Partnership models within a Maori social‐service provider*

This article is a preliminary case‐study analysis of the partnership arrangements present within a Maori social‐service provider, Te Whanau Arohanui, which, like many Maori organisations, holds as its basis the self‐determination guaranteed under the Treaty of Waitangi. The report explores the key areas of context, history, underlying rationale and impact of partnerships on Te Whanau Arohanui. It also explores the tensions inherent within partnerships built between state‐sector and Maori organisations. It argues that power imbalances and cultural values cannot be ignored in shaping outcomes within a political/economic and organisational context.     

In search of a decolonised military: Māori cultural learning experiences in the New Zealand Defence Force

Māori people contribute significantly to the New Zealand Defence Force. Māori indigenous knowledge, however, did not feature in military curricula until recently. It was a common expectation that Māori personnel would conform to the dominant Western worldview, which often meant sacrificing indigenous identity. The introduction of the Service bicultural policies has paved the way for significant change in military education practices in the twenty-first century. This paper showcases the Māori cultural learning experiences of 34 members from the New Zealand Defence Force as they reflect on their experiences within the contemporary context of a military education and training environment, and the broader context of a decolonising society. This study argues that the inclusion of indigenous knowledge systems in military curricula improves the learning experiences of all members. Themes relating to individual development and improved organisational morale emerged that were found to be directly or indirectly attributed to the inclusion of Māori cultural training. The study is grounded in a multicultural military organisation, operating within a nation seeking to establish a bicultural co-equal partnership between Māori, the tangata whenua, original inhabitants, and non-Māori, the kaiwhakanoho whenua, or settler population, of New Zealand.     

How Do We Understand Partnership Working? Experiences from a Telecare Project

Implementing telecare requires experience and knowledge from different disciplines and sectors; business, technology and care. The uptake of telecare has been slow, which is assumed to be caused by difficulties in co‐operation within telecare partnerships. This article presents a new approach to improve understanding of telecare partnerships. The approach builds on theories of trust and partnership working and is informed by rational choice theory. Within this article the approach is applied to recent experiences from a telecare project in Norway, to demonstrate how different ways of interpreting the complex social interactions in telecare partnerships yield new insight and understanding. Examples from the Norwegian project illustrate how different understandings of actions and choices affected trust and caused either improved or deteriorated co‐operation in the partnership. The partners that were able to develop trust through a common evaluation of the problems co‐operated better. However, when partners lacked or had insufficient knowledge, either of each other or of the situation, this led to disparate understandings that threatened trust and affected further co‐operation. The new approach presented here is helpful in analyzing and understanding the actions of different partners within a telecare partnership and identifying why things worked well or went wrong. The approach may have wider relevance for other partnerships.     

Changing faces: the story of two Canadian street youth shelters

This study addresses the relationship between street youth shelters and formal child welfare systems in Toronto, Canada. Two case examples, Covenant House (CH) and Youth Without Shelter (YWS), are examined through archival material, participant observations and structured interviews with 21 front-line and managerial shelter workers. The findings suggest that both shelters have formed reciprocal and unequal partnerships with formal child-welfare organisations. The consequences of such an arrangement are threefold: (1) CH and YWS no longer possess an internal environment to support traditional street youths; (2) both shelters have strayed from their original intentions; and (3) many shelter workers express frustration within this dynamic. Several recommendations are put forward to support the survival of youth shelters: advocating increased government daily rates; seeking a balance between building a legitimate public image and an alternative street youth reputation; making every effort to house hard-core street youths; and building innovative internal programmes to act as referral points.     

Partnership Working in Public Policy Provision: A Framework for Evaluation

Partnership working has emerged as a key feature of New Labour's approach to social policy. However, although the theoretical benefits of partnership have been well rehearsed, agencies charged with fostering partnerships lack "evidence" about how best to proceed in bringing about organizational change. This paper describes the development and implementation of a practical approach to capturing the strategies that can be used to establish, strengthen and sustain local partnerships. To this end, it presents a conceptual framework for the evaluation of partnership working and demonstrates the application of the framework to an investigation of partnership working in Cornwall and Isles of Scilly, and Plymouth Health action zones.     

University-community partnerships in gerontological social work: building consensus around student learning

This article will demonstrate how schools of social work can collaborate with community agencies to provide a comprehensive and enriching educational experience for both student interns and participating agencies. An innovative partnership of a state school of social work with community agencies leading to a cutting-edge geriatric field education program is described. Case examples are used to illustrate the benefits of these partnerships, as well as challenges partners overcame in forging and sustaining partnerships. Necessary components of partnership development are detailed.     

