The Impact of Criminal Conviction Disclosure on the Self-reported Offending Profile of Social Work Students

Correspondence to University of Edinburgh, School of Social and Political Studies, 31 Buccleuch Place, Edinburgh, EH8 9JT, UK. E-mail: richard.perry{at}ed.ac.uk. Summary Data gathered at a Scottish institute of higher education between1986 and 2000 indicate a significant reduction in the scaleof self-reported offending behaviour by social work students.The change coincided with the introduction by the Central Councilfor Education and Training in Social Work (CCETSW) in 1989 ofa requirement that applicants for training disclose prior toadmission any criminal convictions recorded against them. Thearticle suggests that more prolific offenders have been deterredfrom applying to DipSW programmes and the social work professionneeds to take steps to create a more positive climate for therecruitment of those offenders who represent no more of a threatto users than non-offenders.     

Reforming Professional Training and Protecting Vulnerable Adults from Abuse: A Thematic Analysis of the New Social Work Degree's Prescribed Curriculum

Correspondence to Phil Slater, School of Health and Social Sciences, Middlesex University, Queensway, Enfield EN3 4SF, UK. E-mail: p.slater{at}mdx.ac.uk Summary This paper analyses the Prescribed Curriculum of the new Degreein Social Work in relation to the Department of Health themeof ‘protecting vulnerable adults from abuse’. Areview of post-war social policy first establishes the significanceof these terms, both individually and in varying combinations.Subsequently, the phrase as a whole provides the focus for acontent analysis of the three constituents of the PrescribedCurriculum, namely, the Secretary of State’s Requirementsfor Social Work Training, the employment-focussed National OccupationalStandards for Social Work, and the academically oriented BenchmarkStatement for Social Work. With the exception of ‘abuse’,the key terms are all registered, albeit unevenly. This presenceis subsequently enhanced via strategic considerations of ‘logicalimportance’ and ‘organising rubrics’. Finally,terminological variants of ‘abuse’ are traced, withparticular regard to the emerging language of ‘rights’.     

Regulation in Child Protection--Policy Failure?

Correspondence to Mai Walton, Department of Applied Social Studies and Social Work, University of Keele, Keele, Staffs. ST5 5BG Summary This paper examines child protection policy formulation andimplementation. It suggests that policy has been incrementallyformed in an expedient fashion to suit the political and organizationalstatus quo. It draws upon models of issue ascendancy, policyanalysis and inspection, and argues that child protection policyis regulatory in nature yet lacks the prerequisites normallyfound in regulation. It examines perceived policy failure anddemonstrates that this results from partial policy formulationand lack of clarity in objectives.     

Applying for money The encounter between social workers and clients--A question of morality

Correspondence to Lars-Christer Hydén, Department of Social Work, Stockholm University, S-106 91 Stockholm, Sweden Summary The facts of household finances generally obtain their meaningfrom the moral standards of everyday life: it is in relationto these standards that we evaluate our personal finances. Personswho lack money and apply for social welfare compensation generallyhave to turn to a public social welfare bureau where their eligibilityis assessed by a professional social worker. The central questionfor the present study is how social workers and clients dealwith the morally delicate question of personal financial deficitsand how this question should be processed in a formal and institutionalsetting by formal means. This problem is discussed through ananalysis of conversations between social workers and clientsat social welfare bureaux in the municipality of Stockholm,Sweden. In pursuing a formal inquiry the social worker is conductinga moral search: the social worker has to determine the moralcharacter of the client and the circumstances around his/herhandling of his/her own financial situation. The ‘relevantcharacteristics of the citizen’ that the social workertries to match with the beneficiary rules are of a moral nature.In this respect, the social worker is not only a social workerbut also a moral worker. In order to define and defend his orher moral character the client has to pursue the financial issueas a moral issue. In the encounter, the client alludes to everydaycircumstances to account for his/her financial situation andto justify it by applying everyday moral standards.     

