Private Children's Homes

Summary The paper provides survey and intensive research material onthe private children's homes sector. It is shown that this sectoris currently in decline. Private homes are found to be shelteringchildren with long and complex care histories and to adopt adistinctive residential style. Although private homes providevaluable long term continuity, they are less likely to offerthe same range of community services as do residential settingsmanaged by the local authority and voluntary child care agencies.     

Sponsored Places: The Use of Independent Day-Care Services to Support Children in Need

Correspondence to: Dr June Statham, Project Director, Thomas Coram Research Unit, 27-28 Woburn Square, London WC1H OAA Summary The implementation of the Children Act 1989, with its emphasison family support through the provision of non-stigmatizinglocal services and on local authorities working in partnershipwith voluntary and private service providers, has given a newfocus to the use of independent day-care services to supportchildren in need and their families. This article uses datafrom research in England and Wales on the implementation ofthe Children Act as it affects early years services, to considerthe extent of sponsored day-care, the circumstances in whichit is used, and the issues it raises for local authorities,independent day-care providers and the children themselves.     

Improving Social Workers' Knowledge Base in Child Protection Work

Correspondence to Dr Eileen Munro, 16 Aquarius, Eel Pie Island, Twickenham TW1 3EA, UK. Summary The present study was conducted to identify recurrent socialwork errors in the forty-five public inquiries held in Britainbetween 1973 and 1994. This article reports the findings relatingto the recurrent criticisms of social workers' knowledge base.The quality of investigations and assessments are repeatedlyfaulted. Also, many problems arise from social workers' failureto be explicit about what they are doing. The merits and shortcomingsof increased training and handbooks to improve practice arethen discussed. It is argued that social workers' widespreadpreference for a personal, private style of working is a majorobstacle to changing their use of theories and to evaluatingpractice.     

Partnership between the probation service and voluntary sector organizations

Summary This paper considers the development of inter-agency partnershipsbetween the probation service and voluntary sector organizationsin the early 1990s in England and Wales and reports the resultsof research by the author and their implications for youth justicearrangements outlined in the recent 1998 Crime and DisorderAct. The article outlines the development of probation partnershipsand the impact of changes to probation services, voluntary organizationsand service users which include: a shift towards purchaser-providerand contract-based arrangements; voluntary organizations takingon a role to work with involuntary clients; and the introductionof a discourse on partnerships which marginalizes small, informalvoluntary groups. These findings are then considered in relationto the Crime and Disorder Partnerships for crime preventionwhich form a crucial part of the 1988 Criminal Justice Act.The Crime and Disorder Partnerships have less emphasis on amanagerialist agenda but offer no extra resources and this articlesuggests that they may therefore not result in significant benefitsfor agencies working with young offenders.     

Social Gerontology and Social Work

Summary This paper reviews developments in the study of ageing as anindividual and social experience and it considers recent studiesof practical services for the elderly. In so doing it aims tohighlight the ways in which social work skills and helping techniquescan be developed. It also relates the findings of studies ofservice delivery to the elderly to the development of futurepolicy.     

The Quality of Life of the Chronically Mentally Ill: A Comparison of Public, Private, and Voluntary Residential Provisions

Correspondence to J. P. J. Oliver, Lecturer in Psychiatric Social Work, Department of Psychiatry, University of Manchester, Rm 11.11, Mathematics Tower, Oxford Road, Manchester, M13. Summary A pilot survey was undertaken as part of a long-term investigationof the needs which people with chronic mental illness have forcommunity support. The main purpose of this preliminary exercisewas to develop relevant measures of need. particularly measureswhich give due weight to the assessments which chronic patientsmake of their own quality of life. Results have particular relevancein the light of the ‘White Paper’ on community care,Caring for People and the National Health Service and CommunityCare Act, 1990 because the survey considered patients' experienceof life in three distinct types of resettlement facility: thepublic, the private and the voluntary. While differences inregimes, the personal characteristics of residents and objectivequality of life were noted, no differences in subjective qualityof life (either in general or in specific domains of life) werenoted from one type of facility to another. These results andtheir implications are discussed.     

An Interactionist1 Model: An Answer or Just a Better Question?