The social condition of the New Zealand people: a pre-election review of social indicator information

ABSTRACT

Many social commentators have considered that alongside the fiscal transparency enjoined by contemporary New Zealand governments, there should be a complementary social responsibility reporting. This task is usually assigned to social indicator frameworks. However, at present (as the 2017 election looms) there is a faltering in the provision of social indicators which have been in place in New Zealand for almost two decades, with the exception of the recent 2016 survey data from Statistics New Zealand and Ministry of Social Development that were made available within a month of writing this article. Having commented on the current status of the New Zealand social indicator system, we present data from the General Social Survey and the Quality of Life survey to at least convey recent trends in subjective social well-being and reported behaviours and experiences. References are also made to the accumulating literature on social well-being in New Zealand, followed by suggestions for more systematic indicator development and underpinning research.     

Partnership and participation: contradictions and tensions in the social policy space

Partnerships and participation seem to be the order of the day. Yet, for many community organisations, this way of ordering the social policy space is contradictory, creating practice tensions that increase the complexity of local service systems. Such changes impact community organisations in a politics that needs to be made visible if they are to be able to act in the interests of their members and service users. We therefore outline the social policy space currently constituted by four major discourses: neo‐liberalism, managerialism, new paternalism and network governance as they intersect and interact chaotically, reshaping participation and partnerships between government, community service organisations and local communities. We then examine how policy as a technology or set of mechanisms is discursively creating contradictions and practice tensions within which community organisations engage for social justice.     

Linking the university and the social agency in collaborative evaluation research: principles and examples

This paper presents an analysis of components of successful social work evaluation research practice. Among the key obstacles to successful evaluations of social work intervention are the impoverished knowledge base on which many social work interventions are based, the isolation of researchers and practitioners in the conduct of evaluations, and during research implementation failure to cope with the changing field context. To remedy this situation social work needs to invest in university and social agency partnerships focussed on knowledge building for the profession. In such partnerships the traditional roles of the researcher and the practitioner are altered so that shared responsibility for knowledge development is possible. In addition, to deal with changing field contexts the research team needs to be continuously engaged in problem solving and redesign. An initial example of such a partnership is described together with a case study illustrating implementation of a multi-site field experiment evaluation.     

Using Groups to Advance Social Work Practice–Based Research

A discussion about the importance of research for social work practitioners and the nature of academic–practitioner partnerships set the scene in this article for a discussion about an innovative academic–practitioner partnership. This partnership, aimed at strengthening research mindedness and research activity in social service settings, has been fuelled by a belief in the power of groups to achieve what individuals cannot. The authors reflect on the range of inputs and synergistic group processes that allowed for a series of outcomes that would not have been possible within an individualized initiative. In conclusion, lessons learned from the use of groups to advance practice-based research are outlined.     

“Koe wai hoki koe?!”, or “Who are you?!”: Issues of trust in cross‐cultural collaborative research

Abstract

Cross‐cultural research designs are increasingly employed in the New Zealand context to investigate a range of complex social and environmental issues. However, there is little guidance for researchers who work for mainstream organisations and hapū (subtribe(s)) and iwi (tribe(s)) on how to undertake cross‐cultural collaborative research. Trust is a key issue that makes cross‐cultural research possible and it is surprising that issues relating to trust have not featured widely in the literature. In this paper, we reflect on our experiences working cross‐culturally and collaboratively with a hapū in Northland, New Zealand. We discuss how a mainstream research organisation worked with a community health trust and developed a working relationship with a hapū, forming the basis of a community‐driven collaborative evaluation of a central government‐funded project. Key findings were the establishment of a tuākana‐tēina relationship (where teacher and learner are interchangeable) between the members of the collaborative research team and the employment of appropriate research methods to develop a research agenda that ensured everyone would benefit from the research.     

One size does not fit all: organisational diversity in New Zealand tertiary sector ethics committees

New Zealand tertiary ethics committees may work from similar ethical principles but this article demonstrates that the way in which they operate is idiosyncratic. The paper builds on commentaries offered by current or former members of five New Zealand ethics committees on the organisation and practices of their committees. It examines differences among the committees with the aim of initiating an ongoing conversation about the work of ethics committees in the New Zealand context. It argues for the merits of diversity, transparency and openness as core principles for the work of ethics committees and as a platform for dealing with critique.     

