A senior manager with a knowledge management portfolio: the Santa Clara County experience

The agency director sought to create a systematically coordinated department that utilizes knowledge management strategies to promote evidence-informed practice. In his view, the organization was not providing needed information or organizational supports for practitioners to use knowledge effectively. To address this issue, he created a Director of Development and Operational Planning (DDOP) position with the responsibility to build structures and facilitate processes that support knowledge management. The DDOP oversees research and planning, government relations, legislative development and support, Board of Supervisors communications, staff development and training, community contracts, public information and in-house communication. The DDOP is reorganizing units under her supervision to create a knowledge management matrix that will implement new knowledge sharing strategies related to evaluation, contracts, legislation, organizational development, policy and planning, and staff development. The case study describes challenges and strategies related to: government regulations, size and complexity of the agency, staff resistance, and the developmental nature of the process.     

Evaluation capacity building in the nonformal education context: Challenges and strategies

Policymakers’ demand for increased accountability has compelled organizations to pay more attention to internal evaluation capacity building (ECB). The existing literature about ECB has focused on capacity building experiences and organizational research, with limited attention on challenges that internal evaluation specialists face in building organizational evaluative capacity. To address this knowledge gap, we conducted a Delphi study with evaluation specialists in the United States’ Cooperative Extension Service and developed a consensus on the most pervasive ECB challenges as well as the most useful strategies for overcoming ECB challenges. Challenges identified in this study include limited time and resources, limited understanding of the value of evaluation, evaluation considered as an afterthought, and limited support and buy-in from administrators. Alternatively, strategies found in the study include a shift in an organizational culture where evaluation is appreciated, buy-in and support from administration, clarifying the importance of quality than quantity of evaluations, and a strategic approach to ECB. The challenges identified in this study have persisted for decades, meaning administrators must understand the persistence of these issues and make an earnest investment (financial and human resource) to make noticeable progress. The Delphi approach can be used more often to prioritize ECB efforts.     

Boundary-Spanning

SUMMARY

A boundary-spanning approach to practice traverses barriers to give social workers greater understanding of context, more latitude in interventions, and increased access to systems. This broad-based approach helps social workers work in large, complex systems of care that demand more creativity and advocacy from practitioners in less time with less support. It draws from direct social work practice, program planning and management, social work administration, and business/organizational management. Spanned boundaries include those restricting knowledge bases and definitions of setting, those separating health from mental health, those that isolate systems of service delivery and levels and modalities of practice.     

Information Use by Levels in Human Service Organizations

Summary

Theories on organizational structure and the value of information informed observations of patterns of information use by workers in a human service organization. Differences were found in the type and frequency of information used by workers at three different levels-executive, manager and direct service. Findings suggest a gap in the education and training of human service practitioners; suggest effectiveness and efficiency improvements through an organization based design of information systems, To facilitate this, schools of social work must teach the decision-making purposes and processes at each level of the organization. Schools also must expose students to the technologies available to support practice decisions.     

Making Continuing Professional Development Relevant and Accessible in Regional Social Work

ABSTRACT

Continuing professional development (CPD) is an integral component of quality social work practice (Australian Association of Social Workers, 2013). Despite this, there is a lack of knowledge around the perceived needs and challenges of accessing CPD for rural and regional social work practitioners. This research explored professional development education needs and challenges for rural social work practitioners. The findings revealed an increase in complex cases in practice leading to the need for more training in mental health, legal aspects, and therapeutic interventions. Strong demand for CPD was evident, with a preference for face-to-face training instead of online modules. In the face of persistent challenges some innovative solutions were possible from a partnership between service providers, higher education providers, and the professional body to better meet the needs of the rural social work practitioners.

IMPLICATIONS

• Increasing complexity in rural, regional, and remote social work practice has placed extra demands on the knowledge resources of social workers.

• Continuing professional development (CPD) must be relevant and readily accessible to meet the needs of those who practice in these areas.

• Partnerships between agencies, higher education providers, and professional bodies, along with the use of technology can increase accessibility for rural, regional, and remote social workers.

