Assessing Child Protection Risk

Correspondence to Lorraine Waterhouse, Lecturer, Edinburgh Centre for Social Welfare Research, 23 Buccleuch Place, Edinburgh EH8 9LN. Summary The article outlines a set of child protection criteria usedby social workers for the evaluation of risk in sexual abusecases. The criteria were distilled from research findings basedon a sample of 51 child sexual abuse cases drawn from ChildProtection Registers in Scotland in 1987/89. Criteria dividebetween two types: primary (child care) criteria which concentrateon assessing circumstances prevailing within the family home;and secondary (disclosure) criteria which serve to either substantiateor refute disclosure. Primary criteria include attitude of non-abusingparent to alleged perpetrator; access between referred childand alleged perpetrator; type of abuse; age of child or youngperson; attitude of alleged perpetrator to allegations; andparental attitude to social work investigation. Secondary criteriainclude belief or disbelief of child; psychological symptomsin child; physical signs of abuse; children's attitudes towardsremaining at home; and criminal or psychiatric history includingalcohol or drug abuse. In practice the criteria tend to be usedlike a set of building blocks: tall towers represent higherrisk; low towers lesser risk. Given the enormous stakes involvedin child protection decisions, front-line practitioners wereunder considerable pressure to ‘play it safe’.     

Research Note: An Attempt to Classify Adolescent Parasuicide Attempters

Correspondence to David Gilliland, Principal Social Worker, The Royal Belfast Hospital for Sick Children, 180 Falls Road, Belfast BT12 6BE. Summary This paper examines some of the literature available on thesubject of adolescent suicide attempts. It discusses the extentto which it is possible to identify sub-groupings within groupingsof young people who took overdoses. It suggests on the basisof the study undertaken (and in reference to other studies)that it may be possible to identify sub-groupings. The paperalso discusses in detail a study carried out examining characteristicsof two groups of young people—one who had been admittedto hospital following a single overdose attempt, and a secondgroup who had several admissions to hospital following repeatedoverdose attempts. The implications of these findings are discussedin terms of the possibilities of identifying young people whoare at an increased risk of repeating an overdose attempt, andthe issues for practitioners and service managers are identified.     

Guardianship of the Person in Scotland

Correspondence to Bill Whyte, Lecturer in Social Work, Department of Social Policy and Social Work, Adam Ferguson Building, University of Edinburgh, George Square, Edinburgh EH8 9LL. Summary There has been a renewed interest in recent years on the purposeof Guardianship but only limited empirical data on how it isbeing used under the current Mental Health legislation. Thispaper attempts to address both issues. The paper presents someof the findings of a Scottish study which examines the implicationsof this legislation and covers a range of issues including usesof Guardianship; a profile on the Mental Health Officers (ApprovedSocial Workers) involved and their role in assessment; who becamethe guardian and how they exercised their role; and broaderlegal issues. Unlike a recent paper (Evans, 1989) the authorsbelieve the legislative framework is inadequate to promote initiativeand good practice in this field and that there is a need fora new debate on the purposes of Guardianship with particularreference to the powers needed to care for and protect a rangeof adults with differing needs who might be considered ‘atrisk’ in the community.     

Student Imagery of Practice in Social Work and Teacher Education: A Comparative Research Approach

Correspondence to Dr N. Gould, SSRADU, University of Bath, The New Church, Henry St, Bath BA1 1JR Summary Within the fields of adult and professional education, the lastten years have seen the development of the reflective learningparadigm. This refutes a technical-rational model of the relationshipbetween theory and practice, and proposes that practitionerknowledge is experientially constructed and organized throughthe schemata of imagery and metaphor. This paper outlines somefindings 6om a comparative research study of social work andteaching students which adopted a phenomenological approachto understanding the self-imagery of student practitioners andits relationship to prior experience. Some implications forsocial worker education are considered, including the conceptof ‘imaginization’—derived horn postmodernistorganizational theory—as a strategy for empowerment.     

