Preventing Suicide: A Neglected Social Work Research Agenda

Social workers encounter suicidal clients; however, little isknown about social work’s empirical knowledge base forsuicide assessment and treatment. In the first comprehensivestudy of social work’s contribution to the suicide literature,the authors conducted systematic electronic and manual searchesfor suicide research published in peer-reviewed journals bysocial work investigators for the period 1980–2006, withthe purpose of ascertaining the state of clinical knowledgerelated to suicide risk factors and effective treatments. Thesefindings reveal that despite recent increases to the study ofsuicide by social work researchers, they have contributed limitedevidenced-based knowledge in the last twenty-six years on thetreatment or prevention of suicide or suicide-related behaviours.The article outlines the risk factors for suicide and discussesthe implications for clinical social work practice and research.     

Critical Commentary: Who Decides Now? Protecting and Empowering Vulnerable Adults Who Lose the Capacity to Make Decisions for Themselves

The implementation of the 2005 Mental Capacity Act in Englandand Wales heralds a new era for social work practitioners andresearchers. Protecting and empowering vulnerable adults—animportant element of adult-care social work—relies ona legal framework that attempts to balance adults’ rightswith the desire to protect them. The new Act is part of thatframework, addressing the fundamental issue of when and howdecisions can be made on behalf of people who lose decision-makingabilities (‘capacity’). The Act encompasses themeaning of incapacity and best interests, advance directivesconcerning treatment, managing people’s affairs and makingdecisions for them, overseeing the delegation process, and research.In explaining how the Act addresses some of these challenges,the article alerts practitioners and researchers to the keyareas in which the Act will make a major impact.     

Conceptualizing Community Social Work--a Response to Alan York

Summary This note takes further the task of conceptualizing communitysocial work begun by Alan York in his paper for the June 1984edition of this Journal. York's approach is criticised firstlyfor unhelpfully conflating ‘community work’ and‘community social work’ and, secondly, for developinga schema unable to satisfactorily theorise the range of communitywork approaches currently to be found within social work. Buildingupon York's suggestion that ‘dichotomous formulations’provide an appropriate way forward for analysing community practice,three, distinct, dichotomies are elaborated, and recommendedas a basis for locating and comparing current approaches tocommunity social work.     

From Hollis to the Orange Book: Developing a Holistic Model of Social Work Assessment in the 1990s

Correspondence to Margaret Lloyd, School of Social Work, University of Manchester, Dover Street, Manchester M13 9PL. Summary Amidst questioning of its essential identity, social work iscurrently developing new procedures and training programmesin assessment, traditionally one of its core activities. Thedemand for this redevelopment has been created by the changingprofessional climate in both probation and social work practice,in particular the response to legislative changes such as theNational Health Service and Community Care Act 1990. This paperexamines the established model of social work assessment inhistorical context and identifies its shortcomings for practicein the 1990s. It argues that despite the apparently diverserange of assessment tasks now undertaken by social workers andprobation officers, there remains an identifiable, common setof skills. Moreover, unless social work anchors these assessmentskills in a conceptual framework, retaining a sense of its ownhistory, the essential character of social work assessment willbe lost amidst mechanistic procedures and competing philosophies.This paper suggests a typology for making sense of the rangeof assessment tasks in current practice, arguing that this mustbe rooted in a holistic theoretical and philosophical model.The term ‘social work’ is used in its generic senseto include probation practice.     

Spiritual Need and the Core Business of Social Work

This paper examines the development of social work practicein spiritual care and the attitudes towards spirituality andreligion demonstrated by social workers in the UK, through reflectionon key findings from two empirical studies conducted ten yearsapart. Fieldwork for the first study, conducted by the author,was undertaken from 1990 to 1992 and was the first of its kindto examine the treatment of spirituality in social work practicein the UK. The second study reported in 2004. Comparison ofthe findings from these two studies showed that the increasedsympathy towards ‘spiritual practice’ is not asgreat in social work as is demonstrated amongst other humanservices professions, and that there is continuing inhibitionand resistance in the UK in social work education in particular.The paper argues that much of the problem for practitioners,even where they identify spiritual need as an issue, lies inthe inadequate theorizing and lack of practice guidance developedin the context of UK social work. It concludes by discussingthe particular context of mainstream social work practice inthe UK and examines how assessment of spiritual need and spiritualinterventions might connect with social work’s core business.     

