Citizenship and Consumerism in Health Care: A Critique of Citizens' Juries

This paper examines the strengths and weaknesses of citizens' juries as a model for public involvement in health care. It does so through observation of two citizens' juries run by the same Health Authority, during the summer of 1996. The framework used to evaluate the juries is that provided by IPPR in their 1997 Report, namely focusing on the themes of information, time, scrutiny, deliberation, independence and authority. Citizens' juries are compared and contrasted with other models for public involvement and linked with the broader debate on citizenship theory and practice.     

Australian Welfare Reform: From Citizenship to Supervision

This paper examines the implications of welfare reform for the meaning of social citizenship in Australia. Australian welfare reform has been under way since the late 1980s, and reflects the themes of activity and participation that are shaping social policy in many advanced industrial nations. The paper suggests that Australian welfare reform is following a liberal trajectory of change which places a continuing emphasis on market and family as the preferred institutions for social support with a newly salient appeal to moral ideas about the responsibility of citizens to be self-sustaining. The paper argues that welfare is being transformed from a limited social right to support provided on condition, and from treating the claimant as a sovereign individual to a subject of paternalistic supervision. Together, these changes are redefining the meaning of equality in Australian social citizenship.     

批判诠释学视野下的社会工作——从对实证主义社会工作的反思谈起

实证主义在社会工作理论和实务的发展中发挥着重要的影响,而各种反实证主义思潮的论争则使社会工作有了更多视角和面向,在这其中批判诠释学是一支重要的力量。本文对实证主义传统下的社会工作模式进行了一些反思,在此基础上,讨论了批判诠释学对实证主义传统的批评和对社会工作理论和实务的影响。     

From Charity to Citizenship NPOs in Taiwan

This paper examines the historical formation of non-profit organizations (NPOs) in Taiwan. The charity discourse has been dominated among NPOs due to the Confucian and Buddhist traditions in the early twentieth century and reinforced by Western Christian charity organizations during the U.S. aid in the Cold War period. During the Nationalist government period, NPO was a means of social control for the so-called strongman authoritarian state. The political democratization since the mid 1980s has initiated a process of rapid expansion for the NPO sector as a sign for the emerging civil society. NPOs aimed at administrative advocacy and legislative lobby mark the birth of an autonomous civil society. These NPOs adopt citizenship discourse in their formation of group identity. Cases are presented and discussed to illustrate the particularity of each stage. As NPOs become significant players in public domain, the tension and struggle between civil society and state apparatus increase. The privatization strategy of social services by the state may have the effect of re-colonizing civil society.     

From Pavement to Piazza: Grassroots Social Work to Counteract the Globalization of Marginality

This paper—inspired by the experience of grassroots social work in Naples begun by M. Borrelli in the 1950s—emphasizes that “consciousness‐raising” and “community development” can be useful processes to stimulate responsible social participation on the part of the most marginal individuals and groups. To overcome a bureaucratic and pietistic model of the welfare state which serves in the long run to increase their dependence and socio‐cultural subordination, there is a need for alternative social policies, capable of improving people's empowerment and social citizenship. Giving more resources and decision‐making power to the most marginal could amount to changing an unfair and oppressive society from the roots up. This goal remains a moral imperative for both professional and voluntary social workers who believe in a fair, non‐violent and ecological model of development. Unfortunately, in Italy as elsewhere, neo‐liberal reforms of welfare states are tending in the opposite direction, partly as a result of out‐of‐date functionalist theories and by means of a worrying process of welfare marketization and globalization that actually increases the exclusion and marginality of the lower classes. This paper takes issue with current neo‐liberal trends by returning to a territory‐based and resident‐focused image of social work. This way, non‐profit agencies can play a more active and stimulating role in support of communitarian networks and help avoid the risk of the Third Sector's alternative spur being compromised by the otherwise “commodification” of welfare. Only in this way might one stop the transformation of non‐profit organizations into mere private providers for a buyer/controller state, more business‐minded than really concerned with freeing the poor and the marginal “underclass” from subordination and exclusion.     

Social Work, the State and the University

Summary Some aspects of the triangular relationship between the state,the university and social work are explored. Is it appropriatefor social work to be taught in a university? What are the implicationsof the fact that well over 90% of social workers are employedby the state? And what above all, is the nature of the relationshipbetween critical analysis as the corner-stone of scholarshipand the need to prepare the social work student to functioneffectively in the real world? It is argued that the respectiveattitudes of higher education and government towards socialwork are influenced by the nature of social work's relationshipwith sociology, but that this in turn has not been fruitfulfor practice development.     

系统视角下的灾害社会工作

重大灾害给受灾者的生理、心理和社会各层面带来深重的影响，以助人为天职的社会工作者如何发挥专业作用以帮助受灾案主走出灾害困境？本文以此为构思的出发点，通过对灾害救助特点以及社会工作在其中角色定位的思考，引发出从系统视角开展灾害社会工作的设想，尝试建构系统视角下灾害社会工作的实践框架。     

系统视角下的灾害社会工作

重大灾害给受灾者的生理、心理和社会各层面带来深重的影响,以助人为天职的社会工作者如何发挥专业作用以帮助受灾案主走出灾害困境?本文以此为构思的出发点,通过对灾害救助特点以及社会工作在其中角色定位的思考,引发出从系统视角开展灾害社会工作的设想,尝试建构系统视角下灾害社会工作的实践框架。     

从西部地区社会工作职业化谈社会工作教育的境遇

近年来,西部地区社会工作教育的发展,受职业化进程的缓慢而呈现出专业的扩张与就业困难和学生普遍缺乏兴趣与信心的态势,从而使社会工作教育处于一个令人憧憬但又十分尴尬的境遇,因此,在强调专业化,规范办学的同时,通过推进职业化,实现服务领域开放和政府制度支持,是社会工作教育实现良性持续发展的必然选择。     

The Impact of the First Term of the New Labour Government on Social Work in Britain: The Interface between Education Policy and Social Work

Summary This paper considers how far the New Labour educational policyrepresents a clear shift in focus from the policies of the Conservativeadministrations of the 1980s and 1990s. As in other areas ofsocial policy, the paper concludes that current government policyowes as much—if not more—to ‘New Right’ideology than to that of the ‘Old Left’. With anew emphasis on social inclusion, the paper considers the contributionof, and implications for, contemporary developments in educationpolicy and practice for child and family social work in general,and education social work in particular.     

