Strengths-based creative mindfulness-based group work with youth aging out of the child welfare system

ABSTRACT

This article describes the outcomes of a doctoral study exploring the facilitation of an arts and mindfulness-based group for youth aging out of the child welfare system. Although there has been an upsurge in attention to the use of mindfulness-based interventions (MBIs) with children, there are still significant knowledge gaps regarding the use of MBIs with older youth who have experienced trauma, loss, and marginalization. At the same time, there is increasing attention to the importance of relationships to successful transitions in the lives of youth aging out of child welfare system. This research is qualitative and sought to explore how an innovative MBI was experienced by these youth. Data from semistructured interviews revealed key themes related to the unique challenges of being involved in the child welfare system and the aging-out process, the participants’ understanding and benefits of learning mindfulness, as well as their experience of social support through a collaborative group participation. The benefits of group participation, including meaningful engagement in the group process, are considered.     

A family-centred practice supervision project conducted for a child welfare agency

ABSTRACT

This paper reports on a supervision project that aimed to enhance a child welfare agency staff’s professional competence in family-centred practice through a strength-based approach. A qualitative study was designed to explore the effectiveness and the change agents of the supervision. Purposive sampling was used. Two agency supervisors and two social workers participated the study voluntarily. The findings indicated that after the period of supervision, the staff had changed in three respects: their conceptualisation of the meaning of family work in the care context; their understanding of the importance of relationship-based interventions with families; and their development of alternative ways of practice. The agents of change from the supervision were the consultants’ modelling effect and the co-worker experience of the consultants and the social workers. This supervision approach can discern the synergistic effect of supervision on an agency’s routine supervision and balance the cultural beliefs in qing, yuan and ‘face’ embedded in the supervisory process.     

Caring for the Child Welfare Client: Am I Good Enough?

ABSTRACT

Given the demographics of youth served by the child welfare system, culturally responsive approaches are critical to effective social work practice and desperately needed. Like many adolescents who grow up in the child welfare system, Paul, a White adolescent male in foster care, was beset by a lack of adequate environmental resources and multiple stressors and had little hope or motivation to work on improving his situation. This article highlights the author's “use of self” as an African American male therapist who worked with Paul, using a Winnicottian and caring framework. Because child welfare workers are often overburdened by the demands of work, including large caseloads and clients with few to no resources, they find it difficult to consistently provide empathic and caring behaviors for their clients. The author highlights his therapeutic work and struggles with Paul and offers cultural insights and Winnicottian strategies when working with adolescents in the child welfare system who are ultimately in need of permanency and stability.     

Adapting the Friends of the Children programme for child welfare system‐involved families

Research has shown the importance of long‐term, caring adults for children in foster care. This paper reviews the Friends of the Children (FOTC) long‐term mentoring programme and how it was adapted to serve children and families with child welfare system involvement. This study's two research questions are (1) How do Friends (FOTC's paid professional mentors) currently work with, and in turn, have an impact on, child welfare‐involved families? and (2) How can Friends better support child welfare system‐involved caregivers and families to promote family stability, permanence, and child well‐being? Data were collected from 21 caregivers (foster and biological), 24 FOTC Friends, five child welfare workers, and five teachers. Qualitative analyses of focus group, interview, and open‐ended survey data revealed a wide variety of ways Friends currently support children and families. In addition, several recommendations were made for strengthening programming. These findings provide valuable insights into providing long‐term mentoring to child welfare system‐involved children and families.     

Some issues arising in the analysis of the development level of cultural and welfare service

ABSTRACT

A crucial factor in the shaping of state policy for social work and development is to satisfy various needs in people’s living. The work of satisfying people’s demand for enhanced well-being and the elimination of inequalities in their living is realised through the activity called cultural and welfare service. On the basis of theoretical research on other kinds of services, in this paper, we conceptualised cultural and welfare service that seeks to satisfy various demands in people’s living, set main indicators characterising its development level and suggest a methodology for analysing it.     