'Low Key Practices' in Social Work. Towards a Socio-historical Method

Summary In this article a ‘socio-historical’ method of analysisand intervention in social work will be developed, illustratedby an example drawn from social work with families, the programknown in France as Action Educative en Milieu Ouvert. Our purposeis to support and encourage what we call ‘low key practices’,which refers to practices in which social workers within theexisting structures of so-called ‘individual social work’attempt to explain the social struggle taking place in the situationsthey are dealing with.     

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.     

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.     

An Unacceptable Role for Social Work: Implementing Immigration Policy

Correspondence to Dr Beth Humphries, Department of Applied Social Science, Lancaster University, Cartmel College, Lancaster, LA1 4YL. E-mail: b.humphries{at}lancaster.ac.uk Summary Social work has always had a role in policing the boundariesof welfare, and under New Labour there has been a decisive shiftto an increasingly narrow and negative practice. This articletakes social work’s involvement in internal immigrationcontrols as an example of the profession’s complicityin implementing social policies that are degrading and inhuman.It argues that social work has adopted a reactionary and uncriticalview of policy, and asks whether there might be a more progressivefuture for the profession.     

Calling Social Work

New Labour has promoted the use of information and communicationtechnology. Call centres are a key development in this strategyand are now in use for accessing social services. In officialpolicy, the use of call centres is presented as an aspect ofattempts to change the relationship between service users andthe purchasers and providers of services. In contrast, we suggestthat the use of call centres in social care does little to shiftthe balance of power. Call centres bring together four dimensionsof New Labour discourse: learning from the private sector, cuttingcosts, technology and consumerism. Three issues emerge fromtheir development: the undermining of social work’s senseof place; the circumscribing of service user participation;the rationalization of social workers. The call centre servesas a signifier of what, it is claimed, the combination of NewLabour’s consumerism and technology can achieve. Thissignification disguises call centres’ properties of efficiency,calculability, predictability and control. Contrary to the rhetoricthat accompanies them, call centres may be curtailing serviceuser participation, as well as delimiting the social work role.Accordingly, their use has important, but as yet largely unresearched,implications for service users and social workers.     

A New Structure for Intake and Allocation in a Field Probation Unit

Summary From a background of practice and a post-qualifying fellowship,the author draws on the experiences of other Senior ProbationOfficers, as well as his own and his team members. In this article‘intake’ within the probation setting is taken asinitial agency impact as well as that part of team strategywhich has a bearing on allocating new work. Allocation and theconsequential deployment of resources are then seen as centralto the professional lives of team members. A structure is presentedwhich in practice pervades the totality of the team's life;most radical is the author's notion of allocating ‘workepisodes’. The model provides a structure for team membersto specialise in different forms of social work, and at thesame time allowing clients choice to be supervised without being‘sentenced to social work’. It also depends uponthe active use of a team as a group of interacting, interdependentprofessionals who share their work.     

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.     

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.     

Practitioner Research: Evidence or Critique?

In this paper, I revisit some of the origins and more recentdirections in practitioner research in social work, seeing itas a phenomenon that—rather than being special or narrowlyassociated with social work—manifests a pervasive clusterof concerns about good professional practice in contemporarysociety. Drawing on some general conclusions of a recent studyof practitioner inquiry, I indicate ways in which the widersystems of which it is a part frequently hamstring the potentialof such research to operate as more than a fringe operation—a‘street market’ version of mainstream research.I outline four ways in which social workers, service users,agency managers, academics, government departments and universitiesshould work to a transformative agenda for practitioner research—transformativefor both practice and research. This will involve refashioningthe interface between the methodology and methods of practiceand research; generating practitioner research capacity; recognizingthe subtlety and critical potential of a genuinely ‘practical’agenda in practitioner research; and rescuing practitioner researchfrom a simply technical information-providing function, thatby-passes the challenge to promoting critical practice.     