Beyond Retroduction? -- Hermeneutics, Reflexivity and Social Work Practice

Correspondence to Susan White, University of Manchester, Department of Social Policy and Social Work, Williamson Building, Oxford Road, Manchester Summary Over the last three decades qualitative research methodologieshave been in the ascent within social science. Yet social workevaluation studies have tended to be quantitative in nature,conventially relying upon the generation of criteria againstwhich interventions are retrospectively judged. The generationof such criteria inevitably depends upon pre-suppositions, whichin themselves go unresearched. As a consequence the .sense makingactivities on which social work interventions depend are renderedimmune from critical analysis. This reflects a broader tendencyfor social work to cling to naive realist epistemologies, whichare arguably obsolete within the interpretive paradigm in whichits activity is properly located. By examining the debates withininterpretive social science, this paper argues for an approachto social work assessment which avoids the pitfalls of naiveobjectivism and the nihilism of anarchic relativism, whilstretaining creativity, imagination and hope.     

Statistical Errors in Papers in the British Journal of Social Work (Volumes 1-14)

Summary This paper examines the statistical error rate in the BritishJournal of Social Work (BJSW), volumes 1–14. Half of thepapers (n=175) contain empirical data and half do not. Fifty-nineof the empirical articles are quantitative with statisticalanalysis; they account for 17% of the papers in the first 14volumes. Thirty-nine of these papers (66%) make 57 errors, arate which is comparable to that reported in the British Journalof Psychiatry. Nineteen papers (32%) make serious errors. Examplesof the type of errors are described. The wider use of reliablestatistical advice, prior to undertaking data collection, isrecommended.     

Unemployment, Age, Gender and Regional Suicide in England and Wales 1974-90: A Harbinger of Increased Suicide for the 1990s?

Correspondence to Prof. Colin Pritchard, Department of Social Work Studies, University of Southampton, Highfield, Southampton SO9 SNH. Summary The Department of Health's Health of the Nation aims at a substantialreduction in suicide; this is a ‘vote of confidence’in the effectiveness of the community psychiatric and healthservices. However, it will be shown that a number of socioeconomicchanges have occurred which may lead to increased suicide; forexample British male suicide rose in the 1980s, significantlyassociated with unemployment. Though female suicide fell substantiallyover the period, across the regions suicide rates for both menand women were worse amongst the ‘work age’ bands,16–44 years, than the older groups. In respect to therelatively poorer rates amongst younger women, this may be linkedto unemployment and their unfulfilled job expectations. If thesuicide targets are not met, it is feared that the ‘failure’will laid at the door of the community and health services.     

Search for an Indicator of Effective Child Protection in a Re-analysis of Child Homicide in the Major Western Countries 1973-1992: A Response to Lindsey and Trocme and Macdonald

Correspondence to Professor Cohn Pritchard, Department of Social Work Studies, University of Southampton, Southampton, SO17 1 BJ England Summary An analysis of child homicides published in the British Journalof Social Work, demonstrated major falls in child deaths inEngland and Wales between 1973 and 1988. The results were seenas one indicator of improved child protection (Pritchard, 1992a).That study, and a reply to a critique by Creighton (1993), werechallenged by Lindsey and Trocmé (1994) and Macdonald(1995). This paper is a response, and takes advantage of thecriticisms and new data to present evidence which confirms thatthere have been reductions in child homicide in England andWales between 1973 and 1992 and that the Anglo-Welsh improvementswere the best of all the major Western countries.     

