Outreach social work: from managing access to practices of accessibility

A recurring feature of outreach work is that outreach tries to reach people who are left without care and not effectively reached by existing services. In this article, we discuss the importance of outreach practices in the context of changes in society. We suggest that the pressure on the managing of access to social services is increasing along with the demand to avoid an unnecessary inflow, and make a distinction between a residual and structural approach to social work and social service delivery. In a residual approach, outreach social work can be seen as a strategy to manage access or as a strategy to link clients with appropriate services. In this sense, they ensure that people meet predefined criteria of social services. From a structural approach, however, the focus lies on how practices possibly contribute to the realization of human dignity in social interactions and might lead to a socio-political analysis of those situations in which social work intervenes. On a conceptual level, outreach practices thus appear as practices of accessibility. From this perspective, existing problem constructions and dynamics of inclusion and exclusion in social services but also more broadly in society might be questioned and ultimately changed.     

Private lives and public programs: an Australian longitudinal study of the elderly

Major late life events, reported in the Dubbo longitudinal study of older Australians, are used to examine the interaction of private lives with public programs. First, the data indicate strong supportive effects of publicly funded income, health, and aged care programs in reducing family burdens from major life changes. In particular, financial crises were rarely mentioned, directly or indirectly, as major threats. Next, the central role of informal social support in these events is demonstrated, first, as in previous studies, family support was responsive to risky events and to aging itself. Also, in new findings, one-third of surviving elderly respondents coped with the burdens of family crises as a substantial proportion of the "major" life changes that occurred over 13 years of the study. Within the security and support provided by the Australian welfare system, and with strong social networks, families with older persons in the Dubbo study manage multiple, major life changes. With rapid population aging, the development of more, and more easily accessible, services for a growing population of older people is a priority. The critical challenge will be to harmoniously grow public financing, private funding, and informal caregiving to deal with the growing burden arising from an aging society.     

Private rights and public responsibilities: the prospects for agricultural and environmental controls

The paper seeks to examine the prospects for the introduction of formal controls over agricultural and environmental change in the countryside through an analysis of the policy preferences of the National Farmers' Union and the Country Landowners' Association and the rapidiy changing context within which they are operating. We argue that it is mistaken to suppose that there exists a generalised objection to regulation within the farming and landowning community. Present developments are, moreover, blurring the distinction between production and conservation policies. In addition the authority of the farming lobby has been significantly weakened. But we suggest, nonetheless, that the persistent power of constraint enjoyed by farming and landowning interests is likely to ensure that a particular view of environmental protection, involving compensation for property rights foregone, remains predominant.     

Perceived professional standards and roles of public relations in China: Through the lens of Chinese public relations practitioners

As the first quantitative examination of perceived public relations professional standards in China using an online survey, this study was designed based on the standards of professional standards inventory Cameron, Sallot, & Lariscy (1996) constructed and tested among practitioners in the U.S. The survey results suggest six dimensions of perceived standards of professional performance: (1) role and function in organizational strategic planning, (2) sufficiency in professional training and preparedness, (3) gender and racial equity, (4) situational constraints, (5) licensing and organizational support, and (6) participation in the organizational decision-making team. Four dimensions of public relations roles were also identified by the survey participants: (1) brand promotion facilitator, (2) public information specialist, (3) media relations counsel, and (4) conflict management expert. Primary practice area was found to affect how Chinese practitioners perceive the six clusters of professional standards and the four identified public relations roles. These findings provide insights for both practitioners and researchers on how Chinese public relations practitioners view public relations as a profession and how the profession currently holds its professional standards in China.     

Private lives,public accountability: A case study

Lend a Hand Children's Services is the most prominent provider of family services in rural south central Ohio. The agency is in the process of enlarging its fundraising goals and becoming even bigger in the community. Staff have brought to the attention of the vice president of the board that the board president and the executive director may be involved intimately as a couple. Inasmuch as the board president must evaluate the executive director, the vice president turns to trusted counsel for advice on how to approach the unique problems raised by the situation.     

Private school competition and public school teacher salaries

Teacher unions have fiercely fought public policy measures (e.g., vouchers, tuition tax credits) that might increase the proportion of students attending private schools. Yet increased competition in the educational service market should also lead to greater labor market competition, reducing any quasi-monopsony tendencies depressing teacher salaries. Using detailed data on over 600 Ohio school districts, we find that increased private school competition leads to higher salaries for public school teachers. It may be that union leaders disregard the interests of their members in trying to maximizing union size and power. An alternative interpretation is that unions sacrifice shortrun income gains for their members in order to maintain longterm economic rents associated with substantial political power.     

