Client Perspectives in a General Practice Attachment

Summary In this study, 50 clients of social workers in an attachmentscheme were interviewed and their views compared with the assessmentsmade by the social workers. The results were very favourablefor the attachment; the clients were well satisfied with theservice given and the majority of clients felt that they hadbeen helped, especially with their emotional problems. However,there was much disagreement between the social worker's assessmentand that made by the client, especially regarding the type andnumber of problems helped.     

Intermediate Treatment and Adolescents' Perceptions of Social Workers

Summary This paper reports an exploratory study of perceptions of socialworkers. Information was obtained from adolescents involvedin intermediate treatment activity groups, their parents, andtheir caseworkers. The respondents were asked to complete acard-sort of adjectives which might describe the social workers.The results suggest that adolescents may have much more positiveperceptions of their social workers than either the parentsor social workers anticipated. Parents were also found to havepositive perceptions of their social workers, especially iftheir social worker also attended the activity groups with theiradolescent. Some of the variables which were seen to have influencedthe perceptions of the social workers are discussed.     

Can We Afford not to Develop Social Work Practice?

Summary This paper outlines the main arguments for resources to be directedtowards developing practice methodology and skills. A reviewof recent research literature indicates that there are a groupof cases which take up much social work time and resources butthat this work lacks professional expertise and effectiveness.Outcome research in related fields is also reviewed. A synthesisof these studies' conclusions suggests that social workers couldbe effective though the essential skills are rare. The implicationsof these findings for the focus and nature of social work trainingare discussed.     

Communications between General Practitioners and a Social Services Department

Summary Referrals from general practitioners to a social services departmentover a period of six months were analyzed with a view to assessingthe quality of communication. It was found that the referrals,predominantly related to ill health and practical problems,frequently lacked important background information, and manywere considered to be innacurate or inadequate. A high proportionof allocated referrals led to no contact, and there were significantdifferences between the various social services workers in thenature and extent of contacts made. General practitioners rarelycontacted the social services department during intervention.Social workers were the most consistent in involving G.P.s incase management, and the doctors, when contacted, were rarelyunhelpful, and frequently helpful. A wide variety of alternativeactions were discussed when contact was made, and there wasgenerally a high degree of agreement. Contact with G.P.s consideredto have a positive view of social services was more extensivethan with other G.P.s, and positive G.P.s were generally consideredmost helpful.     

Defensive Social Work

Correspondence to Nigel Harris, Department of Philosophy, The University, Dundee DD1 4HN. Summary Social workers with child clients face the possibility thatsome mistake or oversight of theirs could lead to a child abusetragedy, for which they may suffer opprobrium and blighted careers.How can they guard against such risks? This paper shows howsocial workers might use different types of ‘defensive’measure to protect themselves. These parallel the types of measureused by some doctors, particularly in the United States, facedwith risks of litigation on grounds of malpractice. Becausedefensive practices have undesirable consequences, it is importantto find ways to eliminate their use by protecting social workersby other means.     

The Side Effects of Intervention?

Summary Are families worrying too much about ordinary, everyday difficultiesor are we trying too hard to help, resulting in a kind of systemsoverdose? Through the use of two case examples, the authorsexplore these questions, concluding that social work and otheragencies might be in danger of over-reacting, thereby addingto a family's difficulties. Strategies for change at the familylevel and within the welfare network are discussed.     

Child Abuse, Social Anxiety and Welfare

Summary This article attempts to locate the ‘moral panic’concerning child abuse within the context of broader changesin the material conditions and ideological forces in Britainin the early 1970s. It argues that the development of a senseof social anxiety amongst certain sections of the populationand the appeal of the New Right were crucial in the processof establishing the problem as the major issue for social workers.As a consequence social workers have been constrained into amore punitive and interventive relationship with children andfamilies, particularly the poor. The analysis illustrates thatthe way social workers experience role conflict and tensionin this area of their work reflects much wider historical andcultural confusions and contradictions.     