     

NASW’s Supervisory Leaders in Aging: An Acceptable and Feasible Model for Training and Supporting Social Work Supervisors

Social services are instrumental in addressing challenges associated with aging. Yet, practitioners report needing expanded gerontological knowledge and better supervision. The Supervisory Leaders in Aging (SLA) program of the National Association of Social Workers (NASW) was designed to improve gerontological services by strengthening supervision of the social service workforce. With support from the John A. Hartford Foundation, the program was adopted between 2015 and 2017 in four regions, where NASW trained 134 MSW supervisors who support 1200 social service staff, potentially enhancing the well-being of 264,000 clients annually. The SLA curriculum and in-person educational approach constitute a model for supervisor professional development. Quality improvement evaluations suggested feasibility of program adoption and acceptability. Participants rated each of 10 workshops and 97% agreed that instructors were effective, that knowledge was expanded, and that content was relevant, appropriate, and likely to be used. Implications of this model for enhancing supervisory practice are discussed.     

Forging and sustaining research-minded professionals: teaching undergraduate research through student-community partnerships

The teaching of research is a well-established core component of social work curricula around the world. While educators in social work recognize the value, and need for research they have encountered persistent discomfort and reluctance from students to recognize this need. Practitioners in the field of social work often share this reserve either due to limited self-efficacy with regard to research knowledge and skills or practical constraints. With the growing need for practice-based knowledge, accountability and evidence-based practices to drive outcomes and service effectiveness, it is becoming imperative to not only prepare future social work professionals with the required skill sets but also support current professionals to meet these expectations. This paper showcases a pedagogical endeavor with an undergraduate research course in an American rural university, designed and implemented to create and support research-minded professionals through student–agency research partnerships. Through a collaborative, service-oriented learning, students have gained a new appreciation for research and agency connections while agencies have welcomed the path created to pursue their research agenda. This experience has valuable implications for research capacity building, and for community engaged research empowering future and current professionals to suitably use research toward effective and meaningful service provision.     

A Framework for Enabling Evidence-based Practice in Allied Health

Evidence-based practice (EBP) is upheld as best practice in health and human services but there is a need for more research on how this approach can be enabled in day-to-day practice. This qualitative study examined EBP with allied health managers and practitioners in a health service network (n = 17). The findings highlight the systemic nature of EBP and the extent to which it involves both individual and environmental attributes. Individual attributes include clear understanding of EBP, relevant knowledge and skills, and motivation and passion. Environmental attributes are the presence of an organisational culture that values and prioritises EBP and an integrated mix of research support services, professional development activities, supervision and mentorship, and university partnerships. Theoretical frameworks can be useful for making sense of complex processes, planning, and evaluating change. Therefore, the findings are presented as a framework incorporating reflective questions relating to the elements identified as enabling EBP.     

Educating for Practice in the Chicano Community

This paper conveys one perspective on the development and implementation of a training curriculum designed within a framework of knowledge, values, and skills essential for compatible and complementary social work practice in the Chicano community. It reflects the theoretical foundations upon which the Chicano Training Center is constructing a continuing education program for social service and mental health personnel. Curriculum content areas and emphases, as well as training modalities, are discussed and suggested as possible means for educating practitioners to better understand and serve Mexican Americans. The development of bicultural practice models in service delivery systems is also stressed.     

Training as a factor in policy implementation: Lessons from a National Evaluation of Child Welfare Training

Federal, state, and local governments spend substantial resources on training child welfare staff. Moreover, enhanced training is often proposed as a core solution to many problems facing public child welfare and other human service agencies. In this paper we conceptualize training as an element of the policy implementation process. We use data from a multiple case study evaluation of nine federally-funded training projects to examine training activity within a policy implementation framework. Findings indicate federal, state, county and organizational contexts were important in successful implementation; the projects were, for the most part, successfully implemented; training projects lacked explicit causal theory to link training activities to training outcomes; and elements of both top-down and bottom-up implementation frameworks were identified. Conclusions focus on the utility of training for enhancing policy implementation, as well as the need for greater theory development in this area.     

