Preventive Intervention as a Working Concept in Child-Care Practice

Correspondence to: Rosalind Hargreaves, Lecturer in Social Work, Department of Social Work Studies, Keynes College, University of Kent at Canterbury, Canterbury, Kent CT2 7NP. Summary Prevention persists in social work despite criticism of theterm. In 1975 and 1990 identical surveys were carried out todiscover what social workers were trying to prevent in sampledindividual pieces of work. The study elicits the assumptionsunderpinning their thinking about prevention and notes differencesbetween the two surveys. The findings are then discussed inrelation to the 1989 Children Act. A model for individual preventivepractice is presented and the discussion of issues concludesthat the usage of the term will continue despite a change offocus in child-care legislation. Prevention can provide a morevaluable framework for practice with the benefits of greaterspecificity and clarity of thinking on the part of practitioners.     

Long Term Care for the Elderly: the Community Care Scheme

Summary The article describes the full evaluation of the Community CareScheme for the elderly in Kent. The evaluation compared therelative cost-effectiveness of the scheme for clients and carerswith the range of services which would otherwise have been received.It is argued that effective case-management by a key workeris an essential feature of more effective home care for thevery frail elderly and that the case-management role is an appropriatemodel of social work for other long term care groups. The newscheme appeared particularly appropriate for the extremely mentallyand physically frail who were living with others and for theless frail, socially isolated elderly person prone to minorpsychiatric disorder.     

Perspectives on 'Race' and Adoption: The Views of Student Social Workers

¹ Derek Kirton, Department of Social and Public Policy and Social Work, Darwin College. The University, Canterbury, Kent CT2 7NY, UK. E-mail: d.kirtonukc{at}ac.uk Summary This article examines the views of 835 student social workerson race and adoption, focusing on support for transracial andsame race adoption respectively. The two principal findingsare first, one of great divergence of expressed views irrespectiveof background factors, and secondly, that, on balance, supportfor same race adoption is markedly stronger among minority ethnicstudent social workers than their white counterparts. Backgrounddata are used to analyse some of the influences which lie behindthe views indicated, including those of social geography andthe effects of teaching. Factor analysis identifies attitudestowards the nature and salience of ‘black identity’as the most powerful indicator of overall perspectives on raceand adoption. Finally, implications of the study's findingsare discussed in the light of ongoing controversy regardingpolicy and practice in the family placement of minority ethnicchildren.     

Taking Social Work Seriously: The Contribution of the Functional School

Correspondence to: Professor Noel Timms, 157 Kingsway, Pens Wood, Kent BR5 1PP Summary This article explores a largely ignored account of the practicecalled social work, that was developed by what is known in theUSA as the Functional School of Social Work. Their views werehewn out of a fierce controversy within social work. This articleargues that a reconsideration of the Functional School is due:it presented an explicit psychology, though not sociology, ofhelping and centred the nub of practice in the social welfareagency, served by disciplined professionals. Reflection on thetheorizing and practice of the Functionalists illuminates presentconcerns over the knowledge and the value base of social workand leads to a reconsideration of the place of coherence ineach.     

Short Term Care for the Elderly in Residential Homes: A Research Note

Please address requests for reprints to Dr. D. Boldy, Division of Health Sciences, Centre for Advanced Studies, Western Australian Institute of Technology, Kent Street, Bentley WA 6102, Australia. Summary Short term care for the elderly has expanded rapidly in thelast five years. The study evaluates short stay care in fourresidential homes using interviews with 42 clients, their main‘carers’, officers-in-charge of the homes and socialworkers. Whilst the service worked reasonably smoothly and provideda break for family carers there remains further potential forimproving the quality of service in the context of a full rangeof services for elderly people.     

Temporary Foster Care

Summary In order to improve outcomes in temporary foster care the authorbelieves there is a need to develop alternative models for practicethat would (a) define the social work task (b) specify in operational terms how that task would be accomplishedand thus would be amenable to empirical testing. (Temporaryfoster care is defined as the provision of substitute familylife for a child received into care, where there is a clearintention to re-unite the natural family at a future date). This article deals with the essential preliminaries to the developmentof a practice model. The first part surveys the relevant literature;part two develops a theoretical framework for practice aroundthree themes which are considered central to a considerationof foster care. These are the separation experience, the placeof the natural family, and role clarification. Other crucialvariables such as the age of the child, the nature of the problem,or the parents' potentiality for change are not dealt with withinthese papers, but are nevertheless seen as important issuesto be considered at the stage of designing a model for practice.     

Social Work with Immigrants and Refugees: Developing a Participation-based Framework for Anti-Oppressive Practice

Summary This Research Note represents the first in a two part series,dealing with the experience of social work with immigrants andrefugees in Finland. In this part, the author identifies keyideas and outlines research findings in the major area of employment,including a discussion of the skills and abilities which socialworkers need and can contribute in this area. The next issueof the Journal will present research evidence in relation toa range of community and cultural questions which arise fromthis work, concluding with further discussion of successfulsocial work in this field.     