表见合伙之价值评判——兼析新《合伙企业法》第76条

2007年6月1日开始实施的新《合伙企业法》是一部非常有效地法律,但其最大缺陷是仍然没有规定表见合伙制度。表见合伙与表见代理、与民事欺诈是有明显区别的,不能用表见代理与民事欺诈解决实践中的表见合伙纠纷。新《合伙企业法》第76条的规定让人困惑,像似表见合伙,实则不然。建立表见合伙制度更有利于保障交易公平和安全,彰显善意第三人的利益,充分救济善意第三人的权利。因此,我国应当建立表见合伙制度。     

SOCIAL ENTREPRENEURSHIP — FALSE PREMISES AND DANGEROUS FOREBODINGS

As a reaction against neo‐liberalism, Social Entrepreneurship has been promoted as the solution to welfare problems brought about by social change and persistent unemployment. The Social Entrepreneurship Movement (SEM) proposes the reconstruction of welfare by building social partnerships between the public, social and business sectors. Major aspects of this agenda include non‐profit organisations undertaking entrepreneurial ventures and the pooling of government welfare funding under the control of local communities. In this paper we argue that the SEM literature is based on two false premises: the failure to understand the true causes of mass unemployment, and the assumption that the government faces financial constraints in the provision of welfare services. We also argue that implementation of the SEM proposals would erode the rights‐based eligibility to universal welfare services based on the principle of social justice. We also conclude that the SEM is indistinguishable from neo‐liberalism and as such does not represent a viable solution to unemployment and the welfare needs that accompany it.     

The design and development of an instrument for assessing the quality of partnership between mother and social worker in child and family care

Partnership with parents has become a central feature of child care policy and practice. It is related to a general emphasis on the importance of parents evident in issues such as parental responsibility and family support. As such it would be extremely helpful to have an instrument which provides a measure of the quality of partnership. It would be useful both in individual cases, where it could be used to help strengthen partnerships between social workers and parents, and on a wider basis, providing authorities with data with which to assess, in general, the quality of partnership. This paper reports on the design and development of an instrument for assessing the quality of partnership with mothers. First it focuses on key conceptual elements of partnership, which are considered to be role, and role relationship (of social worker and mother), and power. The paper then identifies key dimensions to the notion of partnership, dimensions which are generally agreed, and relate to the key conceptual elements. The ways these are operationalized are described, and the use of the instrument is analysed. The findings go some way to showing the instrument has both validity and reliability, when considered in the context of practice. It is suggested that this instrument may be used both in research and in practice.     

Agency-Family Partnerships

This paper describes a research and demonstration project in which partnerships are formed between agency social workers and family members of elderly clients. While the social worker retains responsibility for counseling and provision of support to the elderly client, the family member is taught by the social worker to assume responsibility for the case management of services provided to his/her elderly relative. Practice issues which have emerged during the first year of this three-year project include: the generalizability of findings in light of the special characteristics of agency clients, the definition of the agency-family partnership, confidentiality in the context of this partnership, exceptions to family involvement, clients without families, and our experiences with research-practice collaboration. Each of these issues is discussed in this paper.     

‘Broad consensus across the divide’: rhetorical constructions of climate change in mainstream news media

The links between science and policy are navigated prominently in the media. The internet provides a forum for discussion of climate change, allowing lay people to enter the debate. In this paper, rhetorical analysis was used to analyse online news articles and comments from the public following two major climate-related decisions in New Zealand. This analysis demonstrates how arguments regarding climate change are built and defended. Identifying strategies invoked by those that occupy a majority or minority position within public discourse on climate change reveals how such arguments take on rhetorical force, providing the basis for establishing claims and counter-arguments. Understanding the rhetorical constructions of such positions can reveal why particular arguments might gain power, opening the way for a more knowledgeable and informed positioning of individuals, organisations, and scientific knowledge to emerge in public debates on climate change.     

表见合伙之价值评判——兼新新《台伙企业法》第76条

2007年6月1日开始实施的新《合伙企业法》是一部非常有效地法律，但其最大缺陷是仍然没有规定表见合伙制度。表见合伙与表见代理、与民事欺诈是有明显区别的，不能用表见代理与民事欺诈解决实践中的表见合伙纠纷。新《合伙企业法》第76条的规定让人困惑，像似表见合伙，实则不然。建立表见合伙制度更有利于保障交易公平和安全，彰显善意第三人的利益，充分救济善意第三人的权利。因此，我国应当建立表见合伙制度。     

The FACES Project: an academic-community partnership to improve end-of-life care for families

This article reports on a research partnership between a community-based hospice and a graduate school of social work. The purpose of the collaboration was to design and test a tool for assessing caregiver strain and resources in families caring for older adults receiving hospice home care services. Eighteen hospice home care social workers interviewed 162 caregivers for the study and provided their own assessment of the tool's clinical utility. Both strengths and challenges of the collaboration are evaluated and implications are discussed for social work practice and research, particularly academic-community research partnerships.     

"Not prepared to care" and "raising the bar": case examples of building university-community partnerships in gerontological social work research

This paper examines university-community partnerships in gerontological social work research. Utilizing a case study approach, the process of collaboration is explored within the context of a two-phase research project conducted jointly by agency social workers, social work students and a social work faculty member. The benefits and challenges of the university-community research partnership are discussed along with the implications for gerontological social work research, education and practice.