Absent in theory,invisible in practice: Queering HBSE for a more inclusive social work profession

A sound theoretical foundation is a necessary element of social work education that prepares students to confront the challenges of practice with critical knowledge of the human experience. Queer theory is a strength-based framework for understanding sexual and gender identities that fall outside of the current social norms, and offers a highly relevant and useful pathway for the education of social work practitioners. Despite its utility for enhancing understanding and acceptance of gender and sexual minority (SGM) people, it is underutilized in social work compared with other disciplines. Additionally, this study reports on the gender and sexual identities of social work students and their endorsement of help-seeking behaviors related to issues of gender and sexual nonconformity. These empirical-based perspectives undergird the tenets of queer theory and support its application in research endeavors aimed at better understanding the human experience. A theoretical and empirical-based argument is made for the queering of HBSE to strengthen both explicit and implicit curricula in social work education. This study expands on the limited usage of queer theory within social work and directly challenges the normative and binary nature of sexual and gender identity evident within the professional literature and implications for education and research are offered.     

Reforming child welfare: an integrated approach

Throughout the 1990s, child welfare systems were exposed to intense pressure. As a result, most systems have undertaken processes of reform and change. This article discusses the strategic development of New Zealand's service system in child welfare. A partnership between managerial discipline and professional leadership has been critical in the service system reform. With respect to management, a strong vision, a culture of high performance, and greater organizational stability and confidence provided the platform on which professional reforms could be established-including the knowledge framework, the service model, the practice package, and staff support. The managerial efforts that have provided the platform for the professional reforms are discussed, followed by an exploration of the professional reform package.     

Strengthening Supervision in Systems of Care: Exemplary Practices in Empirically Supported Treatments

The last few decades have witnessed major growth in the evidence base on effective client interventions used by social workers and other health and social service professionals. As the pressure for service agencies to offer empirically supported treatments has been increasing, financial and time constraints have driven a decline in the frequency and amount of supervision provided within many of these organizations. While the reduction in staff supervision presents a challenge for effective implementation of all treatments, there are comprehensive empirically supported treatment models for clients that serve as exemplars of supervisory practice through their explicit requirements, processes and tools for supervision and supervisor development. After a review of the current status of supervision nationally, an implementation science-based approach is described, which builds organizational support for supervision and promotes optimal supervisory practice through training and consultation of supervisors and supervisees. The elements of this comprehensive approach, developed by the Yale Program on Supervision, are detailed. Supervisory policies, practices, and tools created by the developers of empirically supported treatments and similarly grounded in the principles of implementation science are offered as further examples of strategies for ensuring effective supervision.     

Towards Program Evaluation for Practitioner Learning: Human Service Practitioners' Perceptions of Evaluation

Abstract

While human service practice improvement is acknowledged as an important outcome of program evaluation, much evaluation is narrowly focused on accountability requirements. This type of evaluation often has limited use and relevance to human service practitioners. In exploring forms of evaluation that do have practice relevance, this article presents the experiences and perceptions of human service practitioners subject to evaluations that set out to foster learning. Across the cases participants expressed concerns about data quality and credibility, the relevance of evaluation data to the program context, the invasiveness of the evaluation, management of the process (particularly limited consultation with practitioners), and the lack of effective dissemination. These cases illustrate the challenges for evaluation to be useful to practice, and to foster meaningful improvements to services.     

Integrating research and teaching in social work: building a strong partnership1

In recent years in social work we have increasingly come to address the issue of how to integrate research into practice. Implicit in the research and practice discourse is an assumption that there is an active and reciprocal relationship between research and teaching. In this paper, we question this assumption and after setting the political context, we review research into the relationship between discipline-based research and teaching. We then explore a proposal to redefine knowledge, research and teaching and examine the concept of scholarship. We go on to review some strategies we will be promoting in the UK Higher Education Funding Council's Learning and Teaching Network Support (ltsn) Social Policy and Social Work Subject Centre (SWAP) to support the development of positive linkages between teaching and discipline-based research, specifically on-line possibilities for supporting research mindedness among academics (and students and practitioners). Finally, we end by briefly discussing the equally important integration of pedagogic research into the practice of teaching.     

Gatekeeping in Graduate Social Work Education: Should Personality Traits be Considered?