Social Work Tomorrow: Towards a Critical Understanding of Technology in Social Work

Correspondence to Bob Sapey, Department of Social Work, University of Central Lancashire, Preston PR1 2HE Summary This paper makes use of theoretical ideas that have been developedto understand the impact of new technology on organizationsand applies them to its use within social work agencies. Thesedeveloping theories employ ideas that are familiar to socialworkers—organization theory, decision making theory, andcommunication theory. The paper therefore argues that socialworkers are in a good position to understand and influence theuse of computers within welfare agencies and do not need tobe inhibited by a lack of technological knowledge. It is furtherargued that, unless social workers do become involved in theways in which new technologies are used within organizations,they will fail to influence its impact upon their clients andmay further fail to control the way in which computers affectthe nature of social work itself in the future.     

Building Care Management Competence in Services for People with Learning Disabilities

Correspondence to Paul Cambridge, Tizard Centre, The University of Kent at Canterbury, Canterbury, Kent CT2 7LZ, UK. Summary This paper examines care management arrangements in servicesfor people with learning disabilities. Its perspective is informedby research on the long-term outcomes and costs of care in thecommunity for people with learning disabilities (Cambridge etal., 1994) and by earlier experimental approaches to care managementin Britain. Building on arguments developed by the author ina position paper in 1992 (Cambridge, 1992), the focus here shiftsto the performance of mainstream care management in servicesfor people with learning disabilities, with an identificationand review of critical dimensions for reviewing competence.Lessons from earlier experimental and demonstration approachesare used to inform the analysis and to construct pointers forcommissioners or providers who are looking to assess the effectivenessof care management arrangements in learning disability withintheir own service systems.     

Staff Attitudes and Caring Practices in Homes for the Elderly

Correspondence to Tim Booth, Joint Unit for Social Services Research, The University, Sheffield S10 2TN. Summary This article presents the findings from a major survey of staffattitudes and caring practices in homes for the elderly in Fife.The survey was carried out in the wake of the Wagner Reportto examine the diffusion of good practice ideas among residentialstaff and to see how far these ideas are reflected in actualcaring routines. The study points to the existence of a ‘coolingeffect’ whereby adherence to good practice lessens thecloser one gets to operational reality. Finally, the implicationsof these findings for staff training are discussed.     

Adolescents in Crisis: on Hypothesizing with Minimal Information

Summary This paper suggests some of the questions that practitionersshould ask themselves when faced with an adolescent in crisis.It is important that professionals have available a number oflevels for conceptualizing behaviour if they are to make senseof complex information. Minimal information from a referralis given to demonstrate our approach. We consider some issuesconnected with change in systems; symptomatic behaviour in alife cycle context; agency contexts as they affect professionalhelp; and adolescent development in the context of marital breakdown.The practitioner is encouraged to develop hypotheses, whilehaving very few facts which in the light of further contactmay be developed, or discarded in favour of hypotheses morerelevant to the particular family. We warn against the equal,but different dangers of approaching each new family eitherwith a totally open mind, or with fixed ideas concerning whatit ‘must be about’. We do not argue that it is betterto have little or no previous history (although too much historycan become part of ‘the problem’), but that workersalways have more information, from the very start, than theymay realise.     

Defending Community Care: Can Normalization do the Job?

Correspondence to Helen Smith, Lecturer in Mental Health, Centre for the Applied Psychology of Social Care, The University, Canterbury, Kent CT2 7LZ. Summary One of the major reasons for the confusion around communitycare is the lack of an ideology to guide and influence its implementation.Normalization is probably the most relevant theory in this fieldyet it is riven with contradictions and conflicts. This articleexamines these conflicts and proposes that normalization needsto develop a perspective on power and powerlessness if it isto respond adequately to the challenges of providing communitycare in the 1990s.     

Care Programming in Mental Health: assimilation and adaptation

Correspondence to Justine Schneider. PSSRU. University of Kent, Canterbury CT2 7NF. Summary Two years after the care programme approach in mental healthwas introduced there is still widespread confusion about itsmeaning and its relation to other changes in the arena of communitycare. This paper looks at how care programmes are being implementedand at whom they are being targeted. It also examines the relationbetween care management and care programming and raises somequestions about future developments in the light of communitycare reforms. It draws on data collected during 1992 from threecontrasting health districts, all of which had made considerableprogress in care programming. Sixty practitioners were interviewedabout the theory and practice of care programming. Their experienceis presented here in the context of a review of community careplans for 1992/93 which characterizes the responses of differentlocal authorities to the approach.     

The Background of Children who enter Local Authority Care

Andrew Bebbington, PSSRU, Cornwallis Building, The University, Canterbury, Kent, CT2 7NF. Summary The family backgrounds of 2500 children admitted to care inEngland were investigated, to quantify the association betweenindicators of material and social deprivation and entry to care.These indicators are more closely associated than in Packman'snational survey of 1962. Broken family is the most significantfactor, though there are several alternative explanations forthis, which have quite different policy implications. When allowanceis made for other social factors, children from particular ethnicminorities do not seem specially vulnerable, though childrenof mixed race are. The study confirms that many children whocome into care after an offence have experienced similar deprivationsto non-offenders. There remain great variations between authoritiesin children's routes into care, but less so in the circumstancesof the children themselves.     