Themes and Continuities in Radical and Traditional Social Work

Summary Traditional and radical social work are amongst the principalcombatants in the paradigm-crisis that is alleged to characterisecontemporary social work. In considering the way in which thesetwo theoretical stances approach one of social work's centralproblems—the relationships between the person and society—itis argued that what is revealed is as much overlap as disagreement.This is in part through the subdued radicalism of a traditionalapproach which struggles to comprehend the effects of societyon clients' lives, and in part because radicalism is incorporatedinto prevailing ways of thinking through having to answer thesame questions as social work orthodoxy. It is because of thisthat Marxist social work is shown to be inevitably compromised,though this is not to deny the important contribution of radicalismin providing more satisfactory answers to crucial social workproblems.     

Learning from a Murri Way'

Summary Under the modernist project indigenous social welfare work approacheshave been silenced and relegated to the periphery as deficittheory and practice in the landscape of social work. This positioninghas promoted the belief that indigenous expertise and cultureis only of relevance for culturally-sensitive practice. Rejectingthis view, I utilize the findings of a study of intra-grouphelping amongst Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders—a‘Murri way’—to argue that social work theoryand practice has much to learn from indigenous peoples aboutthe interpersonal helping process. I call for recognition ofa space of possibility between indigenous and non-indigenouspractitioners that the indigenous telling creates. This is aspace in between these players who do not share a common understanding,a space where players may participate in a dance of difference(dialogue) to help map a common space of understanding.     

Reflexive Modernity and Social Work in Ireland: A Response to Powell

Summary The aim of this article is respond to some of the issues addressedby Powell (1998). It focuses on his consideration of the roleand task of social work within a changing society. I argue that,before postulations about the future role of social work inIreland can be made, consideration of its current nature andthe form of its discourses are necessary. I then go on to critiquePowell's analysis of social work in the context of conceptssuch as empowerment, participation and prevention and arguethat, by failing to consider the necessarily regulatory andcentralized nature of much of Irish social work currently, suchan analysis remains merely rhetorical. Powell's reference tothe Irish Association of Social Workers' Code of Ethics (1995)as evidence of social work entering a period of reflexive modernityis also examined. The article concludes with a call for a moveaway from utopian speculation within Irish social work discoursetowards a more realistic and constructive analysis of both thefuture potential and the limitations of Irish social work, givenits spatial and discursive constraints.     

Masking Hegemonic Masculinity: Reconstructing the Paedophile as the Dangerous Stranger

Summary This paper reviews the social constructions of the paedophileas these are embodied in clinical and journalistic discourses.It considers how these discourses have influenced communityperceptions of risk and professional responses to the concernsthey portray. It then locates these professional constructionswithin a context of hegemonic masculinity and unsafe families.It concludes that community safety is not adequately addressedby professional assessments of risk that focus primarily onthe problems posed by known paedophiles. It is important toconsider the problem of sexual violence in a much wider contextthat problematises the context in which sexual abuse occurs.     

Community Social Work in a Market Environment: A British-American exchange of technologies and experience

Correspondence to Roger Hadley, Department of Applied Social Science, Cartmel College, Lancaster University, Lancaster LA1 4YL Summary Community social work, which flourished in Britain in the late1970s and through much of the 1980s, has been sidelined in recentyears by the combined development of market-oriented policiesand managerialism. However, certain recent initiatives in humanservices in the USA, a country which has moved far further towardsa contract culture than Britain, show that some American practitionersare increasingly critical of the perceived limitations of theirown system and are now seeking to borrow from earlier Britishexperience in making it more integrated, localized and community-oriented.This paper explores the example of an American county humanservices agency which has moved in this direction and considersits relevance for the survival and future development of communityoriented social work and social services in the quasi-marketenvironment which is emerging in Britain.     

The Use of Single Case Experimental Designs in the Evaluation of Social Work

Summary This paper seeks to identify the problems raised by the evaluationof social work in predominantly subjective and qualitative terms,arguing that this prevents the accumulation of the detailed,scientifically acceptable outcome-findings from day-to-day practicenecessary for the improvement of services. This in turn forcessocial work to rely far too much on infrequent, and not alwaysusable ‘bulletins’ issued by reviewers of large-scaleresearch. An alternative approach, complementary to the above, and basedon the application of experimental and quasi-experimental methodsto single cases is proposed. The author then discusses the likelyscope of these measures and also some of the practical problemsof using them.     