Crossing Boundaries: An Exercise in Partnership Provision

Correspondence to Bill Whyte, Department of Social Work, University of Edinburgh, Adam Ferguson Building, George Square, Edinburgh EH8 9LL Summary The international movement to develop school enhancement strategiesin secondary schools recognizes the important relationship betweenschool, family, and community as a crucial medium for assistingdisadvantaged children (Crowson and Boyd, 1993). These childrenare equally the responsibility of social work and other publicservices. Many local authorities in Scotland throughout the1980s established what have become known as ‘youth strategies’to improve formal co-operation between education and socialwork, health and police services. This was an attempt to ensureearly identification of young people's difficulties in the expectationof promoting social welfare, enhancing educational attainment,and preventing, among other things, school absent-eeism andthe difficulties associated with school failure. In recent years,the ambition of such strategies has been to focus on primary-agedchildren and their families, as a preventive and protectiveapproach to the damaging effects of multiple disadvantage. Thispaper reports on an innovative project which was establishedto assist pre-school children experiencing multiple disadvantageto make a successful transition from home to primary school.The importance of good collaborative service provision is highlighted, together with an exploration of parents as educators,the provision of social services in an educational settiog.and issues of multi-disciplinary provision.     

Social Skills Training with Delinquents: A Look at the Evidence and Some Recommendations for Practice

Correspondence to Dr Clive Hollin, School of Psychology, University of Birmingham, Edgbaston, Birmingham B15 2TT Summary Following an overview of the use of social skills training (SST)with delinquents, it is concluded that SST can be successfulin changing some aspects of social behaviour but that it haslittle effect on offending. A number of reasons for this ‘failure’are discussed: a failure by practitioners to utilize the fullSST model; and a failure, by practitioners and researchers,to explore the relationship between social skills and offending.Recommendations for both practice and research are made to remedyexisting shortcomings.     

Images of Contract: An Empirical Study of the Use of Theory in Practice

Correspondence to Dr Silvia Fargion, Social Work Unit, Faculty of Sociology, University of Trento, Via Verdi 26, 38100 Trento, Italy. E-mail: silvia.fargion{at}soc.unitn.it Summary Based on a project on the use of contract work by practitionersin Family Support Services in Italy, this article addressesthe relation between theory and practice from a language perspective.Practitioners' representations illustrate two main ways of interpretingthe concept of contract, one focusing on the agreement betweenclient and practitioners, the other on a structured way of working.These two images of contract appear connected to different ‘languagegames’, that is frameworks practitioners use to make senseof their work. This finding casts doubts on the very possibilityof conjugating, in concrete practice, empowering approacheswith a highly structured way of working, as the contract methodand other approaches in social work attempt to do. The researchalso shows how theoretical concepts can be reinterpreted andused in different ways by practitioners, consistent with thebroader languages that social workers adopt to communicate about,and make sense of, their work.     

Professional Ideology, Middle Range Theories and Knowledge Building for Social Work Practice

Please address requests for reprints to Professor F. M. Loewenberg, School of Social Work, Bar-Ilan University, 52100 Ramat Gan, Israel. Summary More effective social work practice will require increased effortstoward knowledge building and theory development. Until a unifiedsocial work theory is available social workers will choose eclecticallyrelevant theoretical formulations from the large number of middlerange theories available to them from other professional disciplines.New middle range theories and innovative theoretical formulationsappear continually, resulting in a smorgasbord of theories,from which social work practitioners can choose. This articleexamines the effectiveness of an aclectic theory base for apractice profession. In the discussion of the findings noteis taken of the need for explicating social work's professionalideology as a next step in knowledge building.     

