Reflexivity, its Meanings and Relevance for Social Work: A Critical Review of the Literature

The concept of ‘reflexivity’ has become increasinglysignificant in social work literature in relation to socialwork education, theory and practice. However, our reading ofthe literature indicates that there is a lack of clarity aboutthe concept in terms of who is being exhorted to be ‘reflexive’,when and how. This article addresses these questions througha critical review of social work literature since the 1990sthat discusses the concept of ‘reflexivity’. Giventhat many authors seem to use the concepts of ‘reflexivity’and ‘(critical) reflection’ interchangeably, wealso apply this analysis to ‘reflection’ and ‘criticalreflection’. This article raises important questions abouthow the concepts of ‘reflexivity’, ‘criticalreflection’ and ‘reflectivity’ are definedand the different consequences such definitions might have forsocial work education, theory and practice.     

United We Stand? Partnership Working in Health and Social Care and the Role of Social Work in Services for Older People

The concepts of ‘partnership’ and ‘collaboration’have become amongst the most critical themes of ‘new’Labour’s social policy, particularly in respect of thedelivery of health and social care. Although the terms are rarelyprecisely defined and hence have become problematic to analyse,in most understandings successful partnerships rely upon goodsystems of inter-professional collaboration. Through revisitingthe extensive literature on the sociology of the professions,and the nature of inter-professional working, this paper willargue that effective collaborative working within health andsocial care is hard to achieve, particularly in the light ofthe vast differences in power and culture between various occupationalgroupings, and the inherently competitive nature of professionsjostling for territory in the same areas of activity. It suggeststhat these issues cannot be resolved unless they are properlyunderstood; a rhetorical appeal to the unmitigated benefitsof ‘partnership’ alone will not produce more effectivejoint working. In addition, it notes that an appropriate rolefor social work in the context of partnership working has yetto be defined and proposes specific tasks and values that distinguishthe social worker from other related professionals.     

Emotional Intelligence, Emotion and Social Work: Context, Characteristics, Complications and Contribution

Emotional intelligence (EI) has become one of the new management‘buzz’ terms. It is suggested that this is the missingingredient that separates average from top management or performance.However, despite its potential relevance for social work practice,there has been little investigation and few reports about itsapplication in social work settings. This paper seeks to stimulatedebate about the role of EI in social work practice by consideringits development, definitions and problematics. Whilst the empiricalevidence supporting the existence of a separate and measurableEI is ambiguous and emergent, the role of emotion in the organizationof human behaviour is more firmly established. The paper examinesthe role of EI and emotion in relation to five core social worktasks: engagement of users; assessment and observation; decisionmaking; collaboration and co-operation; dealing with stress.The paper situates itself in the rapidly changing context ofsocial work: the merger of social services departments withlarger more powerful bureaucracies; the movement towards integratedservice delivery; and the new social work degree. It is arguedthat social work needs to identify its claims to professionalcompetence at a time of such change, one of which is the abilityto use relationships to address users’ needs. This requiresthe capacity to handle both one’s own and others’emotions effectively.     

Rethinking Family Support in the Current Policy Context

This article uses the concept of ‘the social investmentstate’ to understand key aspects of New Labour’spolicies in relation to welfare reform. It argues that ‘investingin children’ and creating ‘responsible parents’are vital features of many of the policies and service initiativeswhich have emerged since 1997. Such features have considerableimplications for policies and practices in the arena of familysupport. The article goes on to outline aspects of an importantcritique of the social investment state which has emerged fromthose engaged in research and policy analysis who argue fora ‘political ethics of care’. It argues that thisperspective offers important possibilities to family supportadvocates not only for critique, but also for articulating muchneeded policy alternatives to those currently being promotedby New Labour. It also signposts the importance of conductingongoing research into the meanings which are being attachedby individuals to complex and contested terms such as ‘family’and ‘support’.     