The Singer or the Song: An Autobiographical Account of a Suicidal Destructive Person and her Social Worker

Summary Margery Hollick has seen a number of people in the ‘helping’professions about various problems. Some she has found helpfuland some actively upsetting. She and Jill Ford, a social workershe did find helpful, look here at some of the possible reasonsfor the different impact made by different workers. One particularaspect of this which they explore is the relative importanceof the standard of professional practice and the personal attributesof the worker. ‘How much is it the quality of the song,the quality of the singer (as a singer, as singer of that particularsong), and how much the conjunction, that makes the difference?’they ask and discuss in relation to their own work together.     

The Welfare of the Child: An Examination of Judicial Opinion about Medical and Social Work Evidence in Adoption Cases

Summary An examination has been made of judicial decisions concerningadoption and custody of children since 1926. It has been foundthat, despite the legal principle that the 'welfare of the child'should be paramount, the law has been interpreted by judgesin ways at variance with the judgements of doctors and socialworkers about the child's welfare As late as 1969, by the orderof a Judge, a child was removed from adoptive parents and givento the jurisdiction of her natural father, who had strangledthe child's mother. The Law Lords in 1971 decided that medicalevidence about the harmful effects of a child's removal froma secure foster home was generally unnecessary, Judges beingable to decide these issues themselves. Cases are cited, whichhave not reached the courts, of children being taken from securefoster homes and placed in unsuitable surroundings by naturalparents. Some proposals for a change of law are proposed, aswell as in social work practice. The principle formulated isthat greater stress should be laid on the mental health andfuture well-being of the child, than on parental rights overthe child     

Community Work, Social Work: Green and Postmodern?

Correspondence to Mary Lane, Department of Social Work, Social Policy and Sociology, The University of Sydney, NSW 2006, Australia Summary Opening with a story about community work, this paper exploresdevelopments and challenges in social and political theory andthe implications for social work, particularly for collectivepractices. Feminism, postmodernism and green political theoryare of particular interest. The paper argues for an interpretiveapproach to practice which emphasizes the local and specific,yet aspires to broader political action in the pursuit of socialand ecocentric justice. Feminism has much to contribute to thisexercise, challenging, as it does, a modern/postmodern divide.The emerging discourse of ecofeminism offers a synthesis ofsocial and ecocentric purposes and values as a basis for tacklinginequalities, whilst postmodern feminists enlighten our understandingof difference and encourage us to renounce certainty and lastproofs.     

Literature and the Therapeutic Imagination

Summary The therapeutic imagination is closely related to the literaryimagination and is concerned with similar issues of the relationshipof the self to society. The study of literature needs to bean integral part of social work education if workers are tobe helped to confront the dilemmas faced by the social worksensibility.     

The Act of Understanding

Summary Attention is drawn to experience that much social work has beenundertaken on a base of common sense, personal intuition andfeelings that the client's situation has been 'understood'.Medical, sociological and psychological sources for theory whichhave given status to objectivity and implicitly deterministicways of thinking are criticized as sometimes contrary to usefulunderstanding and not supportive to constructive change. Itis claimed that a goal of social work theory should be to disciplinethe 'understanding' which exists in the practice and it is suggestedthat this might be based upon the investigation of the meaningwhich people give to the world in which they live and to theirself within that world. This phenomenologkal approach placessubjectivity and the role of the self-concept at the focus ofattention. As a working philosophy it incorporates the formativeinfluences of past experiences whilst also asserting the primacyof the person who may impose a new significance upon both thosepast events and his immediate situation. It is claimed thatsuch an approach might be the source of a discipline which couldrelate more intimately than hitherto the theory and good practiceof all concerned with social welfare and social change.     

An Interactionist View of the Social Work Interview

Summary The paper considers the relevance of the five sub-branches ofthe interactionist perspective to the social work interviewand suggests a model incorporating all five. Such a model illustrateshow conflict between the social worker and the client may ariseand the author tentatively suggests how such conflict may beresolved     

Parental Reactions to Stillbirth

Summary The reactions of both parents to the experience of a stillbirthin hospital are studied during three social work visits madeduring a period of six months after discharge from hospital.Social and emotional responses are discussed and also the implicationsfor social work in hospital and the community.