Mapping Child-Care Social Work in the Final Years of the Twentieth Century: A Critical Response to the 'Looking After Children' System

Correspondence to Paul Michael Garrett, c/o, British Journal of Social Work, University of Warwick, Coventry, CV4 7AL Summary This paper explores aspects of the Looking After Children: GoodParenting: Good Outcomes system (LAC) (Parker et at., 1991).It is suggested that the scheme, to be used with children andyoung people who are ‘looked after’ by local authorities,needs to be subjected to greater critical scrutiny. The paperseeks, therefore, to situate the LAC system in a social andpolitical context and highlights how it also relates to thedominant operational modalities of social work interventionin the late 1990s. In addition, the paper explores how ‘troublesome’children and ideas centred on ‘parenting’ featurein the LAC discourse. The discussion concludes with an examinationof Action and Assessment Records (Ward, 1995b), the centrepieceof the LAC system.     

The New American Social Work Gospel: Case Management of the Chronically Mentally III

Correspondence to Dr R. A. Cnaan, School of Social Work, University of Pennsylvania, 3701 Locust Walk, Philadelphia, PA 19104, USA. Summary Case management is currently the most popular mode of servicedelivery in the United States, especially in community programsfor chronically mentally ill people. Proponents of case managementclaim that it is cost-effective and that it assures provisionof necessary services to clients. In this paper I do not challengeits effectiveness but argue that case management neither empowersclients nor is it free of drawbacks. Given that many countriestend to model the United States, foreign social workers andother human service professionals should first examine the usefulnessof case management vis-à-vis their own cultural and economiccontexts, especially in the light of its many drawbacks.     

Yes Minister: Reviewing the 'Looking After Children' Experience and Identifying the Messages for Social Work Research

Correspondence to Paul Michael Garrett, Centre for Social Work, School of Sociology and Social Policy, University Park, Nottingham NG7 2RD, UK. E-mail: paul.garrett{at}nottingham.ac.uk Summary The heavily promoted Looking After Children: Good Parenting,Good Outcomes (LAC) project continues to exert a powerful influenceon social work in the UK and elsewhere. Despite the repeatedassertions that the documentation associated with LAC is embeddedin ‘objective’ research, this not sustainable onaccount of the failure of the researchers to interrogate theirown normative assumptions and judgements. Specific criticismscan also be levelled at the ‘community study’ connectedto the evolution of the Action and Assessment Records (AARs)which are the key part of the scheme. The system should alsobe viewed in the context of wider pre-occupations about ‘outcomes’.In addition, the project needs to be politically situated andthe researchers' relationship with the Department of Healthshould be more fully explored. In conclusion, it is suggestedthat the LAC experience contains important ‘messages’for the future of social work research.     

At the Edge of the Frame: Beyond Science and Art in Social Work

Correspondence to Dean Emilia E. Martinez-B raw ley. School of Social Work, Arizona State University, PO Box 871802, Tempe, Arizona 85287–1802, USA. Summary The central argument in this article is that social work hasalways been a practice at the fringes. The phrase is used inits best sense and in at least two meanings: (1) that socialwork has been at the edges of the mainstream of scientific discourse,not because of any intrinsic deficiency in the profession butbecause of the nature of the practice; (2) that, in the postmodernsense, social work has been a collage where science, art, rationalityand intuition, systematic and asystematic knowledge meet. Inthis latter sense, this article proposes, social work can representa very desirable convergence of paradigms that needs to be acknowledgedand celebrated. Perhaps the most significant contribution ofpostmodernism is that it accommodates this possibility.     

Case Management and Care Management in Community Care

Correspondence to Prof. Peter Huxley, Mental Health Social Work Research Unit, Department of Psychiatry, Mathematics Building, Oxford Road, Manchester University M13 9PL. Summary This paper reviews the purpose of case management, its introductioninto the UK, and its central components. While case managementhas empirical referents which have been developed over manyyears (largely in the USA) care management has, until recently,had none. The paper examines different models of case managementin terms of organizational structure, content, and outcome assessment.The importance of the distinction between clinical and administrativecase management is emphasized, especially in work with mentallyill persons. The review of existing evidence suggests that inorder to produce effective intervention services must have clearlyidentified objectives, closely specified target groups, interventionswhich match the objectives, and employ related outcome measurements.Some of the current issues in the implementation of care managementare considered.     

