Using a real case scenario in teaching social work with children and families in different practice settings

Transforming classroom knowledge into practice competency is particularly challenging in social work with children and families. It involves complex, competitive practice approaches and different service settings with procedures and norms influencing a child’s wellbeing. The paper presents the content, application, and evaluation of a module based on a case scenario which considers the limitations and achievements of social work with children and families in different settings. A mixed-method approach was applied to this review process. Students were given an evaluative questionnaire based on the theoretical framework of experiential learning whereupon they wrote reflective essays describing their learning experience. Case method contributes to the acquisition of reflective, integrative, and stimulating knowledge. The participation level contributes to the students’ satisfaction during such learning. Students have learned that families with multiple and complex needs require a holistic approach that separate systems and services cannot provide. This way of learning, with certain limitations, allows activation and an intensive learning experience for large groups of students relevant for a number of social work schools.     

The role of child care social work in supporting families with children in need and providing protective services—past,present and future

This article examines the way in which child care social work with deprived families has changed and developed since the inception of Children's Departments in 1948. It is argued that between 1948 and 1970 child care social workers enjoyed a fair measure of social support. A variety of reasons are considered for explaining this—specialization, smallness of size, privacy and a consensus about the needs of children. From the early 1970s it is argued that broader societal changes, including a shift away from social solidarity towards individualism, organizational changes and the advent of child abuse as a public concern, resulted in con?icting demands on child care social workers and a subsequent loss of credibility and con?dence. The 1990s have seen a return to emphasis on family support policies which has been further accelerated in the new millennium by New Labour's stated commitment to eliminating child poverty and creating better life opportunities for all children. The implications of these new developments for child care social workers engaged in meeting the needs of children living in highly disadvantaged families are considered. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The collaborative professional: towards empowering vulnerable families

This article describes the authors' journey in an attempt to understand why considerable efforts of professionals working with vulnerable families are not compensated by better results. The authors propose guidelines to support professionals to develop a collaborative approach, which would empower them as well as the families they work with. The guidelines focus on the front-line professionals, whose main tasks include (i) promoting their own resilience (and of other professionals involved) through reflection and supervision; (ii) building up a trusting relationship with families, which can be achieved by being flexible and informal, providing instrumental support, using time in active, extensive and intensive ways and (iii) promoting and reinforcing small positive family achievements during the course of the intervention. The proposal poses a challenge to professionals' actions and expertise as well as to agencies, being simultaneously a response to their aspirations to do better.     

Social work field education: believing in supervisors who are living with disabilities

Much of what is written by non-disabled authors about living with disabilities does not mirror people’s experiences or opportunities. Literature is often written about people’s abilities (or disabilities) rather than by or with people. Discourse about supervision of social work students can risk assuming that supervisors are people who do not identify as living with disabilities. This research is a co-operative inquiry into the experience of being an Australian social work student supervisor who is living with disabilities. The article extends the literature about being a social work field educator to include ability, and values the practice wisdom of experienced social workers including a current student supervisor who is living with a disability.     

Social work students' conception on roles within the family in Greece

The present article is based on a small-scale research that took place with third-year students in the department of social work at Technological Educational Institute of Patras. During class the students, who undertake the laboratory course ‘Social Work with Families’, were asked to discuss family roles and depict them on drawings. Analysing their drawings in a qualitative approach the findings suggest that students adopt traditional views on family issues and the family roles. Various gender stereotypes and prejudices were reflected in students' drawings and this is alarming for both social work education and practice.     

Assessing change using psychoanalytic theory in children and families social work

ABSTRACT

This article focusses on psychoanalytic theory of change and how this can be used by Children and Families Social Workers. It firstly summarises change theory from a psychoanalytic perspective and provides a theoretical overview. The article then discusses the author’s experience of working with a family where domestic abuse and substance abuse were the presenting issues and where assessment work focussed on the child’s father. The article seeks to demonstrate how psychoanalytic theories of change can be utilised by Social Workers to understand and affect change when working with complex family dynamics.     

Social work education in Australia and the USA: comparative perspectives and contemporary issues

The article discusses similarities and differences in social work education and profession in Australia and the USA, reflects on contemporary issues and challenges that affect social work education and practice in both countries, and identifies mutual areas of learning and exchange. Drawing on secondary data, it comparatively analyses important variables such as the growth of social work education, curricula and curricular models, accreditation standards, code of ethics and professional licensure. The analysis shows significant similarities and differences in these variables, and brings out unaddressed issues and challenges. It argues that the profession in general has not adequately been successful in translating its value-based ideals into social work education and practice in both countries, particularly in the context of the free market economies. Experiences of both countries provide scope for mutual sharing and learning.     

