managing of access to social services is increasing along with the demand to avoid an unnecessary inflow, and make a distinction between a residual and structural approach to social work and social service delivery. In a residual approach, outreach social work can be seen as a strategy to manage access or as a strategy to link clients with appropriate services. In this sense, they ensure that people meet predefined criteria of social services. From a structural approach, however, the focus lies on how practices possibly contribute to the realization of human dignity in social interactions and might lead to a socio-political analysis of those situations in which social work intervenes. On a conceptual level, outreach practices thus appear as practices of accessibility. From this perspective, existing problem constructions and dynamics of inclusion and exclusion in social services but also more broadly in society might be questioned and ultimately changed.     

How Effective are Interventions to Enhance Adherence to Psychiatric Medications? Practice Implications for Social Workers Working With Adults Diagnosed With Severe Mental Illness

This study integrates eight systematic reviews of adherence enhancement interventions to develop practice guidelines for social workers who work with adults who do not adhere to prescribed psychiatric medications. Findings indicate that existing investigations are disparate in their adherence definitions, methodologies employed, and sampling strategies, rendering it difficult to construct overall guidelines for social work practice. However, themes associated consistently with increased adherence are collaboration between clients and providers regarding medication decisions, consistent follow-up care, and a comprehensive network of professionals and caregivers who support clients in their use of medication to facilitate stabilization of mental health symptoms.     

Integrative Behavioral Health Clinic: A Model for Social Work Practice,Community Engagement,and In Vivo Learning

ABSTRACT

Missouri did not expand Medicaid, leaving about 500,000 Missourians without health insurance. To address community needs and provide additional social work training opportunities, a free integrated behavioral health clinic was established. This article discusses the need, describes the clinic, and presents 1-year evaluation results. Sixty-nine clients received services, and 30 students received intensive training during the first year. Almost half of the clients were diagnosed with depressive disorders, and more than half had comorbid medical conditions. Psychiatric symptoms were lower following treatment. Quality of life increased in physical and psychological domains. Collaborative clinics with social work and medical students are a viable option for experiential learning and providing quality care for uninsured or underinsured people with comorbid medical conditions.     

Voluntary work in the Norwegian long-term care sector: complementing or substituting formal services?

ABSTRACT

Across Europe, governments call for increased involvement of volunteers to shoulder some of the welfare burden. Nevertheless, there is little research into what kind of work and how much volunteers currently contribute in the long-term care services and whether this has the potential to substitute formal services. Drawing on findings from a survey of employees in Norwegian nursing homes and home care districts, we examine the nature and volume of voluntary, unpaid work in the long-term care services in Norway. Our data suggest that volunteers to a very limited degree carry out work that has traditionally been considered the formal system’s domain: personal care and practical help. Nearly all the voluntary, unpaid contributions in our data takes place within cultural, social and other activities aimed at promoting mental stimulation and well-being, indicating a classic specialisation of tasks between volunteers and professionals. However, there has been an expansion of the formal care system to include activities aimed at promoting well-being in recent decades. This may indicate that there is a certain level of task sharing between voluntary and formal care. Thus, social workers need to consider voluntary service provision when assessing the needs of clients.     

Stigmatizing Clients with Mental Health Conditions: An Assessment of Social Work Student Attitudes

Research suggests that stigma plays a major role in discouraging clients from participating in mental health treatment. Because social workers provide a significant amount of such services, this study investigates social work student stigma as a function of their willingness to treat clients with alcohol dependence, nicotine dependence, depression, and Alzheimer's disease. Students' held higher levels of stigma toward nicotine dependent clients and less toward those with depression. Personal histories of depression and student age - but not smoking or alcohol use - were predictive of higher stigma levels towards nicotine dependent clients. Implications for social work are discussed.     

Doin’ Meth or Doin’ Math: What Client Constructions of Social Class Mean for Social Work Practice

The voices of people experiencing poverty are underrepresented in social work research, public policy development, and practice interventions. This study explored the social class attributions of clients receiving poverty-related services through qualitative interviews. Findings reveal dynamic contributions of individual, environmental, and structural factors of social class positioning and significant stress and stigmatization associated with experiencing economic hardship. Participants indicate a sense of lived contradiction, viewing social class to be the result of fate while simultaneously endorsing individualistic attributions of poverty. Results have implications for social work research and practice, as well as poverty-related policy and program development.     

Walking our talk in Social Work Education: partnering with consumers of Mental Health Services

Social work education emphasizes the importance of partnership and collaboration with clients, defining clients as experts in their lives and needs. However, academic departments of social work do not usually model this concept of partnership by fully collaborating with clients in the process of educating social work students. Clients are seldom partners with academic educators in curriculum development, information dissemination, or student evaluation. The authors developed and implemented a facilitated dialogue process between consumers of mental health services and social work students as a way to begin to address this issue. Areas of discussion included consumer views on helpful social worker actions and interventions, as well as ways consumers could be, and wished to be, included in social work education. This paper reports on the strategies and recommendations generated by consumers during the dialogue, and discusses implications for social work education.     

Untapped Sources for Recruiting Minority BSW Students

Abstract

Social agencies and social services units currently are experiencing a personnel crisis. Many agency employees who provide direct services to clients lack professional education. Decreasing commitment to traditional social work practice with the most vulnerable populations and increasing interest in psychotherapeutic services may account for the shortage of professionally trained social workers.     

