Focused participation in social work and social action

Focused participation proposes that total participation by clients of social work and communities involved in social action is no participation if it neglects the severe blocks on capacity to participate imposed by oppressed life experience and poverty. Workers should take on the responsibility for including a planned program of participation in every intervention focused on what is most important to the client or community members. Case examples in residential care for elderly people, a child advocacy service concerned with the closure of children's homes, cutting a voluntary organization's budget and family social work illustrate the main points of focused participation.     

Is there a field of social work?: Trainees evaluating social problems and social work

My aim was to study the experiences and priorities of two age groups of social work students practicing in client-centered social work. This article is based on the research on rationality and language games in social work. The target groups of the research project as a whole were the actors: the heads and social workers or activists in public social welfare and health care agencies and institutions and in voluntary associations and action groups, and finally, two subsequent classes of students from a school of social work, during their practicing periods. This article concentrates on the trainees. At first, the trainees wrote essays and kept diaries. Secondly, they marked their standings on graphs visualizing different types of information contents and social relation structures. Thirdly, they made their choices of reasons for and solutions to social problems on a problem wheel. The trainees' study, using different data gathering techniques, partly confirms the results of the research of the other actor groups, in which the data were derived using questionnaires and interviews. The trainees' study shows variation in the respondents' priorities within and between specified social problem categories. Qualitatively analyzed, however, the characterizations of social work, both those who currently act in and those aiming to enter this field, resemble one another.     

论社会创新

社会创新是当代以知识为基础的全球社会发展和我国新型社会转型时期社会变迁的主导形式 ,它同技术创新相互结合 ,共同满足着当代社会发展的全面需要和构成社会可持续发展的综合动力基础。社会创新研究是对于中国现代化具有重大理论与现实意义的前沿型课题 ,应纳入多学科的研究视野 ,并在探索中使之学科化和使学科创新化     

Metrizing social preference

In his Introduction to Value Theory N. Rescher suggests a procedure by which individual valuations can be combined to yield meaningful and accurate social valuation measures. A social valuation is the effective average m ^* of individual valuations, such that: $$m^ * = m - \tfrac{1}{2}\sigma $$ , where m is the mean of individual valuations and σ the standard deviation of individual valuations from m. Rescher's employment of this concept of effective average has the following unacceptable features: (1) the effective average is undefined for the situation by which Rescher chooses to introduce the concept; (2) negative effective averages, which are calculable for many situations, are given no interpretation by Rescher; (3) some effective averages are lower than each individual valuation which figures in their computation, and as a consequence use of the concept of effective average to pinpoint social valuations favors conformity of individual valuations to an unjustifiable extent. Rescher doubts whether a conception of social welfare (or value) can be distilled from individual preferences (or valuations). His doubts are justified, for such a move would require a prior weighting of individual preferences in such a manner that social welfare measures could be arrived at solely by attending to the preferences of qualified individuals, making computation of a welfare measure from the set of individuals' preferences gratuitous.     

A social welfare perspective of market‐oriented social enterprises

The article analyses market‐oriented social enterprises from a social welfare perspective, within the context of the innate conflict between business and welfare orientations. After defining the concept of market‐oriented social enterprises and presenting some successful examples on such entities that employ different marginalised populations, particularly people with disabilities, the article asks three interrelated questions: (i) What policy environment is needed to encourage the development of social enterprises? (ii) Given the innate tension between the social and economic objectives in social enterprises, what structural principles are needed to enable them to meet those dual objectives? Lastly, (iii) What intervention modalities are best suited to help individual participants in those frameworks? Answers to these questions are discussed within conceptual frameworks from the worlds of welfare and business that jointly provide a base for a social welfare rationale for market‐oriented social enterprises.     

Epistemological problems and the personality and social system in social psychology

If we understand social psychology to be an area where sociology and psychology overlap, or more precisely where we try to explain interaction on the basis of psychological and sociological propositions and concepts, we have singled out a field that should be quite challenging not only in theory and method but in the fundamental questions it raises for both sociology and psychology. Actually, the discipline is not that well integrated and is constituted by such disparate approaches as reinforcement theory, field theory, role theory, small group theory, game theory and psychoanalysis. Many sociologists have abandoned the field altogether. Nor have the proponents of these sub-fields made much effort to consolidate, integrate or reconcile their methodologies. Epistemological questions have been notably absent and only now have arguments from the philosophy of science point of view reemerged to revive the critical and potentially fruitful methodological discussions of earlier theorists (F. Allport; Lewin; Mead; Simmel) and their more recent followers (Homans; Malewski). After considering epistemological problems dealing with the generality of theory and explanation, behavioristic vs. action approaches, operational and model structural implications, we want to argue for a better understanding of social system variables besides those of the personality system and of system theory in general. In our discussion we use examples from the area of sport because it composes a complex system, that is not too difficult to observe at the same time that it shows in relative clarity all of the different levels of an action system. It has, furthermore, many features of an almost experimental design in a natural field. In so far it is a model area to allow due consideration for our demand that social psychology rediscover the method of field studies. This will help to reverse the trend characterized by a general neglect of theory that has resulted from behavioral dogmatism and the expedience of research pragmatism based mostly on two-variable linear models. This is not to say that we disfavor rigorous research design and data analysis - to the contrary. We just want it to be done in the context of broader theoretical concerns and in clear recognition of the pitfalls of operationalism and the merits of action theory.     