Cost and Stakeholder Views: A combined approach to evaluating services

Correspondence to Jackie Powell, Department of Social Work Studies, University of Southampton, Highfield, Southampton SO9 5NH Summary This paper focuses on the decision-making process at a strategiclevel in the context of implementing a ‘community care’policy for older people with mental health problems. It is basedon the findings of an evaluative study of the implementationof one district health authority's strategy for the decentralizationof its mental health services for older people. The study wasan attempt to develop an evaluative approach which acknowledgedthe importance of cost, but also the need to include the viewsof the several ‘interested parties’, not least thosewho used the service. The reconciliation of what might be seenas the conflicting interests of the wider public for a carefulutilization of resources with the individual's needs for anaccessible and responsive service represents a major challengefor planners, managers and practitioners within the public sector.This paper argues the need for dialogue as the basis for partnershipbetween those with a primarily financial focus to their workand those more intimately concerned with individual needs.     

Social Work, Liberty and Law

Correspondence to Professor John Williams, Department of Law, University of Wales, Aberystwyth, SY23 3DY, UK. E-mail: jow{at}aber.ac.uk Summary The relationship between law and social work is complex. Doeslaw assist practitioners to promote rights, or is it confinedto ensuring accountability and regulating practice? This articleexplores law's role, and its limitations, in promoting liberty,or more accurately ‘constitutional liberty’. Doeslaw provide practitioners with liberty-based values capable,if necessary, of legal enforcement? The paper argues that thereis no simple answer; law impacts on social work in differentways and there is little consistency across and within clientgroups. However, it concludes that law is one of the tools thatsocial workers can use to promote liberty.     

Technicality and Indeterminacy in Probation Practice: A Case Study

Correspondence to Department of Law, Crookesmoor Building, Conduit Road, Sheffield S10 1FL, UK. E-mail: g.j.robinson{at}sheffield.ac.uk Summary ‘Technicality’ is a theoretical construct which,in the context of professional practice, refers to those aspectsof the work which can be prescribed, ‘programmed’or subject to routine practices. This paper considers the purportedrise of technicality in probation practice, with particularreference to the relationship between increasing technicalityand perceptions of ‘professionalism’. The paperpresents a case study of one ‘technical’ initiativein the probation context: namely, a structured risk/needs assessmentinstrument. The case study examined the implementation of thisinstrument in two area probation services, with a view to establishingits impact both on the exercise of professional judgement (‘indeterminacy’),and on perceptions of professionalism among users and theirmanagers. On the basis of the case study it is argued that,contrary to many recent commentaries, neither significant reductionsin indeterminacy nor an inevitable process of deprofessionalizationcan be automatically ‘read off’ from attempts tointroduce greater structure and/or standardization to socialwork and probation practice. The tentative conclusion of thispaper is that the professional future lies not in a wholesalerejection of technicality, but rather in achieving a positive,workable balance between technical and indeterminate aspectsof practice.     

Comparative Hypothesis Assessment and Quasi Triangulation as Process Knowledge Assessment Strategies in Social Work Practice

Summary Despite a debate lasting some decades, there has been littleor no clear resolution about the way knowledge may be relatedto practice. To a considerable degree this is because of anassumption that knowledge is ‘knowledge as product’:given knowledge, researched and applied to practice. In recentyears, the concept of ‘knowledge as process’ hasemerged, focusing on knowledge of rigorous ways to think aboutpractice situations. This has generated a focus on hypothesisgeneration, testing and falsification, as well as lessons tobe learned from rigorous methods of qualitative analysis insocial research. Rigorous social workers, it has been suggested,would behave like ‘practical qualitative researchers ofthe individual instant’. However, there is little empiricalresearch on the matter. This paper evaluates process knowledgeforms used by social workers. It presents findings that socialworkers vary considerably in the extent to which they develophypotheses about the whole case, or aspects of it, in the depthwith which they analyse cases, and the systematic way they pursuean information gathering strategy. The paper concludes thatthere is clear evidence of social workers behaving as practicalqualitative researchers, but the rigour with which they do sovaries, with fundamental implications for the training process,and the extent to which rigorous strategies, along the linesof research methodology, should be taught.     

