Social Work, Merit and Ethnic Diversity

This paper concentrates on the issues of merit and diversityin social work. The principal focus is ethnic diversity, usedas an example to illustrate a wider point about diversity. Itis clear that ethnic diversity in particular has become a majorpolitical objective across the public sector as part of the‘community cohesion’ initiative. Several benefitshave been identified and linked to the achievement of ethnicdiversity in the workforce; many of these have appeared in socialwork debate. The argument here is that while diversity has transformativepotential, it must be located within a more radical agenda ifit is to be successful. As a profession with a radical threadto its pedigree, social work is well placed to take this agendaforward.     

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.     

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.     

Young People, Risk Taking and Risk Making: Some Thoughts for Social Work

Policy makers, professionals and the public have become increasinglyconcerned with identifying and managing young people who arenot only troubled or at risk, but troubling or risky. Socialwork, however, has been relatively silent on the subject. Insocial work practice, young people have become largely ‘someoneelse’s problem’; in the academy, relatively littlecritical attention has been given to their risk taking, or tothe way we ‘make’ or construct it. This paper takesan exploratory rather than systematically comprehensive journey,across a range of discursive terrains, to open up the debate.Examining current concerns with youth and risk, it exploressome of the social and psychological theory bases whereby youthis constructed as a risky business. Drawing on empirical researchfrom several disciplines, it examines patterns and dynamicsof young people’s risk taking, and explores concepts ofrisk culture and cultural learning, identity capital and Bourdieu’snotion of ‘habitus’, to frame these. The discussionhighlights the need for critically reflective social work tounderstand the complex interplay of identity and agency, structure,culture and context that underpins young people’s risktaking. It encourages us to scrutinize our judgements of whatis acceptable or unacceptable riskiness, what within and whatbeyond the pale.     

A Contested Identity: An Exploration of the Competing Social and Political Discourse Concerning the Identification and Positioning of Young People of Inter-Racial Parentage

The development of racial and ethnic identity of minority ethnicchildren and young people in contemporary multi-racial Westernsociety remains an important academic concern. More recently,a relatively new debate about the identity and ‘correct’labelling of children of inter-racial relationships has beenbrewing in British academic literature. Nowhere is this morevociferous and intense than in the field of social work. Thispaper identifies two competing perspectives vying for positionin this ideological and political battle. It is argued thatwhilst overall consensus may not be possible or even desirable,it is important to explore these ideological positions as theyplay a key role in influencing social work policy and practice.     

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.     

Recognizing Social Work

There has been little interest until recently in the questionof whether social work has the characteristics of an academicdiscipline. This article offers a synopsis of issues arisingfrom a review of social work and social care research fundedthrough the Social Care Institute for Excellence (SCIE). Followinga brief scene setting, the first main section of the articlegives a synopsis of the social work and social care community’sexperience and judgements regarding their engagement with theresearch council. In the second part of the article, we reviewrelevant policies, structures and trends from an ESRC and socialscience perspective. We focus on the development of researchprogrammes, followed by an outline of the delivery and implementationof programmes. In the final section, we review the issues, themesand directions that emerged from the project. These includejudgements of research relevance, research users, research utilization,the social work contribution to the development of researchmethods, inter-disciplinary research, the question of whetherthere are distinctive attributes of social work research, researchcapacity, career building, priority setting, and the outcomesof social work funding bids. We also reflect on the developmentand delivery of research programmes, and the implications ofthe invisibility of social work research within the ESRC. Disciplineswithin universities are not fixed and abiding realities. ‘Recognizing’social work is a dynamic, socially negotiated process, shapedby the construction and ordering of knowledge claims withinsocial work and social science communities, and reflecting powerdifferentials that are mediated through structural mechanismsthat tend to exclude new ‘claimants’ such as socialwork. We include a number of recommendations, and suggest waysin which the issues may have relevance beyond the UK.     

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.     

Language and the Shaping of Social Work

This article is concerned with the power of language to shapeand confirm social work’s identity and to control itsessential direction and task. Social work has perennially concerneditself with communication but paid surprisingly little attentionto the more abstract concept of language. The authors tracethe changing language used throughout social work’s UKhistory, placing this into socio-political and socio-economiccontext and analysing the discourses thus created and promoted.We identify three broad periods in the development of socialwork, characterized as the moral enterprise, the therapeuticenterprise and the managerial enterprise. We conclude by connectingthis discussion with some key challenges, issues and dilemmascurrently facing social work in the criminal justice and communitycare arenas, highlighting the language and discourse of punishment,risk management, consumerism and the market economy. The articleconcludes by arguing that social work must reclaim the languageof its activity as it engages with the challenges to its identity.     