'Lifeworld', 'System' and Family Group Conferences: Habermas's Contribution to Discourse in Child Protection

Habermas’s critical social theory has been challengedon a range of fronts. However, the authors see merit in hismediation thesis as set out in the seminal text, Between Factsand Norms (1996). Adopting a pragmatist defence of the thesis,we review and demonstrate the effectiveness of what we believeis a coincidental expression of some of its main tenets—TheFamily Group Conference in Child Protection. Drawing furtheron Habermas’s work, we then proceed to re-work aspectsof the conference’s core processes, thereby accentuatingthe possibility of empowering dialogue between its key participants:the families (who embody the ‘lifeworld’) and thesocial work professionals (who represent the ‘system’).In the final section, we argue that moral practice in childprotection must be safeguarded by communicational proceduresthat explicitly address issues relating to the use of powerand the need for ‘recognition’ between subjects.     

Risk, Mental Disorder and Social Work Practice: A Gendered Landscape

Whilst the importance of gender for social work practice, riskand mental health has been recognized theoretically for sometime, few attempts have been made to explore this area empirically.This paper presents findings from a mixed-methods study of socialwork practice in relation to mental health service users perceivedto be ‘high-risk’. Findings suggest, first, thatthe concept ‘high-risk’ was gendered because theprimary focus in social work practice was on the risks posedby male service users to others. Second, female social workersin the present study were found to have more female serviceusers from their caseloads who had been defined as ‘high-risk’compared with their male counterparts. The paper goes on toexplore this apparent congruence between female social workersand female service users and highlights how the management ofrisk could be considered gendered because it reflects a worker’s(perceived) capacity in cultural terms to ‘decode’the nature of the risks that their clients face as genderedsubjects. The paper demonstrates how the intersections betweenrisk, mental disorder and social work practice can thereforebe understood as a gendered landscape. It concludes by highlightingthe implications of these findings for social work practiceand research.     

Inter-agency Information Sharing in Health and Social Care Services: The Role of Professional Culture

This article uses a literature review to examine the ways inwhich professional culture might shape inter-organizationalexchange of personal information in a health and social carecontext. The aim is to explore a simplified model of possibleinformation-sharing behaviours (‘ideal’, ‘over-open’,‘over-cautious’ and ‘chaotic’) and tosuggest that patterns of information sharing may be influencedby a number of factors. It is proposed that these factors includenot only inter-professional differences in the approach takento information sharing but also the ways in which the professionsinterrelate.     

Social Networks and Social Service Workers

Correspondence to Peter Sharkey, School of Law, Social Work and Social Policy, Liverpool Polytechnic, 98 Mount Pleasant, Liverpool, L3 5UZ. Summary ‘Networks’ is a word often used in the discussionof social work practice and within social services departments.It was a word which was central to the Barclay Report (1982)and important within the more recently published Griffiths Report(1988) on community care. It is a word also known to sociologistsand anthropologists through the development of ‘networkanalysis’. There is, however, a fairly wide gap betweenits use within social work and its use within social science.This article tries to explore this gap and the ways in whichsocial science ideas might have some use and relevance to socialservice workers. It does this by using some illustrative datafrom a study done of the personal networks of thirty elderlypeople who were all clients of a social service district office.     

Genealogy's Desire: Practices of Kinship Amongst Lesbian and Gay Foster-Carers and Adopters

This article considers the practices of kinship amongst lesbianand gay foster-carers and adopters, and asks how far these havechallenged dominant genealogical discourses. It asks not howexisting social work practice can be adjusted to prevent discriminationon the basis of sexuality, but rather how the practices of lesbianand gay carers can be drawn upon to expand the genealogicalvisions of state foster-care and adoption work. The author discussesthe methods by which lesbian and gay carers have challengedheteronormative views of adult relationships, the idea of ‘natural’parenting, conventional state child welfare models, the biogeneticbasis of adult–child bonds, notions of the proper ‘family’,and the supposedly non-political nature of heterosexual kinship.Finally, the article asks how foster-care and adoption practicemight learn from the new forms of intimacy, care and parentingdeveloped by lesbians and gay men.     

Regulation or fragmentation? Directions for Social Work under New Labour

Summary This article reviews the modernizing agenda of New Labour forsocial work which has been articulated in the various changesfor social work and social care announced in the ‘QualityStrategy’. Focusing predominantly on arrangements foreducation and training, the article argues that, rather thanpresenting a coherent strategy, the structures and proceduresare fragmented and unco-ordinated at many levels. A major weaknessis that New Labour has failed to clarify where it places socialwork in the structures of a ‘modernized’ welfarestate.     