Social work, social networks and network knowledge

Summary The claim that there is something distinctive about the kindof knowledge associated with social work research is investigated.When three tests of distinctiveness are applied it emerges thatthe only way in which this claim can be upheld is by referenceto a prior claim to ontological distinctiveness. The natureof this distinctive ontology is explored using an image of linksand interdependencies. It is argued that complexity is integralto both the world of social work practice and the process ofdoing social work research. Alternative conceptions of complexityin the physical and social sciences are discussed but it issuggested that social work research needs its own concept of'network knowledge' if it is to deliver understandings of complexityrelevant to the world in which it exists. Finally, the extentto which network knowledge is networked knowledge, collectivelyowned and produced is examined. The article concludes that bylinking the concept of knowledge to the process of knowledgecreation, what emerges is not only a distinctive research paradigmbut also a way of rebuilding a concept of professional unityand purpose in social work education.     

Applying Single-Case Evaluation in Social Work

Summary This article reports on a research project involving the useof single-case designs on an agency-wide basis within KirkleesMetropolitan Education Social Work Service. Following a programmeof training, 21 social workers (69 per cent of the service)applied the methodology in 83 cases. The extent of practitionerinvolvement in this project prompted Bruce Thyer (Professorat the University of Georgia, USA and editor of Research onSocial Work Practice and author of Thyer, 1993) to state ina letter to the authors, ‘Please allow me to offer mycongratulations on a most valuable project. To my knowledge,this is the largest agency-based study of this type which hasever been conducted. Your agency social workers are especiallyto be commended for their implementation of single-case designswith real life clients and families’ (6 May 1994). Theproject's strategy was to concentrate on the prerequisites ofsingle-case methodology which include specifying target problemsand selecting an appropriate measure to monitor progress. Thetype of single-case design used was determined by the courseof natural practice, hence indicating the flexible nature andviability of this methodology in the evaluation of social workpractice. The use of single-case designs encouraged a systematicapproach in the definition of target problems, identificationof goals, selection of intervention procedures and in monitoringoutcomes. The practitioners found that single-case designs enabledcontinuous assessment of outcome data by both the clients andthe practitioners, providing a model of accountability and collaborativeworking. A paper based on this article was presented by MansoorKazi at the ADSS Research Group Conference, Stafford, 17–18November 1994.     

The Limits of Competence in Social Work: The Assessment of Marginal Students in Social Work Education

Summary Out of a population of 208 final year social work students,a sample is gathered of those whose fieldwork gave rise to commentby tutors. A further sample of 35 deemed to be ‘at risk’is identified, and the process by which all but four obtainedtheir Certificate of Qualification in Social Work is carefullymonitored. Among topics discussed are the need to define theprocess of assessment more clearly, the weakness of so-calledtheoretical foundations in social work practice, the risk ofmisunderstanding between fieldwork teachers (supervisors) andcourse tutors regarding their respective responsibility forjudging competence in practice, and the desirability of requiringstudents to demonstrate competence rather than expecting coursesto prove incompetence.     

Some Implications of an Integrated Model of Social Work for Theory and Practice

Summary This paper is an attempt to assess the significance of the introductioninto this country of an ‘integrated’ or ‘unitary’approach to social work. An attempt is made to clarify the relationshipbetween paradigms, theories and models. The author claims thatan integrated approach to social work may represent a shiftfrom a predominantly individualistic conceptual model of practiceto an interactionist one. These conceptual models are comparedand critiques of the integrated model are examined. The questionis posed: is it possible to have an integrated model of practicewithout an integrated theory? Some suggestions are made concerningthe essential characteristics of such a theory and the possiblecontribution of sociology to its development Finally, some implicationsof the model for practice and for social work education arediscussed.     