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 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 guanxi: a reflexive account of the social work relationship in the Chinese context

ABSTRACT

In a guanxi-driven acquaintanceship, the worker, the client, and the community are tied together more closely than they are in mutually agreed-upon service contracts. This paper re-examines the contemporary boundaries in the social work relationship, especially in Asian nations such as China, where ‘relationships’ are generally translated and perceived as ‘guanxi’. The indigenisation of social work must be managed with care when translating from West to East. Drawing from the experiences of community development projects in rural Hong Kong, this paper discusses how guanxi among social workers, clients and other stakeholders in Chinese communities might challenge the professionalism of social work and breach the boundaries of social work relationships.     

Social work and prostitution: an approach to educational practices

Female prostitution is a diverse, complex reality. And migratory processes are multiple and differ greatly. The conjunction of prostitution and immigration generates new challenges in the professional field of social work; but it is a field that has been able to adapt to the versatility and diversity of this reality. This article sets out to explore the educational dimension developed by social work in this context and to highlight its contents and characteristics: a dimension that takes shape in practices and tasks that enable women who engage in prostitution to realise their capability to manage their life in the way they would like.     

Social work and digitalisation: bridging the knowledge gaps

The aim of this paper is to spark a discussion about how social work in England has responded to digitalisation thus far. It pays attention to relationality, the interaction between people and things and includes reference to the practice landscape, the places and spaces within which social work occurs. It calls for social work to revisit the idea of professionalism in the connected age, through outlining circumstances where practitioners have been called to account for online practices that have compromised public trust. These practice failings indicate that knowledge gaps, pertaining to digital literacies and technological competence in social work education and practice, exist. Therefore, the current requirements for learning and development, pre- and post-qualification, are appraised alongside the preliminary findings of a research project designed to examine the contribution of social work education to the digital socialisation of students in readiness for practice. The suggestion is made that social work should pause to consider ‘digital knowledge gaps’ before rushing to drive technology enhanced practice methods forward.     

Piecing Together Family Social Work in Mainland China

As rapid economic and sociopolitical development brings about drastic changes in family structure and processes in China, many social concerns arise. Through a review of journal articles published over a period of 28 years (1979–2006) in social work and related disciplines in China, this article presents a glimpse of family social work using the China National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI) database. The result is despairing, in that only a small number of articles on family social work were found. Given social work's traditionally strong belief in the family, as well as the strong emphasis on the family in China, the social work profession can contribute to China's social development through strengthening family social work and family policy. Nevertheless, this article argues for family social work to be sensitive to the cultural needs and characteristics of families in China, instead of imposing Western theories and interventions as if families come in just one size and shape.     

The limits to public service: rural communities,professional families and work mobility

Australia faces an ongoing challenge recruiting professionals to staff essential human services in rural and remote communities. This paper identifies the private limits to the implicit service contract between professions and such client populations. These become evident in how private solutions to competing priorities within professional families inform their selective mobility and thus create the public problem for such communities. The paper reports on a survey of doctors, nurses, teachers and police with responsibility for school-aged children in Queensland that plumbed the strength of neoliberal values in their educational strategy and their commitment to the public good in career decisions. The quantitative analysis suggested that neoliberal values are not necessarily opposed to a commitment to the public good. However, the qualitative analysis of responses to hypothetical career opportunities in rural and remote communities drew out the multiple intertwined spatial and temporal limits to such public service, highlighting the priority given to educational strategy in these families’ deliberations. This private/public nexus poses a policy problem on multiple institutional fronts.     

Defining Coparenting for Social Work Practice: A Critical Interpretive Synthesis

Coparenting, referred to as “an enterprise undertaken by two or more adults working together to raise a child for whom they share responsibility,” is responsive to intervention, associated with multiple indicators of individual and family well-being, and applicable to diverse family structures. Because of a lack of conceptual clarity, however, and absence from social work publications, coparenting has not yet entered the purview of social work. In this review, the authors attempt to synthesize existing coparenting definitions into one that is conceptually clear and clinically useful for social work practice with families. Implications for social work practice and research are discussed.     