A code of ethics for social work and social care research

Summary This Critical Commentary is the final product of the Economicand Social Research Council sponsored seminar series, TheorisingSocial Work Research to appear in the BJSW. The special editionof the British Journal of Social Work published in August 2000carried several key papers arising from the seminar series aswell as reports of some of the events themselves. The responsibilityfor drafting the Code of Ethics for Social Work and Social CareResearch fell to me and although discussed at the Luton Seminarand at the final conference in Manchester, the text presentedhere is much as it first appeared. This is simply to reaffirmthat it has no particular status and is reproduced in the Journalas a prompt to further discussion, precisely the purpose itwas to serve for the seminar series. Before reproducing the Code, it might be helpful to revisitsome of the main points which were raised in the paper presentedat the Luton Seminar which set the context for the Code (Butler,2000).     

Green social work and its implications for social development in China

Green social work has been significant in introducing new issues into environmental debates and increasing its centrality to social work practice. These have included: the mainstreaming of environmental considerations; a widening of the theoretical and practice base to ensure that social and environmental justice are considered integral to any environmental involvement by social workers; highlighting the need to think of innovative approaches to socio-economic development; and making disaster interventions core elements in the social work repertoire of knowledge, skills, capacity building and curriculum formulation. This paper considers the challenges of China’s rapid industrialisation and its implications for rural people migrating into cities, the urban populations that receive them and environmental degradation. It introduces the idea of green social work and discusses the implications of green social work for social development in China in the context of environmental crises precipitated by the country’s rapid economic development.     

扩大社会保障覆盖面实现社会公平

党的十六届五中全会对社会主义和谐社会建设做出了全面部署,强调“要以扩大就业、完善社会保障体系、理顺分配关系、发展社会事业为着力点,妥善处理不同利益群体关系,认真解决人民群众最关心、最直接、最现实的利益问题。”其中,完善社会保障体系作为一个重要的着力点,而在社会保障制度建设中,目前群众要求最为强烈的是扩大社会保障覆盖面,将更多的社会成员特别是中低收入者纳入社会保障体系。多年以来,尽管我们做了很多努力,但社会保障的覆盖面还是太窄,多数城镇职工未能享有社会保险,而广大农民则基本上被排斥在社会保障体系之外。这种情…     

Understanding 'Going Missing': issues for social work and social services

Correspondence to Malcolm Payne, Professor of Applied Community Studies, The Manchester Metropolitan University, 799 Wilmslow Road, Didsbury, Manchester M20 8RR. Summary Recent research about young people and adults who ‘gomissing’ raises important issues for social work and thesocial services. Large numbers of young people go missing eachyear, becoming vulnerable to exploitation and at risk of committingcrime and suffering from other social difficulties. Adults leavebehind families with practical and emotional difficulties. Adefinition of ‘going missing’ should focus on absencefrom social expectations and responsibilities. Five groups ofmissing person are identified: runaways, pushaways, throwaways,fallaways and takeaways, reflecting different social situationsin which going missing occurs. It is argued that going missingis one of a range of choices which people in difficulties maymake, depending on their approach to problems in their livesand the availability of opportunities. Effective local co-ordinationto focus on reasons for going missing, on reunions and returnsto residential care or home, and to provide emotional and practicalhelp to people ‘left behind’, are required, providedthat care is taken to protect people who go missing becausethey are subject to abuse and violence.     

论社会工作介入社会福利政策的必要性与方式

在我国民政福利体系的改革过程中,最引人注目的是低保制度的出台。低保制度实施过程中所出现的新情况和新问题使专业社会工作的介入成为必要。通过倾听弱势群体的声音,反映弱势群体的政策诉求;参与低保制度的实施过程,作政策与政策对象的调解人;对社会政策的实施进行跟踪调研,提出政策的修订建议;以及专业助人行动,协助低保对象实现自助,社会工作将发挥其他专业不可替代的作用。     

The impact of the use of the social welfare services or social security benefits on attitudes to social welfare policies

Muuri A. The impact of the use of the social welfare services or social security benefits on attitudes to social welfare policies
Int J Soc Welfare 2010: 19: 182–193 © 2009 The Author(s), Journal compilation © 2009 Blackwell Publishing Ltd and the International Journal of Social Welfare. This article investigates the attitudes of citizens and clients to social welfare services and social security benefits. The data come from a Finnish national survey conducted at the end of 2006. First, the article overviews the previous welfare‐state studies relating especially to the theoretical perspectives of self‐interest and legitimacy. The empirical analysis indicates (i) that a different operation of self‐interest can only weakly explain the differences in attitudes between services and benefits; (ii) that there is general support for Finnish social welfare services and social security benefits, which, however, is mixed with growing criticism among women and pensioners who are supposed to benefit most from the welfare policies; and (iii) that such determinants of attitude as gender, use and, to some extent, lifecycle have become as important as class‐related factors such as income and education.