Ambiguities in Decision Making: Social Work's Response to 'Glue-Sniffing' in Scotland

Correspondence to Dr Elizabeth Jagger, Social Science Department, Park Campus, 1, Park Drive, Caledonian University, Glasgow G3 6LP Summary This paper examines how social workers make decisions aboutwhich cases of ‘glue-sniffing’ require intervention,in the context of a government policy which construes the problemprimarily within the arena of parental responsibility. Usingdata from interviews with social workers and research on ‘glue-sniffing’,it shows that social workers were frequently reluctant to dealwith cases. It explains that this has to do with factors suchas organizational priorities, lack of resources and, in particular,the ambiguous status of ‘glue-sniffing’ within theirown professional discourse. It concludes that the complex interplayof these factors means that government policy is not translatedinto practice in any simplistic manner.     

Social Work, Sectarianism and Anti-sectarian Practice in Northern Ireland

Correspondence to Dr Jim Campbell, Department of Social Work, The Queen's University of Belfast, 7 Lennoxvale, Belfast BT9 5BY, Northern Ireland. Jim Campbell lectures in the Department of Social Work, The Queen's University of Belfast. His doctoral thesis was on the concept of violence in social and political thought. His current research interests include social policy in Northern Ireland and mental health social work Summary This paper addresses a subject relatively unknown to the Britishand international social work audience—that of trainingfor anti-sectarian practice. In doing so, it points to someof the complex, even dangerous issues raised by such trainingfor social work students and practitioners in Northern Ireland.The paper comments upon the limited but significant ways inwhich social work educators and practitioners have tried tochallenge sectarian discrimination in Northern Ireland, andproposes methods in train ing and research which might facilitatea better understanding of these processes.     

Formalizing the Unformalized: Practitioners' Communication of Knowledge in Practice

Correspondence to Dr Jennifer Osmond, School of Human Services, Logan Campus, Griffith University, University Drive, Meadowbrook, Queensland 4131, Australia. E-mail: j.osmond{at}griffith.edu.au Summary Despite considerable debate in the literature, social work continuesto invest considerable analytical and empirical energy on understanding,recognizing and critiquing the nature and form of its knowledgebase. Although such contributions have advanced the discussion,what is largely absent but essential to this debate is an understandingof how practitioners actually express what they know. This paperfocuses specifically on this issue and in so doing, advancesone template for working with practice language. From a qualitative,multi-method research methodology, it was found that participants'communication of their knowledge was not always formal and labelled.Knowing could be expressed via examples, stories, metaphor,as well as understandings that resembled existing theoreticalknowledge or that which had been reformulated and synthesizedin practice. The paper emphasizes the necessity to recognizethis diversity in knowledge communication, so as to accuratelyand responsibly map actual practice knowledge, but in doingso, also raises the issue of addressing limitations that suchrecognition brings. The issue of competent and clear practicearticulation is a topic to which the profession should giveserious attention. The inability of practitioners to explicitlyarticulate the basis of practice behaviour places them at aconsiderable disadvantage in a competitive labour market.     

Responding to Youth Crime in Scotland

Correspondence to Bill Whyte, Director, Criminal Justice Social Work Development Centre for Scotland, School of Social and Political Studies, University of Edinburgh, Flat 1FR, 31 Buccleuch Place, Edinburgh EH8 9LJ. E-mail: B.Whyte{at}ed.ac.uk Summary Scotland’s Children’s Hearings deal with young peoplewho offend within an integrated system dealing also with youngpeople in need of care and protection, on the assumption thatthe difficulties of both groups have similar roots in multiplesocial disadvantage and social adversity (Whyte, 1998a). A government-fundedstudy, one of the first since the system’s inception in1971, was commissioned to examine the social characteristicsof over 1,000 children and young people referred for offenceand nonoffence reasons. This paper describes the characteristicsof 465 of the young people who were referred specifically foroffending. It provides the first ‘official’ datain twenty-five years on young people in the system. The studyfound that most of those referred for offending had characteristicsstrikingly similar to those referred for nonoffence reasons,as predicted when the system was first established, and similarto those present in the general literature on young offendersfrom other jurisdictions. The study poses fundamental questionstaken up by the Scottish Executive’s review of youth crimeon how best to design systems and develop social interventionsthat can address offending and social disadvantage in an integratedway.