An Unfinished Reflexive Journey: Social Work Students' Reflection on their Placement Experiences

The fieldwork placement is recognized as one of the major componentsof social work education and a major determinant of its quality.A key aspect of the learning process in the fieldwork placementis the exposition of practice encounters to the students’critical reflection. Given the importance of the process of‘reflection’ or ‘reflective learning’,a qualitative study based on the reflective logs of social workstudents was conducted to explore the meaning of social workfield education and the learning experiences of social workstudents during their placement. The study findings revealedthat disturbing events experienced by students in their fieldworkwere a catalyst to their reflective process. Meanwhile, theirundue concern with knowledge and skills application within acircumscribed knowledge frame suggests the dominant influenceof scientism and competence-based practice in social work, inwhich learning outcomes and instrumental and technical reasoningare highly emphasized. Discovery of ‘self’ was alsothe major premise in the students’ reflection logs, inwhich a majority of them took their prevailing self-identityas a constant state to be verified in interaction with othersin the fieldwork placement. Reflexivity is manifested in askingfundamental questions about assumptions generated by formaland practice theories; it addresses the multiple interrelationsbetween power and knowledge, and acknowledges the inclusionof self in the process of knowledge creation in social workpractice. Its realization in social work education requiresthe social work educators’ reflexive examination of thedynamics that influence the construction of curriculum, whichin turn construct our prospective social workers.     

Viewing Spirituality in Social Work through the Lens of Contemporary Social Theory

This paper locates the social work literature on spiritualitywithin the broad theoretical and epistemological perspectivesof late modernity. It focuses particularly on the rise of individualismand its culmination in the theory of reflexive modernization—lifepolitics and subpolitics—and makes an appeal for an ‘ecospiritualsocial work’—one which would take social work awayfrom individualism back to its communitarian roots. The riseof spirituality in social work is linked to individualism. Bothresult from the depersonalizing and alienating effects of modernity:the detraditionalization and secularization of society; therise of science, rationality, the professions, and industrialand technological progress; and the decline in religion. Socialwork mirrors this process in that it has worked vigorously toshake off its religious, moralistic beginnings, and to embracethe secular trappings of professionalism in the process increasinglyembracing highly individualistic values and scientific explanationsof reality. The literature on spirituality in social work, inwhich the influence of New Age spirituality is strongly evident,tries to re-instantiate our search for quality and meaning.However, social work has yet to examine broader sociologicaltheory and the way in which it can deepen our understandingof the rise of spirituality in social work.     

Direct Payments and Social Work Practice: The Significance of 'Street-Level Bureaucracy' in Determining Eligibility

Sponsored both by governments intent upon fiscal restraint anduser movements keen to extend choice and control, ‘cash-for-care’schemes are replacing direct services across mature welfarestates. Recent legislation on direct payments, which has enactedthe UK version of cash-for-care, has attracted considerableresearch interest in the UK. Previous studies point to a numberof tensions for social workers in the implementation processwhich give rise, in turn, to considerable uncertainty, evenhostility, on the part of front line staff. This article, whichdiscusses the findings of a study of assessment and care managementpractice in one English council, seeks to make sense of socialworkers’ approach to the allocation of direct paymentsby reference to Lipsky’s (1980) theory of ‘street-levelbureaucracy’. The author concludes that despite ten yearsof managerialism, in the course of which professional practicehas been routinized and regulated, Lipsky’s work is stilluseful in analysing front line behaviour around direct payments.     

Shaping the Future of Mental Health Policy and Legislation in Northern Ireland: The Impact of Service User and Professional Social Work Discourses

This paper explores the complex interrelationship between serviceuser and professional social work discourses and provides acritical commentary on their respective contributions to therecent review of mental health policy and legislation in NorthernIreland. The analysis indicates that dominant trends in mentalhealth care, as mediated through service structures and institutionalidentities, have tended to prioritize the more coercive aspectsof the social work role and reinforce existing power inequalitieswith service users. It is argued that such developments underlinethe need for a ‘re-focusing’ debate in mental healthsocial work to consider how a more appropriate balance can beachieved between its participatory/empowering and regulatory/coercivefunctions. Whilst highlighting both congruence and dissonancebetween respective discourses, the paper concludes that opportunitiesexist within the current change process for service users andsocial workers to build closer alliances in working togetherto reconstruct practice, safeguard human rights and developinnovative alternatives to a traditional bio-medical model oftreatment.     