Summary It has been argued that an interactionist approach illuminatesthe relationship between public issues and private troubles.However, the model has been fundamentally criticized as beingtheoretically empty. The value of the approach is examined bythe analysis of a practice example. The basic criticisms ofthe model are confirmed but nevertheless it may offer a usefulstepping-stone away from the rigidities of case-based practice     

Implementing Community Social Work from a Social Services Department: Some Issues

Summary The proposal in the Barclay Report on the role and tasks ofsocial workers for ‘community social work’ as astrategy for social services departments is assessed The writerargues that the voluntary sector has significant roles and prioritiesoutside the social services, that government priorities forencouraging the voluntary sector emphasise other areas of workand that involving voluntary groups in official initiativesmay be seen as going against the independence of some groups.The motivation of groups and individuals in the voluntary sectorwill be important, but various research and practice shows thatindividuals, informal groups and mutual aid groups may be difficultto involve in a substantial programme. The climate of opinionin the field of volunteering and the social background of clients'neighbours may provoke hostility. Experience of community worksuggests that official initiatives may lead to resistance andconflict rather than involvement, and there may be ethical problemswith compulsion.     

Organization Development: a Group Centred Approach to Improving the Effectiveness of After-care Hostels

Summary This paper describes an approach to improving the effectivenessof voluntary hostels in which (a) the target for change is theentire management group of the hostel, (b) the content of therelationship between the management group and the consultantis real work problems and (c) the method of achieving changeactively involves members of the management group in the identificationand diagnosis of problem areas and in the development of strategiesto improve the situation. The aim of this approach is to encouragethe management group to take the initiative and manage ratherthan drift along and react to new circumstances as they arise.     

Agency Decentralization: Planning and Assessment

Summary Criteria are examined for the location of area offices in SocialServices Departments, drawing on the monitored experience ofdealing with voluntary callers to an area office in the ProbationService. Changes were observed in numbers of voluntary callersand the kinds of problems presented, together with developmentsin inter-agency relationships. The caller's subjective feelingsregarding the accessibility of the agency were found to be importantdeterminants of agency use. Implications are drawn out for planningdecisions in local authorities     

The Singer or the Song: An Autobiographical Account of a Suicidal Destructive Person and her Social Worker

Summary Margery Hollick has seen a number of people in the ‘helping’professions about various problems. Some she has found helpfuland some actively upsetting. She and Jill Ford, a social workershe did find helpful, look here at some of the possible reasonsfor the different impact made by different workers. One particularaspect of this which they explore is the relative importanceof the standard of professional practice and the personal attributesof the worker. ‘How much is it the quality of the song,the quality of the singer (as a singer, as singer of that particularsong), and how much the conjunction, that makes the difference?’they ask and discuss in relation to their own work together.     

Social Work with Single Parent Families: Consumer Views

Summary The article describes a research project undertaken to determinethe satisfaction of a particular client group—single parents—withthe service they were given. The research examines five kindsof problems—legal, accommodation, financial, child care,and emotional-and concludes that problems were likely to arisein all these areas, and that, whatever the problem, the socialworker's ability to help solve it depended to a large extenton the quality of the relationship with the client.     

Depression in Older Adults: Psychological and Psychosocial Approaches

Correspondence to Margaret A. Fielden, Burton District Hospital Centre, Belvedere Annexe, Lower Outwoods Road, Burton-on-Trent, S.E. Staffs. Summary Depression is a commonly experienced psychiatric disorder inthe adult population. The elderly require special considerationsince they show higher prevalence rates than younger adults,high levels of re-occurrence, and a different presentation ofsymptoms. This suggests a need to understand depression in theelderly within a psychological frame and within a psychosocialsetting, where symptoms and themes express the physical, social,and emotional losses of ageing and age-associated developmentaltasks of role change, accepting dependence, and preparing fordeath. An effective therapeutic approach must encompass physical, social,and psychological care. Psychological and psychosocial responsesto depression in the elderly are reviewed here in terms of theirsensitivity to issues of ageing and their preventative valuein minimizing vulnerability to depression.     

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.     