Voices From the Front Line: State Social Workers and New Labour

Summary The article explores the condition of state social work in Englandtoday. It is based on interviews with experienced social workersemployed by local authority social services departments acrossthe north of England. These front line state social workersprovide a penetrating insight into the diverse ways in whichtheir work has been transformed and degraded and the mannerin which the needs of clients have been largely ignored. Fromtheir perspective, the election of a Labour government in 1997proved to be a massive disappointment and many social workersreported that it has further undermined state social work practice,workers and clients. The paper seeks to offer an explanationby noting the neo-liberalism of Labour's social policy and thedire consequences which flow from New Labour's fixation withwaged work as the principal solution to social exclusion andpoverty. Above all, it seeks to provide an opportunity for theviews of front-line state social workers to be heard.     

中国社会工作教育发展面临的机遇与挑战

社会工作 进入二十一世纪,我国的社会工作教育开始了新的大发展时期。截至2002年6月,全国设有社会工作专业的本科院校已达94所,比1999年的40多所翻了一番,加上专科院校设立的社会工作或社区工作(管理)专业,已超过百所学校。社会工作教育的大发展说明,随着我国社会现代化水平的提高,社会工作作为现代社会协调社会关系,防止社会冲突,解决社会问题的一种专业方法、一种制度性安排,逐渐显示出它的重要性。而在另一方面,这种发展也带有     

From Values of Rights in Social Work: Some Issues in Practice Development and Research

Prof. E. Sainsbury. Dept. of Sociological Studies. University of Sheffield. Sheffield S10 2TN. Summary The following is a discussion paper prepared for a researchteam engaged in a project funded by the Joseph Rowntree MemorialTrust. The problems it sought to address concerned how the teamcould derive a clear statement of clients rights from broadformulations of professional values, and the extent to whichresearch can measure the realization of these rights in socialwork practice. It was found in the research that the practical wisdom (commonsense) of social workers is frequently assumed to be based onprofessionally agreed values, and that—in the pressuresof daily work —values are seldom articulated in ways whichchallenge the procedures and solutions dictated by common sense.Thus, an initial purpose in preparing the paper was to commenton ways in which matters concerned with values become obscuredin practice, and to find ways of linking together values. rightsand practice more strongly. In offering this paper for widerpublication. the research team hopes that it will stimulatecomments which will assist their thinking.     

Importance of Research in Social Work Practice: A Pilot Study From Turkey

Abstract

It is highly important that social work practice be guided by scientific research and the resultant practices introduced to the literature. Social work research in Turkey is carried out by social work academics and practitioners. This dual position they occupy has not been thoroughly investigated in recent years; therefore, the aim of this research was to scrutinize the relationship social workers take when completing research in Turkey. Within the scope of this research, data were collected by conducting an online survey of 365 social workers. Results of the study show that 45.8% of the social workers have conducted research before. Nonetheless, 93.7% of the social work practitioners do feel the need to carry out scientific research in order to shape their professional practices. Considering these results, future research should concentrate on social work practitioners’ problems taking into account their dual position as both the producer and consumer of the research.     

'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.     

Citizenship, Social Inclusion and Confidentiality

Correspondence to Tony Evans, Oxford Brookes University, Social Work Department, Heritage Gate, Sandy Lane, West Oxford OX4 6LB. E-mail: tevans{at}brookes.ac.uk Summary Confidentiality has tended to be disconnected from wider debatesabout citizenship and social inclusion. It has been hived offinto self-referential legal and professional discourses concerningthe principles that should inform social workers' conduct. Thelacuna concerning the significance of confidentiality in widerdebates is made more remarkable by the shift towards consumercitizenship, a shift that has ostensibly emphasized serviceusers' rights, including their capacity for active participationin service provision. The rights discourse, as a component ofactive consumer citizenship, is considered in relation to theperspectives of ‘interests’ and ‘will’.The arguments that support moving in the direction of a critical‘will’ perspective, through deliberative processesthat involve service users in developing and framing informationrights, are highlighted and linked to data from a small-scaleempirical study. This perspective is regarded as consistentwith a politically dynamic formulation of social citizenship.Such a formulation involves seeing citizenship as a practicethat requires on-going debates about claims to rights, movesin the direction of seeking to rectify imbalances in power andrecognizes the capacity of service users to act in their owninterests as citizens.     

社会工作督导反思:学习成为有效的社会工作督导老师

有效的社会工作督导老师是社会工作实习教育成败的关键,但也成为内地社会工作实习教育发展的一大瓶颈。本文从这一历史现实问题出发,综合考察了有效的社会工作督导老师的职责、角色、素质要求及其发展基要,从成为有效实习督导的发展阶段的视角,着重从承担督导职责、澄清督导目标、建立督导关系、发展督导模式以及勇于督导反思五个方面探索了如何做一名新的专业实习督导老师及其持续发展。