Why social work should care: Television violence and children

There is an abundance of research on the influence of television violence on children. The convergence of research demonstrates an association between heavy viewing of violence and aggressive behavior. Despite thirty years of research, regulatory policy has failed to decrease violence on children's television. Children exposed to high rates of violence on television may be at greater risk of developing school and social problems. This paper highlights both research and theory which explains the relationship of television violence to children. It further makes the case that television violence should be an important and legitimate concern for social work.Ms. Lazar is an Associate Professor of Social Work at the University of Southern Maine and a Doctoral student at Simmons School of Social Work.     

Place,power, and possibility: Remaking social work with children and youth

This article introduces the work of an interdisciplinary group of scholars and activists who critically examine the nature and boundaries of social work with children and youth. Their works explore the institutional and social spaces shaping young people's lives; deconstruct discourses, policies, and practices that shape meanings and experiences of childhood; and consider challenges for social work and possibilities for transformative action. In this essay the editors address the social construction of childhood; outline a framework for analysis informed by an understanding of the cultural politics of childhood; consider the relationship between neoliberal globalization and contemporary thought and practice regarding children and youth; and introduce cutting-edge scholarship addressing place, power, and possibility and the remaking of social work with children and youth.     

A new paradigm for social work

The emergence of a new paradigm involving professional transactions with people other than social workers' clients and a redefinition of social work to include indirect work with clients is charted by way of an account of five different approaches to residential social work and some of the parallels in approaches to field work. Reactions to the proposals of the CCETSW Working Group on the Review of Qualifying Training are explained as reactions to a paradigm shift from an earlier paradigm which focussed only on direct work with clients to a new paradigm which includes, among other things, indirect work and which underlies the thinking of the members of the Working Group.     

Domestic violence research: Theoretical and practice implications for social work

Identified in the late eighties as the number one public health risk to adult women by the Surgeon General of the United States, domestic violence remains the leading cause of injuries to women, ages 15 to 44, more common than muggings, auto accidents and cancer deaths combined (U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee, 1992). Academics and practitioners have assessed the problem and its potential solutions using both quantitative and qualitative research methods. Yet, how far have we come and how much do we really know? This paper will attempt to answer these questions by critiquing the “current state of affairs” of domestic violence research. Common theories of causation and their applications to social work theory and practice will be delineated and an ecologically based intervention for domestic violence will be proposed.     

Professional morale and social work training: A study

This article presents the results of an empirical study that was designed to ascertain the state of professional morale of the membership of the Connecticut Society for Clinical Social Work. The data suggest a dissatisfaction with career choice. Reassessment of the character and quality of social work supervision emerges as one of the study's implications.This article is adapted from the author's Masters thesis,Social Workers, Social Work, and Professional Self-Perceptions (1978), for the Smith College School for Social Work. The author wishes to thank Professor Roger Miller of Smith for his helpful comments.     

A Piagetian approach to social work practice with children and adolescents

While the field of social work is heavily committed to the treatment of children and adolescents with behavior problems, it has given little attention to the application of Piaget's egocentrism theory to these problems. This paper outlines the theory proposed by Piaget and reviews subsequent empirical validation and clinical applications of his theory. The role of social work in developing more sophisticated applications of Piaget's theory is discussed.     

Violent children and structural violence: Re-signaling ‘RAD Kids’ to inform the social work professions

This article critically examines representations of children diagnosed with Reactive Attachment Disorder, or “RAD Kids”, and their construction as dangerous subjects. Based on ethnographic research within attachment therapy clinics, and among adoptive families, social workers, and medical professionals in the U.S. and Russia, the author suggests that notions of danger associated with “RAD Kids” actually reflect a social anxiety about the contexts of structural violence in which we are attempting to build families and raise children at the turn of the 21st century. The author culturally and historically contextualizes the signaling of “RAD Kids” as violent within literature on moral panics over children and youth. She explores how these representations function as an attempt to “resignal” public anxieties about the difficulties associated with building families through adoption, and especially, the adoption of formerly institutionalized children. The article provides a model for thinking about complex relationships between children, pathology, and power to inform the social work professions, and particularly practice with children diagnosed with RAD.     

The role of social work in the context of social disintegration and violence

Violence and the violence discourse are very similar from country to country: focus on youth, preponderance of males among perpetrators and victims, disproportionate involvement of migrants and indigenous people, greater prevalence with socioeconomic disadvantage and low education, and the impact of underlying factors such as political disintegration, exclusion from the consumer lifestyle, and inadequacies of social institutions. In social disintegration theory, the basic explanatory backdrop is the dynamic relationship of integration and disintegration between and within the different spheres: individual and functional system integration, integration into society, and integration into the community. (Relative) exclusion from work, consumption, and democratic processes combined with experience of socioemotional deficits seem to give a particularly strong boost to socially unacceptable forms of particularist integration and to favor collective and individual acceptance of violence. When subjects draw balances of personal recognition and of the achieved and achievable scope to organize their life, the latter orientations appear subjectively more likely to meet their expectations than socially (more) accepted modes of behavior.The central conclusion on social reactions to violence in general and professional social work in particular is that rather than relying on admonishment, punishment, or curative measures, or some combination of these, to combat violence, there is a need for wide-ranging long-term options for those acutely affected and at risk to have the long-term scope to organize their own lives-to experience life control, recognized integration, and development of competences. Those who experience being the organizer of their own life have no need of violence as a form of self-assertion.     