Making 'Anti-Social Behaviour': A Fragment on the Evolution of 'ASBO Politics' in Britain

The British Association of Social Workers has actively opposedAnti-Social Behaviour Orders (ASBOs). It is the contention ofthis article that there is a pressing need to interrogate factorswhich are influencing and driving the ASBO agenda during theperiod of New Labour in Britain. The discussion begins by referringto the significance of keywords and phrases in social work andsocial policy. This is followed by an examination of the recent(re)appearance of concern about ‘anti-social behaviour’.A critical overview of the White Paper Respect and Responsibility:Taking a Stand against Anti-Social Behaviour (Home Office, 2003a)is then provided. It is then argued that Tony Blair and formerhome secretary, David Blunkett, played distinctive roles increating Britain’s ASBO politics. This, moreover, is apolitics which potentially narrows social work’s roleand purpose.     

Patients with Minor Mental Disorders Leading to Sickness Absence: A Feasibility Study for Social Workers' Participation in a Treatment Programme

Minor mental disorders are common among patients who visit theirgeneral practitioner. In the Netherlands, they are associatedwith high costs due to absenteeism, disability benefits andmedical consumption (consumption of drugs as well as expenditureof medical staff’s time). In the Netherlands, a protocolwas developed for the treatment of minor mental disorders, basedon the principles of brief cognitive behaviour therapy. Thecost-effectiveness of this protocol was tested in a group ofpatients whose minor mental disorders had lead to sickness absence.The protocol was completed by Dutch social workers, one of whosecore tasks normally is to provide psychosocial care. The mainaims of the protocol are for the patient to regain functionalityand to prevent long-term disability. The protocol emphasizespatients’ own responsibility and active role in the recoveryprocess, includes homework assignments and stresses the importanceof early work resumption. This article focuses on a discussionof the feasibility of this treatment for minor mental disorders.The evidence for or against the protocol’s cost-effectivenesswill be discussed in future papers. The results show that patients,social workers and general practitioners were motivated to participateand that the protocol was well received by all three groups.If the treatment also proves to be cost-effective, it wouldappear to be a promising intervention for a frequently encounteredproblem in primary care.     

Self-reflection in Reflective Practice: A Note of Caution

In reflective practice, social work students are encouragedto undergo self-reflection. It is a process of self-analysis,self-evaluation, self-dialogue and self-observation. Under appropriateconditions, social workers’ self-reflection can be veryconstructive, resulting in self-enhancement. However, underinappropriate conditions, social workers’ self-reflectionin reflective practice can be destructive and create problemsfor their professional and self-development.     

Globalization and Social Work: International and Local Implications

Globalization can seem a remote process, related only to theeconomic and commercial world. However, it impacts (differentially)on the work opportunities and living conditions of populationsaround the world and has also influenced thinking about welfarepolicies, including through state provision. It thus has implicationsfor the practice and education of social and community workersin both affluent and poverty stricken states. In addition tosocial professionals who seek opportunities to work internationally,globalization is also affecting the practices of those who wouldpreviously have seen their work as essentially rooted in localconditions and community needs. This paper therefore gives someexamples of the ways in which local practice may have cross-borderand international dimensions, drawing on experiences in thechild-care field, particularly in the UK and European context.The author indicates how international social work courses areaiming to equip specialist international social workers, whilealso arguing for the development of educational programmes whichprepare ‘local’ social workers for practice in aninterdependent world.     

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.     

'Anti-Oppressiveness': Critical Comments on a Discourse and its Context

This paper identifies and aims to explain an apparent dissonancebetween the dominance in Britain of ‘anti-oppressive’social work discourse and the socio-political context surroundingits use; a context often claimed to feature excessive regulationand control. Pursuing this, some politically radical aims associatedwith ‘anti-oppressiveness’ are spelt out, and thedifficulty of achieving these in an unconducive climate is discussed.Then, a distinction made by Robert Merton between ‘latent’and ‘manifest’ functions is used to suggest thatthe manifest radicalism of ‘anti-oppressive’ discoursecan helpfully be distinguished from some latent largely unrecognisedconsequences of its use – not consequences with politicallyradical impact, but with a social meaning congruent with a climateof control. It is concluded that the ‘success’ ofanti-oppressive discourse might well be viewed as requiringmore of the kind of critical analysis that the discourse itselfwas supposed to espouse.