'No Irish Need Apply': Social Work in Britain and the History and Politics of Exclusionary Paradigms and Practices

Correspondence to Paul Michael Garrett, Centre for Social Work, School of Sociology and Social Policy, University of Nottingham, University Park, Nottingham NG7 2RD, UK. E-mail: paul.garrett{at}nottingham.ac.uk Summary In Britain, Irish people have continually been excluded fromthe discourse of anti-discriminatory social work theory. Themain reason for this centres on the dominant tendency to exclusivelycentre on ‘race’ and visible difference. Recentpolicy documents in relation to social work with children andfamilies illustrate the fact that Irish people are omitted indiscussions seeking to promote culturally appropriate services.Conceptually this approach is founded on implicit ideas aboutBritish identity and erroneously suggests that white ethnicitiesare homogeneous, unified and clearly demarcated from a (new)black presence. Historically, ideas associated with ‘theproblem family’ can be related to the racialization ofIrish people. Archival research examining responses to unmarriedmothers travelling to Britain to have ‘illegitimate’babies adopted also highlights how Irish women have been subjectto exclusionary social care practices. Whilst rejecting an essentialistconceptualization of ‘Irishness’, the article goeson to suggest that the mainstream and hegemonic discourse on‘race’ needs to take specific account of Irish peopleand other minority ethnicities not identifying as ‘black’,particularly during a period of globalization and new migrationinto Britain by refugees and asylum seekers.     

Looking Back: The View from Here

This article considers key developments in social work in thelast decade. From the vantage point of Australia, British socialwork (and the British Journal of Social Work) is seen in a particularperspective. However, some international comparisons are possible.Thus, the article focuses on two apparently contradictory developments:the ‘search for uncertainty’ in post-structuraltheory and the ‘search for certainty’ in evidence-basedpractice. It concludes that both, in different ways, describesocial work in the early twenty-first century.     

Irish Social Workers in Britain and the Politics of (Mis) Recognition

The article focuses on the perceptions of Irish social workersworking in ‘children and families’ settings in Britain.These respondents cannot be seen as representative of all Irishsocial workers in Britain, yet they do provide insights intofive significant themes: the approach to ‘race’and ethnicity in social work education; Irish identities inBritain; racism and stereotyping; children and families whoare Irish Travellers; and an agenda for the future. The discussionconsiders some of the issues raised in the context of what hasbeen referred to as the ‘politics of recognition’.     

A Role for Anyone? A Description of Social Work with the Elderly in Two Area Offices

Summary This article analyses information from Case Review Forms completedby social workers on 199 allocated elderly clients. These peoplewere very frail, most were considered to be ‘at risk’and to require regular, reliable and frequent care. The questionof the client moving to a tafer setting arose in two-thirdsof the cases, concerning which there was often some dispute.It is argued that social workers require a high level of professionalskill in dealing with clients, and others involved, faced withsuch questions and that this requirement will remain with thedevelopment of ‘community social work’.     

Understanding 'Going Missing': issues for social work and social services

Correspondence to Malcolm Payne, Professor of Applied Community Studies, The Manchester Metropolitan University, 799 Wilmslow Road, Didsbury, Manchester M20 8RR. Summary Recent research about young people and adults who ‘gomissing’ raises important issues for social work and thesocial services. Large numbers of young people go missing eachyear, becoming vulnerable to exploitation and at risk of committingcrime and suffering from other social difficulties. Adults leavebehind families with practical and emotional difficulties. Adefinition of ‘going missing’ should focus on absencefrom social expectations and responsibilities. Five groups ofmissing person are identified: runaways, pushaways, throwaways,fallaways and takeaways, reflecting different social situationsin which going missing occurs. It is argued that going missingis one of a range of choices which people in difficulties maymake, depending on their approach to problems in their livesand the availability of opportunities. Effective local co-ordinationto focus on reasons for going missing, on reunions and returnsto residential care or home, and to provide emotional and practicalhelp to people ‘left behind’, are required, providedthat care is taken to protect people who go missing becausethey are subject to abuse and violence.     