Changes in the Form of Knowledge in Social Work: From the 'Social' to the 'Informational'?

This paper examines the changing form of knowledge in socialwork over the past thirty years and its implications for theoryand practice. In particular, it considers the impact of newsystems related to a range of new information and communicationtechnologies (ICTs) and the shift from a narrative to a databaseway of thinking and operating. In doing so, it attempts to identifya series of key challenges and questions which need to be consideredin order to engage with the changes. In particular, it addresseshow far social work is still primarily concerned with subjectsand their social relationships and argues that social work nowoperates less on the terrain of the ‘social’ andmore on the terrain of the ‘informational’. Suchchanges have implications for the relationship between theoryand practice in social work and the nature of ‘social’work itself.     

Modernity, Postmodernity and Social Work

Correspondence to Prof. David Howe, School of Social Work, University of East Anglia, Norwich NR4 7TJ. Summary For so long in search of a common base, there are early signsthat social work's intellectual outlook is fragmenting. Theunity that was once sought in both theory and practice as wellas policy and organziation is being abandoned. A child of modernity,social work now finds itself in a postmodern world, uncertainwhether or not there are any deep and unwavering principleswhich define the essence of its character and hold it togertheras a cohernt enterprise. The article outlines some of the characteristics of modernityand postmodernity, relating them to the rise of social work,its formation within modern society, and its current conditionin what many observers believe is a postmodern world. Thereare three ‘visions’ within which people look toleam the ’truth‘ of things, including matters offact and matters of value: those centred in God's word (revelation);those centred in the minds of men and women (reason); and thosede-centred and dispersed withing language, meaning and culture(relativism).     

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’.     

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.     

Use of Critical Consciousness in Anti-Oppressive Social Work Practice: Disentangling Power Dynamics at Personal and Structural Levels

One of the limitations of anti-oppressive perspectives (AOPs)in social work is its lack of focus at a micro and individuallevel. AOPs should entail the social worker’s addressingthe needs and assets of service users, challenging the oppressivesocial structure and, most importantly, critically challengingthe power dynamics in the service-provider/service-user relationship.Critical consciousness challenges social workers to be cognizantof power differentials and how these differentials may inadvertentlymake social-work practice an oppressive experience. The authorscontend that critical consciousness fills in some of the gapsof AOPs, and argue for a fuller integration of critical consciousnessinto teaching and practice of AOPs. The methods to work towardcritical consciousness, such as inter-group dialogues, agent–targetdistinctions and empowerment, are detailed.     

Evangelical Christianity, Secular Humanism, and the Genesis of British Social Work

Correspondence to Dr Graham Bowpitt, Department of Social Sciences, The Nottingham Trent University, Burton Street, Nottingham NG1 4BU, UK. E-mail: graham.bowpitt{at}ntu.ac.uk Summary This paper is a reappraisal of the Christian origins of socialwork and, as such, is a contribution to writing the profession'shistory. It examines the competing ideological roots of theconcept of ‘social work’ which emerged in late nineteenth-centuryBritain, and the extent to which they are derived from the Christiancharitable tradition or its secular transformation. Two featuresof early social work are examined in particular depth: its moralpurpose in relation to the Evangelical belief in charity asan instrument of spiritual revival; and its rational methodsin relation to secular beliefs about the possibility of personaland social change. Much of the paper focuses on the ideological and institutionalrelationship between the emerging activity of social work andEvangelical revivalism which formed the context for most latenineteenth-century philanthropy. The crisis of faith experiencedby Victorian intellectuals is a significant motif throughoutthis period. This is not an attempt to rewrite the history of social work,but to re-examine neglected features in its origins: EvangelicalChristianity and its secular humanist transformation. In doingso, it is hoped to throw light on the recent revival of interestin the importance of religion to social work.