Symbolic violence and the Olympic Games: low-income youth,social legacy commitments,and urban exclusion in Olympic host cities

Drawing on a five-year qualitative study on the impacts of the Olympic Games on homeless and marginally housed youth in two host cities (Vancouver 2010 and London 2012), this paper explores the instances of ‘symbolic violence’ perpetuated by the institutional infrastructure associated with the Olympics. Following Pierre Bourdieu’s use of the term, symbolic violence refers to the manner in which the young people turned dominant notions of what the desirable Olympic city looks and feels like into a sense of their own non-belonging and/or inadequacy, experienced bodily and emotionally. Feeling pressured to vie for elusive Olympic jobs and volunteer positions, and to be less visible to the thousands of tourist-spectators for the Games, youth in both cities reported a defiant mix of frustrated indignation and resigned acceptance that they did not ‘fit’ the image of the global Olympic city that organizers were trying to convey. The paper argues that this social harm, difficult to measure yet real nonetheless, is an important though unintended legacy of the Olympic Games for homeless and marginally housed youth living in its shadows. The paper also calls for a more sustained engagement with Bourdieu’s concept of symbolic violence in youth studies as a discipline.     

Private democracy: on corporate theories of persuasion in public life

Private corporations have grown rapidly in numbers worldwide and their increasing power and involvement in human life needs to be more fully and critically understood. This ethnographic inquiry draws on studies of very large U.S. corporations, the work of Aristotle, Bacon, Bakhtin, and others to evoke an increasing use of rhetoric and self-consciously designed social organizations developed for profit by the private sector. Companies, it is shown, have historically and now theorize the social order, seek to totalize aspects of it, impose arbitrary orders, critique one another, and influence more effectively subsequent human behavior in the marketplace.     

Parenting stress and child maltreatment: The buffering effect of neighborhood social service availability and accessibility

The current study examines the relationship between aspects of social service availability and child maltreatment. Specifically, the study uses negative binomial regression to estimate whether service availability, accessibility, and receipt are associated with physical child abuse and neglect. Relying on Social Cognitive Theory and Stress and Coping Theory, the moderating effect of the service variables was tested on the relationship between parenting stress and maltreatment. The sample is comprised of 1053 parents who completed a survey in July of 2014. The findings suggest that service availability has a potential protective effect against physical abuse and neglect, and that service accessibility has an additional protective effect above and beyond sheer availability of services for child neglect. Further, the availability of services has a significant moderating effect – it decreased the relationship between parent stress and abuse and neglect. Service receipt had a paradoxical effect — although one might expect receiving social services to reduce maltreatment, there was a positive correlation between the two such that parents reporting receipt of a greater number of services tended to have higher levels of abuse and neglect. Further, service receipt moderated the relationship between parenting stress and neglect, such that the relationship was stronger. The study suggests that efforts to increase service availability and accessibility may prevent child maltreatment.     

Revisiting the relationship between public relations and marketing: Encroachment and social media

Although public relations and marketing trade presses regularly discuss the conflict between the functions (e.g., Ecker, 2013; Havartin, 2013), academic researchers focused on the issue primarily in the 1980s and 1990s. The drop in public relations and marketing encroachment research does not parallel a drop in encroachment in practice, especially in light of today’s social media environment. In fact, historic tension between public relations and marketing intensified with the incorporation of social media into communication efforts. This paper updates the study of encroachment by reviewing the historical views of the topic, proposes ways that social media use has intensified issues related to role encroachment between public relations and marketing professionals, and outlines questions to guide future study of these topics.     

The re-enchantment of social institutions: Max Weber and public relations

The German sociologist Max Weber is rarely referred to in public relations theory and research. In this article it is argued that his concepts of legitimacy and legitimation are relevant for understanding and analyzing public relations activities. Legitimacy, i.e. having sufficient external support to continue to exist, is seen as the ultimate purpose of public relations, and legitimation is seen as the efforts which are aimed at acquiring organizational legitimacy. The article discusses both theoretical and practical implications of these ideas for the field of public relations.     

Reconceptualising professional knowledge: the changing role of knowledge and evidence in social work practice

New socio-economic conditions have necessitated different approaches to professional learning and decision-making and alternative perspectives are required to properly understand and engage with the complexity of the world of work, learning and doing. This paper considers the international literature in relation to professional learning in the context of evidence-based practice and knowledge exchange, and considers how we might overcome existing barriers to implement a more knowledge-based approach to social work practice. By adopting actor network theory and socio-material theories, this paper begins to consider alternative perspectives on professional learning and knowledge exchange as implementation in social work. The paper argues that the production of knowledge itself is not enough to guarantee that even the best knowledge will have any utility in practice and that we now need to search for more effective ways of generating and implementing new knowledge. Furthermore, more attention needs to be given to how current approaches to research design, dissemination and implantation could become more meaningful for practice.