Social Inquiry Reports in One Juvenile Court: An Examination

Summary The paper begins by briefly outlining the current debate overthe usage of social inquiry reports in the juvenile court, particularlywith regard to the effect that their recommendations can haveupon the lives of young people appearing in that court. It thendiscusses the findings of research carried out by the authorinto the social inquiry reports presented to one juvenile court.In particular it examines the contents and format of these reports,the effect that concepts of ‘welfare’ and ‘justice’have upon the recommendations of these reports, and the differencesthat exist in the reports presented by the probation and socialservices. It concludes that there is a pressing need for a revisionin the presentation of these reports to the court as no consistentstandard of information is being offered. It also argues thatit is time to reassess the role of treatment in the juvenilejustice system, in the light of this and other recent research,and to separate more clearly the components of welfare and justicewithin this system.     

The Cumbrian Reparation Scheme

Correspondence to David Smith, Lecturer in Social Work, Department of Social Administration, University of Lancaster, Fylde College, Bailrigg, Lancaster LA1 4YF Summary This paper discusses an experimental ‘reparation’scheme run by the probation service in Cumbria. A general contextis provided by an analysis of some varieties of mediation andreparation, and the scheme is then placed within its local organizationalcontext, which meant that it drew its work from juvenile liaisonpanels established by the police. The paper argues that thepanels suffered from the lack of a clear commitment to diversionfrom prosecution on the part of the police, and that the reparationscheme was used as part of the probation service's effort toincrease the use of cautions. The practice of reparation andthe experiences victims and offenders had of it are then reviewed.Offenders generally viewed the scheme more positively than victims,but some victims were glad of the opportunity to be involvedin something which might be helpful to young offenders. In conclusion,it is argued that despite the contradictions which were evidentin the practice of reparation in this setting, there may stillbe scope for innovative work by social work agencies in relationto victims of crime.     

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.     

Social Work Ideologies in the Probation Service

Summary The research described in this paper was an attempt to exploresome aspects of social work ideology in the probation service.We were particularly interested to identify the extent to whichprobation officers subscribed to certain ‘treatment model’assumptions about criminal behaviour. The project was designedas a small-scale study in depth of probation officers' socialinquiry practices. The data-collection methods used for thiswere a combination of depth interviews with probation officerswho also completed self-administered questionnaires. We foundthat some probation officers appeared to subscribe to ‘treatmentmodel‘ ideals more than others, but that all probationofficers were treatment orientated towards some of their casesand not to others. Their treatment preferences seems to relateto the seriousness of the offender's criminal history and personalproblems and the recommendation that was being made. Some ofthe implications of these findings for social work practicewere discussed.     

Probation Practice, Effectiveness and the Non-Treatment Paradigm

Correspondence to Dr Peter Raynor, Department of Social Policy and Applied Social Studies, University of Wales, Swansea SA2 8PP. Summary This paper reports interim and largely positive results fromthe continuing evaluation of ‘Straight Thinking on Probation’,a substantial intensive probation programme in Mid-Glamorganbased on the work of Robert Ross et al. (1988) in Canada. Thepotential effectiveness of this type of programme is then discussedin relation to the influential model of the probation service'srole advanced by Bottoms and McWilliams in their 1979 ‘non-treatmentparadigm’. Are such programmes ‘treatment’,based on a model of offender pathology and therefore in conflictwith the paradigm, or are they ‘help’, based ona model of empowerment? An attempt to answer this question alsorequires consideration of how far the ‘non-treatment paradigm’was itself a response to perceived ineffectiveness requiringrevision in the light of new evidence. It is argued that suchrevision need not threaten the underlying moral philosophy ofthe paradigm.     

From Paradigm to Practice in a Special Probation Project

Summary Between January 1980 and December 1982, a team of probationofficers in South Yorkshire attempted a new approach to probationpractice. The project arose initially out of the ideas put forwardin Bottoms and McWilliams (1979) ‘A Non-Treatment Paradigmfor Probation Practice’, but the team members developeda version of the paradigm which in many respects differed markedlyfrom the original. In this paper, their statutory work is describedwith particular reference to their social enquiry practice andto their attempted separation of the care and control aspectsof probation orders.     

Institutionalized Ambivalence: Social Work and the Children and Young Persons Act 1969

Summary Partly through political ambivalence, partly through internalcontradictions, the Children and Young Persons Act 1969 hasfailed to reconceptualize the relationship between justice andwelfare in the juvenile court. The social work role is now characterizedby the potential for role conflict and inappropriate exerciseof discretion. Nevertheless, it is argued that the Act raisesissues which must be addressed and the capacity of the ‘backto justice’ movement to do so is critically assessed.     