Predictors of Child Welfare Worker Retention and Performance

Abstract

Using administrative records, this paper tracks for up to four years using Cox survival methods the retention of 839 public child welfare workers who began child welfare work in 1999. It also examines, using ordinal logistic regression, supervisory performance evaluations of 382 of these workers. Participation in a IV-E-funded social work educational program predicted better retention. In particular, risk of termination decreased by 52% during the mandated contractual employment period in which the educational stipend was “worked off”. Other predictors of longer retention included prior non-child welfare employment at the public agency and working in the state office setting. Temporary job classification predicted higher risk of termination. With temporary classifications excluded, female gender predicted better retention. In exploratory Cox frailty regressions, neither county of employment nor supervisor explained significant variance in retention. Involvement with the IV-E funded social work program was not associated significantly with supervisory ratings. Regression analyses revealed an association between an ethnic group's representation in the population of child welfare workers and supervisory evaluation; the greater that representation, the higher the overall evaluation for the group.     

Psychosocial and relationship-based theories for child and family social work: political philosophy, psychology and welfare practice

Psychosocial perspectives on children’s development are allied to theories that recognize the ‘self’ as essentially a social entity. The quality of relationships that children experience in their social environment have a profound effect on their socio-emotional development, personality formation and social competence. To this extent, psychosocial theories of children’s development and wellbeing can provide child and family social workers with a powerful framework within which to analyse, assess and practise. However, it is also recognized that the character of child welfare practices and policies are influenced by prevailing political climates. A simple dichotomy is described between political philosophies of the right and left; libertarianism and communitarianism; individual freedom and collective action. It is argued that the present swing to libertarian individualism has brought about major changes in the policy and practice of much child and family social work, including a preference for theories that emphasize people’s psychological independence, rationality and personal responsibility. In such a climate, child and family social work becomes more legalistic, orientated towards principles of justice rather than welfare, and towards rights and responsibilities rather than personal relationships and social competence. Psychosocial developmental theories, with their emphasis on the importance of social relationships and the emotional interconnectedness of people in community, fare less well under the rigours of psychological individualism and free-market economics. The paper concludes that if children’s psychosocial development and competence are a product of their social history, practices that psychologically ‘disembed’ people from their relationship environment are unable to consider children’s needs within a coherent, well-grounded theoretical framework. If child and family social work is premised on helping children develop social understanding and emotional wellbeing, theory and practice are best served by taking a psychosocial perspective.     

The dynamics of economic globalization and political development on the welfare state in South Korea

The Korean welfare system has grown over the past 40 years from a limited and selective developmental system into a relatively comprehensive universal system. What explains this dynamic is the interplay between South Korea's global economic integration and its political transition from authoritarian rule to democratic governance. While the corporatist consensus under the authoritarian government limited social welfare to an instrument to promote economic growth and industrialization, the social democratic corporatist consensus under economic globalization has enabled the democratic regime to introduce a relatively universal welfare system.     

The implementation and development of child welfare and protection works in China

The Chinese government adheres to the principle of ‘children first’ and actively protects their rights of survival, development, protection and participation through methods such as laws and regulations, policy system, public services and pilot works. The Chinese government aimed to narrow the gap between children's development in rural and urban areas and to continuously improve the level of child welfare. The government complies fully with its responsibilities in raising the overall quality of life for children and improving their health and overall development.

China has 280 million children, and is the country with the most children in the world. China is a signatory of and a country that loyally implements the Convention on the Rights of the Child. Since the economic reform, China's economy has developed rapidly, politics has been harmonized and stabilized, and the degree of social civilization has risen continuously. At the same time, work on children has also achieved remarkable accomplishments in China.     

Strategies for survival: users' experience of child welfare in three welfare regimes

This paper draws on research into child welfare services in France, Germany and England which compares the subjective experience of mothers who have been in contact with family support and child protection agencies in the three countries. The mothers' stories suggest that successful help‐achieving strategies differ according to the nature of the child welfare regime, and that behaviour which is effective in getting a good response in one country may work less well elsewhere. The stories of two mothers in each of the countries have been chosen to demonstrate how the structures of different social welfare regimes affect the efforts of welfare users to get the help they need.     