To begin to systematically determine what qualities may be most useful for social work students and developing practitioners from a gatekeeping standpoint, this study explored the relationship between personality traits among first-year MSW students and performance in the field and classroom. Results indicated that there is a relationship between some personality traits and performance in the field and classroom. Findings from this study support previous research in allied disciplines indicating that personality traits are relevant to professional training and occupational success. They also lend support to recent literature in social work, which has recognized personal characteristics or attributes as critical to success in practice. Implications regarding gatekeeping, the US Council on Social Work Education's implicit and explicit curricula, and signature pedagogy are discussed.     

Educating a New Generation of Social Workers: Challenges and Skills Needed for Contemporary Agency-Based Practice

Schools of social work are continually challenged to provide professional training which effectively prepares students for the ever-changing and increasingly demanding contemporary practice context. This paper provides an overview of emerging clinical, organizational, and research trends and challenges within agency-based social work practice in the past decade. Implications of these changes for the profession will be discussed and recommendations will be offered for ways in which academic and field educators can best equip social work students with the skills needed to meet these challenges of the current agency-based practice context. These recommendations for social work practice, education, and research include the development of an integrated set of clinical, organizational, and research skills; directions for curriculum renewal and expansion; and academic field partnerships for future research.     

Practice Learning and the Development of Professional Practice

The development of professional practice is based on practice learning, yet there is no consensus about its definition. The currently evolving use of the term ‘practice learning’ provides us with an opportunity to consider the nature of learning for professional practice at initial entry through to post qualifying stages of development. A number of streams of thought are influencing the understanding of practice learning and we aim to consider some of these and how they inform those involved in supporting and guiding practice learners at different stages of their professional development.

In presenting our conceptualisation of practice learning we argue against oversimplified dualities of classroom‐based academic learning concerned with theory and workplace‐based practice learning concerned with practice. Additionally we make explicit the career‐long nature of practice learning which is as embedded in continuing professional development as it is in the requirements for qualifying programmes.

Having established what we mean by ‘practice learning’ we consider the impact of organisational learning theory on the management of practice learning. The consideration of the characteristics of organisations which learn leads to a brief examination of approaches to teaching and learning which promote knowledge creation in a way which is meaningful to practitioners. We will argue that the development of understandings of organisational learning and knowledge creation should become part of the knowledge base for those supporting and guiding practice learners, in addition to the traditional knowledge base of adult learning theory.

Before exploring the nature of practice learning it would be helpful to consider briefly what we mean by professional practice for which practice learning is preparing people.

Professional practice in social work is a complex set of activities which involve direct work with service users, and their families, as well as work with other professionals and agencies. A range of knowledge and skills are used with a firm value base which recognises diversity and oppression as key elements in UK society.

Such professional practice is learned and developed in a range of ways over time through training, practice, understanding, analysis and reflection. However, the nature of just what practice learning is and where it occurs has become a focus of debate in the UK as a result of recent developments in initial professional education and training for social work.     

Substance Use and Disabilities: Experiences of Adults' Social Care Professionals and the Implications for Education and Training

This paper draws on data from a national survey of social workers and social care practitioners in England undertaken in 2010–2011. It focuses on practitioners working in services for adults with either learning or physical disabilities and, in particular, their experiences of responding to alcohol and other drug use among their service users. Based on secondary analysis of survey and focus group data from the earlier study, the paper outlines the extent to which workers in these areas of practice encounter alcohol and drug problems and discusses the key challenges this poses for them. The findings show that between 4% and 10% of adults' practitioners' service users have alcohol and drug problems depending on the nature of the disability. Regardless of the type of disability, practitioners reported difficulties in talking about substance use with their service users as well as identifying tensions around life-style choice and risk management. They also reported the need for education and training in a number of areas. Social work education and subsequent training in working with substance use problems needs to be available to adults' practitioners and it needs to address the specific issues and needs in different areas of social work practice.     

The Broader System Begins With The Workplace

Most practitioners trained in family therapy are employed in host agencies which are not family therapy services. In these environments an ongoing challenge is to find constructive ways to manage the contraints of the employing agency. Central to meeting this challenge is the practitioner's ability to make sense of the host agency's local conditions. This paper offers a framework for developing an explicit awareness of these local conditions. It is the authors' view that an advanced level of ‘local knowledge’ allows for more creativity in managing the inevitably challenging experience of practice in human service agencies.