The Introduction of Contracts in a Family Service Unit

Summary An article written by John Corden, in an earlier issue of thejournal, examined the application of the concept of contractin social work practice, drawing on the legal paradigm. Thispaper develops some of these ideas in a more specific way; itdescribes the way in which contracts were introduced betweenthe workers and clients of a Family Service Unit After settingout the context in which the idea was introduced, the differentfeatures of some contracts between workers and families arereported, along with the views of the different parties. Thismaterial is used to illustrate and develop some of the ideasdiscussed in the earlier paper.     

Listening to Children--Who Cares?

Summary The intent of this article is to reinforce the idea of listeningto children in care. It is the author's belief that when giventhe opportunity to be heard, children can provide observationsthat are both relevant and important. To illustrate this beliefthe article provides verbatim comments of children obtainedas part of a larger research endeavour. It concludes with observationsextracted from children's evaluations of a Canadian ‘WhoCares?’ conference held in 1979, the Year of the Child.     

Repeat victim support

Correspondence to Professor Ken Pease, School of Human and Health Sciences, University of Huddersfield, Queensgate, Huddersfield HD1 3DH Summary The occurrence of a crime may be regarded as a good predictorof where and when a further crime will occur. In consequence,a practical form of support for victims may well be the preventionof repeat victimization. To a variable and largely unknown extent,this approach is already being implemented by Victim Supportvolunteers. Making such practice routine might provide a worthwhilesupplement to the services which Victim Support already offers.Some ways are suggested in which this approach might be developed.The effectiveness of such an approach would be measured in termsof customer (victim) satisfaction and lower than expected ratesof swift repeat victimizations. It is stressed that Victim Supportmay turn out not to be a viable platform for the delivery ofcombined support—prevention services, although it shouldbe the agency first considered for this role. Possible experimentaltest-beds for such an approach are proposed.     

Social Work and the Justice Model

Summary Three sets of ideas, which I am calling justice, welfare, andcommunity approaches interact in the criminal justice systemsof England and Scotland. Social workers are usually most influencedby a welfare approach but this approach is always in dangerof becoming arbitrary. The essential values of a welfare approachmight in fact be strengthened by introducing from the justiceapproach ways of structuring discretion. This idea will be examinedin relation to juvenile justice and parole where compulsorypowers back the application of welfare ideas. Ways of ensuringthat social work discretion is confined, structured and checkedwill be considered.     

Changing Social Work Roles in Family Centres: A Social Psychological Analysis

Correspondence to Dr R.J. Brown, Institute of Social and Applied Psychology, The University, Canterbury, Kent, CT2 7LZ. Summary This article reports a longitudinal study of field and residentialsocial workers' perceptions of each other in the first ten monthsafter the introduction of a new children and families policyby a large social services department. 1 A central element ofthis policy was the setting up of Family Centres designed tofacilitate closer co-operation between field and residentialstaff. Data was collected from two interviews ten months apartwith 52 field and residential social workers based in two divisionsin the county. Mutual role perceptions indicated a consensusover the traditional division of labour between field and residentialworkers with field workers being seen as having superior skillsin counselling, crisis intervention and case responsibility,whilst residential workers were regarded as better at providingbasic care for and developing close relationships with childrenin care. On only three role dimensions (engendering trust withclients, accuracy in assessments, and preparation work) wasthere any disagreement between the two groups. None of theserole perceptions changed perceptibly over the course of thestudy. However, the social workers' perceived outcomes fromtheir work (for example, pay, training opportunities, promotionprospects, etc.) changed markedly over the ten month period,and varied between the two divisions. In one division evidenceof a changed and more egalitarian relationship between the fieldand residential staff was visible; in the other, both groupsseemed to show a decline in morale and no real change in thetraditional status difference between the groups was apparent.These findings are interpreted in the light of social psychologicaltheories of intergroup relations, and some policy implicationsare discussed.     

Social Work and Self-determination

Correspondence to Department of Political Science and Social Policy, University of Dundee, Dundee DD1 4HN. Summary Self-determination is a curious concept, related to, but notquite the same as, freedom and autonomy. As an ethical principle,the principle of self-determination bears little relationshipto the way social workers behave. It is used as if clients werebeing allowed a free, independent choice; but clients are subjectto pressure, and the social work relationship is often conceivedwithin a structure of authority. As a guide to practice, theconcept of self-determination ignores the cases where directionis legitimate or desirable. Self-determination can be seen as a professional ideology—aninter-related set of values and ideas. The concept is derivedfrom a number of ideas and values outside social work, but itappears to have little direct relevance to social work in practice.The paper suggests that the concept of freedom may be more usefuland less remote from the realities than ‘self-detemination’is.