Victim-Offender Mediation in the Italian Juvenile Justice System: The Role of the Social Worker

Correspondence to Anna Costanza Baldry, Department of Social and Developmental Psychology, Faculty of Psychology, University of Rome ‘La Sapienza’, via dei Marsi, 78, 00185 Rome, Italy Summary Mediation, according to the restorative justice approach, balancesthe victims' needs against holding offenders responsible forthe harm caused and requiring them to make reparation for it.Victim-offender mediation in the Italian juvenile justice systemis not, as yet, widely implemented. Social workers, employedby the Juvenile Criminal Justice Department, are the only professionalsinvolved in mediation. Results from a national survey conducted with social workerswho are responsible for victim-offender mediation as part oftheir probation duties, show that mediation programmes remainlimited and unstructured. Individual, locally based experiences,not equally distributed around the country and mainly involvingpetty crimes, indicate that in most cases primary attentionis paid to the young offender and that the victim's interestsare not considered. Social workers claim that, although theyperceive the advantages of a restorative justice approach tocrime, they lack the skills as well as the time to undertakethis duty adequately. The research findings also address thepotential biases of offering mediation programmes as part ofa probation order, thereby affecting the independence and neutralityof mediation. This risk can be avoided if social workers actingas mediators are thoroughly trained, as in the case study ofattempted murder presented below. The case study reported shows,moreover, that mediation can be successfully undertaken evenwith serious offences and that both the victim and the offendercan benefit from it. Issues related to the implications andsocial policy impact of mediation as a social work practiceare also considered.     

Working with Female Offenders: Beyond 'Alternatives to Custody'?

Correspondence to Anne Worrall, Lecturer in Social Work, Department of Applied Social Studies and Social Work, University of Keele, Keele, Staffs. ST5 5BG. Summary Developments in the Probation Service in the 1980s have beendominated by the rhetoric of ‘Alternatives to Custody’.At the same time, there has been an increasing awareness ofgender biases within the criminal justice system. This articlereports on research into the attitudes of probation officersand female offenders and explores the implications of thesefor future work with women by the Service.     

Technicality and Indeterminacy in Probation Practice: A Case Study

Correspondence to Department of Law, Crookesmoor Building, Conduit Road, Sheffield S10 1FL, UK. E-mail: g.j.robinson{at}sheffield.ac.uk Summary ‘Technicality’ is a theoretical construct which,in the context of professional practice, refers to those aspectsof the work which can be prescribed, ‘programmed’or subject to routine practices. This paper considers the purportedrise of technicality in probation practice, with particularreference to the relationship between increasing technicalityand perceptions of ‘professionalism’. The paperpresents a case study of one ‘technical’ initiativein the probation context: namely, a structured risk/needs assessmentinstrument. The case study examined the implementation of thisinstrument in two area probation services, with a view to establishingits impact both on the exercise of professional judgement (‘indeterminacy’),and on perceptions of professionalism among users and theirmanagers. On the basis of the case study it is argued that,contrary to many recent commentaries, neither significant reductionsin indeterminacy nor an inevitable process of deprofessionalizationcan be automatically ‘read off’ from attempts tointroduce greater structure and/or standardization to socialwork and probation practice. The tentative conclusion of thispaper is that the professional future lies not in a wholesalerejection of technicality, but rather in achieving a positive,workable balance between technical and indeterminate aspectsof practice.     

Ambiguities in Decision Making: Social Work's Response to 'Glue-Sniffing' in Scotland

Correspondence to Dr Elizabeth Jagger, Social Science Department, Park Campus, 1, Park Drive, Caledonian University, Glasgow G3 6LP Summary This paper examines how social workers make decisions aboutwhich cases of ‘glue-sniffing’ require intervention,in the context of a government policy which construes the problemprimarily within the arena of parental responsibility. Usingdata from interviews with social workers and research on ‘glue-sniffing’,it shows that social workers were frequently reluctant to dealwith cases. It explains that this has to do with factors suchas organizational priorities, lack of resources and, in particular,the ambiguous status of ‘glue-sniffing’ within theirown professional discourse. It concludes that the complex interplayof these factors means that government policy is not translatedinto practice in any simplistic manner.     