Non-Statutory Mental Health Social Work in Primary Care: A Chance for Renewal?

Correspondence to Malcolm T. Firth, Honorary Research Fellow & Senior Psychiatric Social Worker, 'DEAL', Department of Psychiatric Social Work, 12th Floor, Mathematics Building, University of Manchester, Oxford Road, Manchester M13 9PL, UK. E-mail: malcolm.firth{at}mhsc.manchester.nhs.uk Summary The current status of evidence-based practice in the field ofmental health has led some to question the potential for innovationif social work practice is organizationally proscribed or reducedto a dogged adherence to methodological orthodoxy. Conversely,social work's value base is esteemed disproportionately to itsevidence base. Changing service contexts in the UK, particularlythe emergence of Primary Care Trusts as gatekeepers and commissionersof health and social care services, are providing opportunitiesfor social work to develop a new presence and purpose. The authorsdescribe their work in a small-scale service based in primarycare that anticipated these opportunities, by a retrospectivestudy of 120 cases. A new evidence base that derives directlyfrom practice is suggested as a way forward for social workeducation and training, as well as for service and professionaldevelopment.     

Toward a Theoretical Framework for Perinatal Bereavement

Correspondence to Dr Keith Brownlee, School of Social Work, Lakehead University, 955 Oliver Road, Thunder Bay, Ontario, P7B 5E1 CANADA. E-mail: keith.brownlee{at}lakeheadu.ca or oikonenj{at}imail.tbh.net Summary For many women a foetal or neonatal death is a significant life-alteringevent. Modern medicine has offered pregnant women an early awarenessof their developing foetus coupled with an opportunity for advancedfeelings of attachment, which, in most cases, accentuates thegrief and sense of loss. While crisis intervention serviceshave become standard practice in hospital settings and typicallymeet many clinical and short-term needs of bereaved parents,conventionally held theories of grief fall short of the realitiesdescribed by such parents. This paper critically examines theclinical and research support for current approaches to perinatalgrief and argues that theory development specific to perinatalloss is needed within the field and that social workers canplay an important role in this respect. Some emerging ideasare discussed that appear to hold promise for establishing modelsthat would be more responsive to the particular complexitiesof perinatal bereavement.     

Working in the Social Services: Job Satisfaction, Stress and Violence

Correspondence to Professor Jan Pahl, Department of Social and Public Policy and Social Work, Darwin College, University of Kent at Canterbury, Canterbury CT2 7NY. Summary A major survey of the social services workforce (Balloch etal., forthcoming), carried out in the Research Unit at the NationalInstitute for Social Work, has produced new data about sourcesof job satisfaction and about the incidence of stress and violence.The survey took place in five different local authorities inEngland, and interviews were carried out with 1276 individuals,selected from four groups of staff: managers, social work staff,home care workers and residential staff. The results suggestedthat those who work in the statutory, social services do experiencemore stress and violence than workers in other parts of thehealth and welfare services. However, different jobs presenteddifferent hazards. In general, home care workers were the mostsatisfied with their jobs, and were also the group least likelyto be stressed or to experience violence in the course of theirwork. By contrast, residential workers, especially those withmanagement responsibilities, were most at risk of both violenceand stress. Men were more likely than women to experience violence,while other groups with a higher than average risk of stressincluded younger members of staff, and managers and social workstaff responsible for elderly people.     