Child welfare policy and services in Korea

Over the past 20 years, the Korean government has developed child welfare laws to respond to an increasing number of child maltreatment cases and create a centralized child welfare delivery system. However, the system remains fragmented and under-developed due to a lack of understanding of child maltreatment and limited government support. Further, few studies have comprehensively reviewed the system. This study examines the Korean child welfare system, identifies challenges for child welfare policies and services, and discusses the implications for future policy; the results can be used to improve the safety, permanency, and well-being of children and families in Korea. The analysis shows that the government has prioritized family preservation over removal from families, even in substantiated cases of abuse. However, ensuring the safety of children in Korea will require not only working to preserve families but also developing and implementing better options for in-home services and out-of-home placement.     

Child welfare workers who are exhausted yet satisfied with their jobs: how do they do it?

In response to a study of Canadian child welfare workers that unexpectedly found participants scoring high on a measure of emotional exhaustion (burnout) and, at the same time, high on overall job satisfaction, this paper reviews research that has investigated these constructs in the social work literature as well as in selected studies from sociology, social psychology, management and women’s studies. The review reveals that some previous studies also report the coexistence of high levels of emotional exhaustion and strong job satisfaction in child welfare and social worker samples. Several studies have suggested that individual characteristics, including finding reward in helping others, having a commitment to the mandate of child welfare and believing that one’s labour is ‘making a difference’, contribute to satisfaction with child welfare work in spite of work overload and emotional exhaustion. Attributions regarding causes of exhaustion, coping strategies and goal orientation may also attenuate the expected negative effects of emotional exhaustion. Considerable evidence supports the positive influence of variables organizational managers can control, including job autonomy, supportive supervisors, workload, promotional opportunities and perception of personal safety. The degree to which this phenomenon is associated with female socialization and the ‘ethic of care’ underlying social work is discussed. Implications for child welfare research, practice and policy are offered.     

Value orientations of social welfare policy structures

Substantial literature exists around the variation of welfare policy development in liberal democracies. The contrast of the American welfare state to those in Europe has sparked significant analytical literature about which factors are most significant in the variation. The literature extensively examines many of these factors but has neglected the significance of social values. This article discusses values and policy development as a foundation for further studies linking specific values to policy and institutional development. First, I discuss theorists who have identified value orientation as significant to welfare state variation; second, I review the major comparative welfare state literature. Finally, I discuss the major variation categories through the lens of social values by identifying the significant value orientation of sample policy structures. Comparative welfare state literature benefits from elucidating the values orientation of welfare policies that define the welfare state typological categories. Including the role of social values in welfare state comparisons promotes greater understanding of the origins and trajectory of current policy. Key Practitioner Message: ● Increase understanding of welfare state variation factors; ● Frame questions about social values reflected in social policy.     

The Understanding and Use of Reflection in Family Support Social Work

ABSTRACT

Previous research emphasizes the need for reflection in complex, dynamic practices, like social work. However, increased governance of the public sector and welfare state has caused a reform, which in turn has affected the layout and conditions of work. Private sector control ideals and ideas from the auditing system have led to a new focus. It is argued that we should subordinate practice approaches – characterized by reflection, proven experience, and tacit knowledge – to manual-based treatment, evaluations, and assessments. This study aims at understanding the role of reflection in social work by investigating its use and valuation by family support social workers. Opportunities and resources for reflection are another focus. Focus group interviews (n = 40) were used to produce data. The need for reflection to conduct highly qualitative social work became evident. The question is not whether to reflect or not, rather how this best can be done, given current time constraints. Reflection was considered a coping mechanism, offering a sense of professional legitimacy. Organizational changes seem to impact on time for reflection. However, when enabling process, learning, and development, it can be argued that reflection is beneficial for several parties. Therefore, reflection requires continued emphasis, highlighting its potential benefits.     