Changing Behaviour in a Residential Group Setting for Elderly People with Learning Difficulties

Correspondence to Ms K. Cigno, Department of Social Policy and Professional Studies, University of Hull, Hll HU6 7RX. Summary Group living is not an easy situation for residents and staff.A client with a long history of institutionalized care and aggressivebehaviour proves to be a challenge to care staff who attemptto improve the quality of her life and that of her fellow residentsthrough a behavioural intervention aimed at reducing the numberof disruptive incidents and increasing the use of social skillsand activities for this client. The results indicate a lesseningof incidents of ‘unreasonable behaviour’ and anincrease in self-esteem. The appropriateness of this approachto elderly clients' problems is discussed.     

Unasked Questions or Unheard Answers? Policy Development in Child Sexual Abuse

Correspondence to Julie Browne, 5 Belsize Crescent, London NW3 5QY Summary Despite an increase in both publicity on child sexual abuseand initiatives from government and voluntary agencies, it isby no means obvious that the position of the majority of sexuallyabused children has been significantly improved. Most sexuallyabused children still do not disclose the fact that they arebeing abused and it has been argued that new ways of approachingthe problem of child sexual abuse are needed. A study was madeof the policy development work being carried Out by the children'scharities and by survivors' organizations in this area. Individualsurvivors were also questioned as to the type of help they neededwhen children to enable them to end or escape the abuse. Itemerged that, in the main, the charities espouse pathologized/legalisticsolutions to the problem of child sexual abuse. In contrast,survivors' organizations tended to adopt a view of the problemwhich challenges societal attitudes, male sexual socialization,and the labelling of victims as passive and damaged. This articleattempts to find explanations for why these different approacheshave been taken and examines the implications for policy developmentin this area. It concludes that social workers and the children'scharities could benefit considerably from greater collaborationwith both survivors and survivors' organizations.     

A New Approach to Community Care for the Elderly

Summary Organisations can absorb successfully only a few fundamentalinnovations within a short period of time. It is therefore importantfor the designers of innovations to ensure that they directlyand substantially contribute to solving important problems,and for agencies to concentrate their innovative activity onthose that do so contribute. The first aim of this paper isto analyse the policy context so as to clarify the nature ofthe problems that make innovation in the care of the elderlyimperative and show how features of the Community Care Projectcontribute to their solution. The second aim is to provide somepreliminary evidence of the success of the scheme. The analysisof data for seventy persons in the experimental and controlgroups shows that the experimental group fared better in a numberof important ways; and that the gains appear to have been madeat no extra cost to the social services department. Therefore,it is concluded, the adoption of the scheme may contribute tothe technical progress needed in the provision of social serviceto the elderly with needs at or above the margin for residentialcare.     

Group Living in Homes for the Elderly: A Comparative Study of the Outcomes of Care

Correspondence to Tim Booth, Department of Sociological Studies, Joint Unit for Social Services Research, University of Sheffield, Sheffield S10 2TN. Summary This paper traces the theory and practice of group living inhomes for the elderly in the literature and in the field. Itreviews the current state of research and calls for more workon the comparative evaluation of outcomes. It describes andpresents the results from a longitudinal study of matched samplesof residents in group homes and traditional homes which assessedthe relative changes in their personal functioning over time.The findings suggest that group living arrangements have beenoversold—in so far as they promise more than they deliver.     

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.     

Caring for the Elderly Widowed--the Burden on their Supporters

Summary This paper examines how caring for elderly widowed people affectsthe lives of their ‘familiars’. This study is partof a larger national study on widowhood in old age carried outby the Institute for Social Studies in Medical Care. The familiarstended to be the children of the widowed, particularly theirdaughters. Children of the widowed, again often daughters, weremore likely than other familiars to suffer life restrictionsbefore and after the death because of the care and support givento the deceased and the surviving spouse. In addition to theircaring role familiars were often committed to full or part-timeemployment and most also had their own families to support.The care they provide for the elderly is not always withoutcost. The contribution towards community care given by suchinformal helpers deserves greater recognition and the social,psychological and financial costs thus incurred merit greaterrelief. As the help is needed by a minority only of such informalcarers, adoption of a policy relieving them as far as possibleof the costs they incur, would not involve intolerable financialoutlays.