Social Communities and Homelessness: A Broader Concept Analysis of Social Relationships and Homelessness

Pathways to and from homelessness were examined from the perspective of people who were both employed and homeless in Calgary, Alberta. Based on data collected through semi-structured open-end interviews (n = 61) with employed homeless people (N estimated at 2,400), we found that respondents identified aspects of five predominant social relationships that had the greatest impact on their present homeless situation: relationships with friends and family, acquaintances in shared accommodation, landlords and employers, other homeless people, and the social service delivery system. The findings provide a model for beginning to understand the complex social communities in which homelessness exists. Further research needs to explore the relationship between service providers and individuals' other social relationships and the role those can play in finding a pathway from homelessness.     

Social work and social control in the penitentiary system: an empirical study in northern Italy

In Italy there is a prison and probation system based on a rehabilitative model, which is connected with social policies and entrusts relevant tasks to the helping professions. Among these, social work is affected by changes in social policies, marked by the influence of neoliberal thought. Contemporary sociological studies highlight the transition from a model mainly focused on ensuring social welfare, to a model in which the dominant interest is to increase effective social control. In this transition there has been an impoverishment of social protection for the most vulnerable segments of the population. This article presents the results of a qualitative research study carried out in northern Italy, among professionals working in the penitentiary sector (mainly social workers). Research has focused on the representations of the respondents on specific issues, including: the relationship between the crisis of the welfare state and the penal-welfare system; the culture of control and the changes in the role of social workers. Results show, inter alia, that social workers reject punitive responses, especially those towards the most disadvantaged social groups. Moreover, in this crisis of the welfare state and the rehabilitative model, political ideals, felt by the entire professional community, seem to be lacking.     

Social work education in Cyprus: prospects and challenges in developing an indigenous character

The evolution of the social work education and welfare system in Cyprus is inextricably linked to the country’s recent turbulent history. Social Work in the Republic of Cyprus, although shaped by the country’s turbulent political past and present, is also influenced by Western theory as in many other countries in the Asian and African continent [Gray, M., & Fook, J. (2004). The quest for a universal social work: Some issues and implications, Social Work Education, 23(5), 625–644; Rankopo, M. J., & Hwedie, K. O. (2011). Globalization and culturally relevant social work: African perspectives on indigenization. International Social Work, 54(1), 137–147; Yip, K. S. (2007). Tensions and dilemmas of social work education in China. International Social Work, 50(1), 93–105]. In contrast with social welfare which has a long history (since late nineteenth century), social work education is still at an early stage of development in Cyprus. A non-surprising situation given that social work practice and education, in its early stages, is essentially a modernist Western invention which has a history of silencing marginal voices and importing, into diverse cultural contexts across the world, Western thinking primarily from the UK and the USA (Gray & Fook, 2004). However, if an indigenous social work character is to be developed in Cyprus, and a more distinctive identity with regard to the social work academic curricula is to be demonstrated, then Payne’s [(2001). Knowledge bases and knowledge biases in social work. Journal of Social Work, 1(2), 133–136] views on social work knowledge need further exploration.     

Information and communication technologies in interventions of Czech social workers when dealing with vulnerable children and their families

ABSTRACT

The topic of informatization and digitization of social work is a new phenomenon bringing new challenges that need to be dealt with. However, in the Czech Republic, the processes of informatization, digitization and e-social work may still look like grey zones. This article presents the result of one of the first Czech studies whose aim was to find out how social workers interpret the impacts of the use of information and communication technologies on social work. The goal of the research was to find out how the ongoing process of informatization permeates the Czech social work aimed at the target group of vulnerable children and their families. The authors have applied a qualitative research strategy in this research project using semi-structured interviews as the technique of data collection. The utilization of this technique has enabled them to obtain information from 25 social workers. The interviews have been analysed using the procedures of situational analysis. When interpreting the results, the authors focused on the area of communication where information and communication technologies are used, which social workers considered crucial.     

Social work promoting participation: reflections on policy practice in Italy

One of the core dimensions of social work practice, identified since its establishment as a professional endeavour, is concerned with political action. Nonetheless, policy practice, which entails that social workers should connect their work with individuals, as in traditional casework, to wider political action, is often perceived as marginal in everyday practice. This paper connects views on social work policy practices to the context provided by the ways social policies are actually constructed in Italy. A research study on governance processes across Italy, addressing the main actors involved in social policy-making, reveals that in fact practitioners’ political action is differently represented within different frameworks, ranging from being seen as a near impossibility, to being perceived as a crucial factor in the policy-making processes. If context and cultures play such a relevant role, synergistic work at different levels and by all the different actors in the social work community is required if we want social workers to be able to express their potential fully in the political arena.