Welfare Workers' Cultural Models of Domestic Violence

ABSTRACT

Despite progress in policies and services for domestic violence, service use remains lower than the need suggests. This study, an analysis from a larger project on social service providers, examines welfare workers' shared beliefs about domestic violence. Using a mixed method design utilizing pile sorts (n = 38; 11 child welfare and 29 financial assistance), a survey (n = 57; 24 child welfare and 33 financial assistance), and in-depth interviews (n = 3; two child welfare and one financial assistance)—workers organized their ideas about factors that contribute to domestic violence, rated the factors along key dimensions of meaning (importance, controllability, characteristics of victims or perpetrators, and cause or effect), and shared experiences of their work with domestic violence cases. Financial assistance and child welfare workers organized their beliefs similarly demonstrating consensus on the importance of the factors, and shared beliefs about the factors that were causes and effects of domestic violence. In interviews, child welfare workers emphasized their focus on systems and collaboration. Despite areas of agreement, child welfare and financial assistance workers did not demonstrate consensus on ideas about domestic violence overall. The findings have implications for practice, specifically for improving responses to domestic violence and increasing the use of domestic violence services.     

The impact of social transformation on the non-government welfare sector and the social work profession

This article examines changes to non-government social welfare, their impact on service delivery and on the social work profession. To redress the legacy of the past and the consequent inequalities in social welfare, in the first decade of democracy the government allocated the bulk of its welfare resources to transforming the social security system at the expense of social service delivery. As a result, South Africa has a costly social security budget with social services on the brink of collapse, leaving social workers and other social service professionals with low morale in the face of the huge challenge of providing welfare services with scarce resources, especially in the non-government sector. Nevertheless, social work remains an important role player in social development. From its marginalised position in the first decade of democracy, in the second decade it is repositioning itself as a recognised contributor to reconstruction and development in South Africa.     

‘I am the face of success’: peer mentors in child welfare

Child welfare systems have struggled to create innovative, culturally sensitive programmes to address the multiple and pervasive barriers that exist in engaging child welfare parent clients in their service plans. Peer mentor programmes—those in which parents who have successfully navigated the child welfare system and reunified with their children, mentor parents newly entering the system—are designed to address some of these barriers, to improve reunification outcomes. Focus groups with parent clients (n = 25) and interviews with peer mentors (n = 6) were conducted to identify the characteristics of peer mentoring programmes that are critically helpful to parent clients, as well as the mechanisms that allow peer mentors to be effective in their work. The qualitative analysis uncovered three general themes to which both parents and peer mentors frequently referred in interviews—the value of shared experiences, communication and support. Additionally, the study found that peer mentorship has positive effects not only on parent clients but also on the mentors themselves. The inclusion of peer mentors in child welfare practice suggests an important paradigm shift within child welfare that could lead to culture change for the field.     

The Emperor's new clothes: South Africa's attempted transition to developmental social welfare and social work

This article critically interrogates the depth and quality of change of post‐apartheid welfare policy and social work practice towards a social development paradigm against the background of inequality and poverty in South Africa. It asks several questions: what kind of welfare system has the current welfare dispensation created? How far has it moved from a residual, ameliorative system to an institutional developmental system, in keeping with the developmental welfare paradigm? To what extent can residual provisions be transformed into developmental processes? What conditions are necessary for this to happen? The answers to questions such as these provide the basis for assessing South Africa's new developmental processes. The article highlights the fundamental contradictions in social development policy imperatives, which call for a marriage of economic and social considerations, and the internal contradictions across and within various welfare policies. Further, it argues that the government does not have the political will to bear the costs of the substantive change that the move towards developmental social work requires, choosing instead limited, individually targeted and ameliorative measures, such as increased social security spending. Thus, it suggests that ideological critique, consciousness raising and participation in public policy debates remain crucial for those who seek long‐term solutions to inequality and poverty in South Africa.     

Facilitating Arts-Based Mindfulness Group Activities with Vulnerable Children: An Example of Nondeliberative Social Group Work Practice

ABSTRACT

This article discusses the process of facilitating arts-based mindfulness group work and activities with vulnerable children age 8 to 12 years who were involved with the child welfare or mental health systems. Specifically, it delineates connections between our group program and Norma Lang’s nondeliberative social group work practice. Importantly, in working with vulnerable children, the authors purposefully fostered the development of mutual aid, creativity, and strengths and recognized that each group had a life of its own.