Parents' Views on Social Work Interventions in Child Welfare Cases

Correspondence to Trevor Spratt, Lecturer in Social Work, School of Social Work, The Queen's University Belfast, 7 Lennoxvale, Belfast BT9 5BY, Northern Ireland. E-mail: T.Spratt{at}qub.ac.uk Summary This article reports findings from the third part of a three-partresearch project examining the potential for social workersto shift from a child protection to a child welfare orientationin their practice. Whilst social workers in the UK have beenencouraged to make such changes, they have been hampered byconcerns to manage risk. Findings reported from the earlierparts of the project, indicated that there was potential fora substantial proportion of child protection work to be redesignatedas child welfare work, but that where this was achieved in practice,there was evidence of the continued influence of child protectionprocesses as social workers sought to manage the risks inherentin child welfare cases. The study reported here sets out toascertain the views of parents who were subject to child welfareinterventions. The findings indicate that while parents feelapprehension with regard to contact with social workers, inthe majority of cases successful relationships are formed. Itis argued that social workers display considerable skill inmonitoring potential risks whilst engaging with families andthat the subtleties involved in such activity are not capturedby official measures of governance which concentrate on moreabstract indicators of performance.     

Internationalizing Women's Struggle against Discrimination: The UN Women's Convention and the Optional Protocol

Correspondence to Dr Kwong-leung Tang, Department of Social Work, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shatin, Hong Kong. E-mail: kltang{at}cuhk.edu.hk Summary In the face of rampant violations of women’s human rights,women’s activism for change has extended beyond the nationalboundary. This paper discusses the importance of the UnitedNations Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discriminationagainst Women (Women’s Convention) in the promotion ofwomen’s rights. Adopted by the UN General Assembly in1979, this Convention has been ratified by over 170 nations.As an anti-discrimination treaty, it has both strengths andweaknesses. Recently, it has been strengthened through the introductionof an individual complaint mechanism (the Optional Protocol).It also provides for the conduct of special inquiry into violationsof women’s rights. To draw benefits from the Convention,women across the world must understand and act upon its keyprovisions. Social workers should support and facilitate itsimplementation by educating women about its main provisions,assisting them in the complaint procedure and overseeing states’full compliance with the Convention.     

Evaluating Social Work and Medical Practice with Black and Ethnic Minority Groups Using the Clinical Audit Model

Correspondence to Kish Bhatti-Sinclair, Department of Social Work Studies, University of Southampton, Highfield, Southampton SO17 1BJ, UK. Summary This paper is based on the External Audit-Ethnically SensitivePractice (EA-ESP) project which was undertaken within six primaryand secondary health care settings. This project is used asan example of how the clinical audit model can be used to monitorand review health and social work practice in the UK. The paperexamines quality, compares approaches to evaluation, and suggeststhat audit can be a useful tool for agencies in obtaining userand staff views on many areas of practice but in particularon equal opportunities, anti-racism and anti-oppression. Attentionis drawn to audit within broader evaluative and review approachesalready employed by social work academics and practitioners.The issue of quality and how it can be measured is consideredthrough an analytical comparison with approaches which employaction research and other evaluative means in the process ofreview. Audit is explored in the context of a growing need for the developmentof monitoring and review systems which provide evidence to supportand develop professionalism within social work. External auditis explored and compared to internal audit. Finally, the needfor the development of quality services in anti-racist and anti-oppressivework is highlighted and it is suggested that audit can be acost-effective and efficient way of achieving this.     

Notes on Theory and Practice in Social Work: a Comparative View

Please address reprint requests to Robert van Krieken, Department of Social Work, University of Sydney, Sydney, New South Wales 2006, Australia. Summary There are still a number of problems surrounding the relationshipbetween theories of social work practice and that practice itself.This paper examines the factors underlying those problems andemphasises their roots in the failure to examine the diversityof social work theories and practices. We refer to one attemptto resolve the problems—the distinction between ‘practicetheory’ and ‘theory of practice’—pointout some difficulties with it and suggest an alternative, three-folddistinction within theorising: between (a) materialist socialtheory, (b) strategic practice theory and (c) working concepts. As an example of how those distinctions can be used, we thenbriefly discuss the work of Oskar Negt and its introductioninto the Dutch welfare context, as it was the issues raisedby that which stimulated the ideas in this paper. We concludeby arguing that only this kind of perspective on theorisingcan produce ideas which are of real use to progressive socialwork practitioners.