Keeping safe: teaching undergraduate social work students about interpersonal violence

While most social work graduates will not practice in organizations specializing in the threat or aftermath of violence, they will encounter clients affected by interpersonal violence and trauma in almost all fields of practice. Therefore, the social work curriculum should provide students with the knowledge and skills necessary to work with these clients. In developing a suitable curriculum it is important to be mindful of the adverse reactions students might experience when exposed to traumatic material, especially those who have experienced prior trauma. This article discusses a third-year social work course that examined social work interventions in response to interpersonal violence, with a focus on sexual assault and domestic violence. It describes four “safety strategies” implemented in 2010; (a) ongoing recognition of, and education about, self-care and vicarious trauma, (b) development of a supportive culture in the classroom, (c) accessible avenues of personalized support and debriefing, and (d), providing transparent and diverse curriculum. Finally, it draws from relevant research and student feedback to discuss the strengths and limitations of each “strategy.”     

A study of a social work agency: the occupational routines and working practices of the education social work service

In this paper we will be examining the way in which the education social work service goes about its routine, everyday work with truants (which, for the purposes of this paper, will be seen as the service's major occupational task to resolve).¹ Such an analysis has, in our view, a twofold importance. Firstly, it adds to the extensive literature² on disaffection amongst school students; secondly, it contributes to juvenile justice studies³ which have highlighted the importance attached to truancy in the formal decision-making process; this in turn has led to the development of a range of administrative and judicial strategies to remedy the problem⁴. In addition, it is our view that the truancy problem is likely to increase in the light of the growing certainty of unemployment on leaving school for large sections of the youth population, coupled with fiscal cuts in the education budget: we have been able to show in our Sheffield-based research (which confirms trends indicated in earlier studies undertaken in this same city⁵ that there has been a statistically significant increase in non-attendance amongst fifth formers between 1976 and 1982 in the local comprehensive schools.⁶ The truancy issue has been perceived as a serious social problem for a number of years now⁷ and, on the same basis, we can expect that this will continue – indeed, as something of the moral panic that exists in the related social sphere of youth unemployment.⁸ Perhaps this is one of the reasons for the reference to the role of the service in the 1983 Conservative party manifesto:⁹‘we shall switch the emphasis in the education welfare service back to school attendance so as to reduce truancy'.     

Evidence-based social work practice with children and families: a cross national perspective

This paper summarizes, from a cross-national perspective, some commonly used models of evidence-based practice and relates them to social work practice with children and families. We first identify concepts and dimensions central to an analysis of the outcomes of social work practice. We then present and discuss key components of social work practice that any evidence-based model must take into account. Finally, we provide some examples of strategies that may be useful to practitioners and policy makers across nations and cultures in order to build a solid knowledge-base for effective social work practice.     

Supply and demand: A study of labour market trends and the employment of new social work graduates in victoria

Abstract

At a time of significant restructuring in the community services labour market, it is particularly pertinent to analyse the current labour market opportunities available to new social work graduates. In 1995, using a small RMIT-funded (Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology) research grant, five schools of social work in Victoria collaborated to pilot a survey of the employment paths of the previous year's social work graduates. The survey was repeated in 1996. A complementary project which analysed the job advertisements for social work and social work-related positions during six months in both 1995 and 1996 provided further insight into the employment opportunities being advertised. Survey results showed a high rate of employment among new graduates with a decreasing number of graduates being employed in designated “social work” positions. This trend was reflected in the requirements for the positions advertised. The implications of this diversity of jobs and the decrease in designated “social work” positions are discussed, particularly in terms of broader changes in the world of work.     

Working with burns survivors: A social work approach

Abstract

Adjustment to a major burn may be a prolonged and demanding journey for patients, families and staff working with this client group. As well as recovering physically, patients must wok towards a psychological recovery by confronting a complex range of emotional responses to their injury. We outline the psychosocial impact of burn injury and suggest ways in which the social worker can assist in the adjustment process during the hospital admission both in the acute and the rehabilitation phases, including a case-management approach and the establishment of a support group for survivors.     

Globalization,social work,and social welfare

This paper presents a critical review of globalization as explicated in the social work literature. It argues that writers about globalization and social work have so far accepted an unprolematized and undifferentiated construction of the theory of globalization which does not engage with the significant differences that exist between different accounts of globalization. In doing so they implicitly reproduce neo-liberal assumptions about the role of the state and its relationship to global forces. This results in a reductionist and pessimistic analysis of the fragmentation and deprofessionalization of welfare and social work which is often at variance with empirical evidence. Specifically, the acceptance of a narrow and economically over-deterministic reading of globalization unwittingly depoliticizes debates about social work and undermines resistance to the challenges to welfare.