Social Work, New Public Management and the Language of 'Service User'

The purpose of this paper is to offer insight into the possibleconsequences of language developed at the political level byan authoritative body for the purpose of designing social policythat is then adapted as discourse in social care. The focusis on the UK government’s policy toward the language of‘service user’ in the context of New Public Management(NPM). It begins with a brief introduction on the importanceof language. Next, it outlines the move towards NPM and changesthat have facilitated the shift from ‘client’ to‘service user’, presenting some of the implicationsthese changes have had on social work in Britain. Finally, itdetails the possible detrimental effects of labelling language,and discusses research from other countries on preferred termsof reference for individuals who use health and social careservices.     

Keyworkers Re-examined: Good practice, quality of care and empowerment in residential care of older people

Correspondence to Rosemary Bland, Department of Applied Social Science, University of Stirling, Stirling FK9 4LA, Scotland Summary Social work definitions of ‘good practice’ in residentialcare which were originally developed in work with children andyoung people have also been applied to residential settingsfor other user groups, including older people. However, anylink between such elements of practice and positive outcomesfor users has not always been demonstrated. The introductionof market principles and orientations into social welfare inthe 1980s re-defined the social work ‘client’ asa ‘consumer’ with the associated power to make choicesin the area of social care. The success with which such an approachcan be applied to services for people who are very often, notin a position to exercise much choice, is debatable. Alongsidethe notion of the ‘consumer’ or ‘user’of services has grown the ideology of ‘empowerment’of people who use social work services. Drawing on findingsfrom a recent study, this article explores the contributionof the keyworker role to good practice and the empowerment ofolder people living in residential homes. It concludes that,because their understanding of the concept and practice is largelyundeveloped, the role as currently interpreted is not consonantwith good practice and tends rather to reinforce the power ofstaff.     

Would Palliative Care Patients Benefit from Social Workers' Retaining the Traditional 'Casework' Role rather than Working as Care Managers? A Prospective Serial Qualitative Interview Study

Social workers have made a significant contribution to the developmentand delivery of palliative care. Both palliative care and socialwork are rapidly evolving but, given their changing contextsand increasing workloads, can they sustain compatibility? Advancesin treatment of life-threatening illness mean that people livelonger in a period of palliative care. Social work has undergoneradical change in the wake of the 1990 NHS and Community CareAct and subsequent local-authority modernizations, with socialworkers now given the role of care managers, rather than themore traditional ‘casework’ or therapeutic role.This paper aims to explore the current and potential role ofthe social worker in palliative care for people with cancerand other prolonged life-threatening illness. It draws uponevidence from a prospective qualitative, patient-centred researchstudy, which detailed the experiences of forty people with lungcancer and advanced cardiac failure, and their personal andprofessional carers (Murray et al., 2002). A total of two hundredand nineteen qualitative interviews were carried out. We found that social workers were conspicuous by their absencefrom the lives of these forty vulnerable adults, who were livingand dying in the community with many unmet needs which, potentially,could be met by social-work input. The study highlights sixareas of concern in which social-work assessment and interventioncould have impacted on dying patients’ quality of lifeand that of their carers: loss and dependency, family-centredissues, carers’ needs, practical tasks, emotional andspiritual struggles, and finally, support needs of staff. Theseareas are outlined to explore the territory which a social workermight inhabit if resources and policies permitted.     

For the Sake of their Health: Older Service Users' Requirements for Social Care to Facilitate Access to Social Networks Following Hospital Discharge

Facilitating older service users’ requirements for accessto or re-engagement in social networks following hospital dischargeis recognized in social care analysis and policy as criticallyimportant. This is because of the associated benefits for restoringphysical health and psychological well-being. However, it tendsto be a neglected dimension of current social care/intermediatecare. Our paper draws on a qualitative study of voluntary sectorhospital aftercare social rehabilitation projects in five UKlocalities, which focused on addressing this issue. Throughexamining older service users’ feedback and experience,our study confirms the health benefits of social care facilitatingaccess to social networks at this crucial juncture. By providingsensitive interpersonal interaction, advocacy and ‘educational’assistance, social care workers supported older service users’re-engagement in a variety of networks. These included friendship,recreational and family groups, health care treatment programmesand locality based contacts and organizations. As a result,material, interpersonal and health care resources were accessed,which contributed to restoring and sustaining physical healthand psychological well-being. The process of such social carealso emerged as critical. This included ensuring that objectivesreflected service users’ priorities; integrating ‘low-level’home care; offering befriending; and challenging the pre-settime frame of intermediate care.