‘Care is not a dirty word!’ Enacting an ethic of care in social work practice

While ‘care’ has been positioned as a core value of the social work profession since its inception, the increasing influence of neoliberal rationalities have placed care on the periphery of social work theory and practice. Social work scholars have promoted the incorporation of ethic of care theory into direct social work practice as a means of countering the effects of a context that is antithetical to caring practice. I present findings from my Australian study, providing an original contribution by presenting concrete understandings of how social workers enact care in everyday direct social work practice. The study was guided by a grounded theory approach. Fifteen social workers were interviewed using a semi-structured interview schedule. The interviews were analysed using constructivist grounded theory techniques. ‘Meeting needs’, ‘just being there for clients’, ‘building relationships with clients’, and ‘going the extra mile’ were some of the ways that participants demonstrated care in their practice. Constraints on care were challenged and resisted by ‘taking a stand’, ‘bending the rules’, ‘picking battles’, ‘justifying care’, and ‘taking risks’.     

养老服务的逻辑、实现方式与治理路径

养老服务是不同供给主体将不同内容、质量和价格的养老产品或项目,以不同的方式配送到不同需求老年群体的过程。不同供给主体基于责任驱动和利益驱动,为需求主体提供适应性养老服务,是养老服务的基本逻辑。养老服务的实现,是在特定地域、特定的社会关系网络中,通过优化配置养老服务资源,聚集整合养老服务资本,来保障有质量、有尊严的老年生活。鉴于养老服务供给的多元性和需求的复杂性,养老服务的治理则需要运用先进的合作治理与参与治理理念、选择科学的治理工具和现代化的治理技术,保障养老服务供给与需求的适应性匹配,进而保障养老服务实现方式的有序运行。     

Should There Be Mentoring Efforts to Help Retain and Recruit More Males Into Baccalaureate and Master's Social Work Programs?

Social work programs need to actively set mechanisms in place to attract more men into a predominately female academic major through mentoring, recruitment, and retention efforts. This article conducts a review of the literature to examine whether mentoring efforts should be directed at male social work students. It is inconsistent for the social work profession to embrace the concept of providing culturally competent practices to clients but fail to address and combat a significant gender gap in the delivery of services to male clients.     

The professional role of social work in a market environment

One argument often heard in garnering support for the reorganisation of the welfare state in the Netherlands is that the safety net which it was intended to form has become something of a hammock, whereas a genuine safety net ought to act more like a trampoline. Nowadays sometimes also known as the activating welfare state, it aims to reduce apathetic response and increase the participation of its citizens in society. More and more, social workers are enlisted to help achieve these goals. Activation, however, is also associated with the introduction of a market environment in the social sector.

In 1992, the management of the social work organisation in The Hague concluded a controversial agreement with the municipal social services. Under this contract, clients referred to the social work organisation by the municipal social services would be made eligible for regular jobs on the labour market. The clients who were referred had obligations of their own: their benefits would be reduced if they did not cooperate. The social work organisation guaranteed contractually a success rate of 60% within a pre-determined period. For this ‘product’, the municipal social services paid a fixed amount of money each year.

The article describes the professional manner in which the social workers in The Hague dealt with the contract.     

A Joint University—Field Agency: Toward the Integration of Classroom and Practicum

Abstract

The authors describe an innovative program designed to create a joint university and local municipality agency in Israel. The agency was structured to be a teaching laboratory that would offer innovative services for social work clients and a unique field placement for students. Four major goals involved joint outcomes for both university and municipality. These included (a) demonstrating evaluation research as a means of accountability and as a tool for practice; (b) using generic social work methods for work with families; (c) reaching out to difficult and high-risk clients with innovative programs; and (d) using the laboratory as a training center for welfare workers, agency supervisors, and students from all levels of the social work programs. The authors describe and evaluate each of the goals, discussing the implications for teaching and for social work practice.     

The Impact of Managed Care on Field Instruction

Managed care is changing the provision of services to clients and the availability of field placements for students. This exploratory study, reporting on an October 1996 survey of social work field directors nationwide, confirms that placements have been lost because of managed care. Yet, it also notes that schools and agencies are reassessing their relationship and can collaborate to create different learning opportunities in the new environment. The findings have implications for deans, program directors, field directors, and regional and national organizations (such as the Council on Social Work Education) in the areas of revising the curriculum, confronting student expectations, and establishing new relationships with agencies.     

Use of standardized client simulations in an interprofessional teaching concept for social work and medical students: first results of a pilot study

ABSTRACT

Teaching concepts with standardized clients/patients (SC) had been successfully implemented in the education of health professionals. Benefits were also demonstrated for social work education. Based on former experiences with simulated clients in medical education, we developed an innovative teaching concept for social work and medical students. We focused on the training of consultations with clients suffering from a serious illness like cancer—with different learning goals for medical students (e.g. breaking bad news) and social work students (e.g. psychosocial exploration and counseling). Both groups should gain knowledge about the other professions tasks and learn to handle clients’ emotional reactions. In addition to role-plays with simulated clients in small groups, the concept includes an interprofessional lecture by physicians, psychologists, social workers, and lawyers as well as a visit on the palliative care ward (for social work students only) and a research colloquium. A formative evaluation shows high satisfaction with the teaching concept. The students underline the realistic setting, interprofessional contact, authentic talks and direct feedback. The SC method and its interprofessional application proved to be a practicable and motivating way to enhance conversational skills.