What Makes for Successful Groupwork? A Survey of Agencies in the UK

Summary This paper reports the findings of a survey of Social ServicesDepartments, Probation Services and the major voluntary agenciesin the UK. The survey aimed to shed light on the factors whichpromote successful groups in social work and probation agencies.The survey did not attempt to map the extent of current groupwork.A questionnaire was piloted in a Social Services Departmentin northern England with social work and social care practitionersparticipating in ‘The Groupwork Project’, a trainingand development programme which continues to have as its aimthe establishment of a groupwork service in a mainstream socialservices agency. The survey was designed to be illuminativeand exploratory rather than conclusive. In this paper, the authorsreflect on the research process and on the findings of the survey.These findings point to the complexity of factors consideredsignificant to the success of a group, and to the importanceof contextual factors in establishing and sustaining a groupworkservice.     

Social Work Influence on the Cautioning of Juvenile Offenders

Summary Data on 254 juvenile offenders known to the police in one innercity area of Bradford were analysed in order to assess the roleof social workers in pre-court decision making. Overall, onlyabout one-fifth of the juveniles or their families were knownto the social sciences department, and social work influencewas limited to these cases. Despite this, the research suggestedthat socialworkers could play a crucial role in keeping juvenilesout of court. However, this role was restricted where socialworkers operated as consultants rather than participants indecision making.     

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.     

The Probation Officer as Social Worker

Summary In this article the author argues for a detachment of the probationservice from the function of carrying out court orders to superviseoffenders. He suggests that changes in social work traininghave not been matched by any fundamental changes in the probationservice's relationship with the court or by any fundamentalchanges in the probation service's own organization or philosophy.The consequence is that probation officers spend a disproportionateamount of time doing tasks for which their training has notequipped them. He postulates a new relationship between theprobation service and the courts which gives the former greaterautonomy in social work decision making, and gives the lattergreater scope to administer punishments within the community.The need to move away from the utilitarian justification forwork with offenders that it reduces crime is also urged, andit is suggested that there is a need to establish, as a value,the importance of social work provisions and counselling foroffenders as a deprived group in society, irrespective of theeffect of these measures on the crime rate.     

The Treatment of Enuresis amongst Child Clients of a Social Services Department

Summary The adoption of an ‘outpatient’ model of supervisingthe treatment of bedwetting amongst child clients of a socialservices department is described. The treatment technique usedwas the generally effective ‘enuresis alarm’, or‘bell-and-pad’. Fifteen out of a total of 25 concludedcourses of treatment were successful, with an average treatmentduration of 14.9 weeks. Both this outcome, and the rate of drop-outbefore completion of treatment (ten cases) are comparable withthose obtained with non social services clients, and the useof the enuresis alarm with children in care (including thosein residential establishments) was found to be quite practicable.A high relapse rate (43%) was, however, found for social servicesclients, relapse usually following a placement change or othermajor stress.     

Prison Welfare and Voluntary After Care

Summary Some findings of a survey into the experiences of men releasedfrom prison are reported, where they relate to their use ofprison welfare and after care services. These are discussedin the context of issues such as through-care, rate of take-up,and the factors which may be influential in determining whethera man makes use of after care on release from prison. It isproposed that for more isolated men the probation service shouldadopt a ‘reaching-out’ strategy.     

The Impact of the First Term of the New Labour Government on Social Work in Britain: The Interface between Education Policy and Social Work

Summary This paper considers how far the New Labour educational policyrepresents a clear shift in focus from the policies of the Conservativeadministrations of the 1980s and 1990s. As in other areas ofsocial policy, the paper concludes that current government policyowes as much—if not more—to ‘New Right’ideology than to that of the ‘Old Left’. With anew emphasis on social inclusion, the paper considers the contributionof, and implications for, contemporary developments in educationpolicy and practice for child and family social work in general,and education social work in particular.     

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’.     

The Victorian Ethical Foundations of Social Work in England--Continuity and Contradiction

Correspondence to Bill Forsythe, Dean of Academic Partnerships, 261, Northcote House, University of Exeter, Exeter EX4 4QJ, UK. E-mail: W.J.Forsythe{at}exeter.ac.uk Summary In this article we argue that during the Victorian era certainethical foundations of best practice were identified and werecentral to the work of particular individuals. We also arguethat there was a strongly discriminatory moralistic basis tosocial policy and mainstream charitable intervention that militatedagainst these ethical foundations. We suggest that this contradictionis replicated in New Labour's ‘Third Way’ and thatwe need to heed the tradition of social inclusion espoused bysome of the Victorian practitioners discussed if we genuinelymean to put into practice the ideas of social worth and communityespoused by New Labour rather than return to the Victorian distinctionbetween the ‘respectable’ or ‘deserving’poor and the ‘pauper’.