Mental health and social support: a pioneering study on the physically disabled in southern China

This is a pioneering study examining the effect of different types of social support on the mental health of the physically disabled in mainland China. With a random sample of 204 physically disabled people in Guangzhou, the biggest metropolis in southern China, results of this study showed that perceived social support was more effective in maintaining the mental health of the physically disabled than received social support. With respect to received social support, the attitude of the supporters, satisfaction with the support, the reciprocity of support relationships and the personal agency of the support recipients were found to be predictive of mental health. However, received daily-care support unexpectedly showed a significantly negative effect on mental health, while received economic and emotional support appeared to be irrelevant to the mental health of the physically disabled.     

A comparison of social work education across South Africa and Japan in relation to the Global Standards for Social Work Education and Training

Sakaguchi H, Sewpaul V. A comparison of social work education across South Africa and Japan in relation to the Global Standards for Social Work Education and Training Int J Soc Welfare 2011: 20: 192–202 © 2009 The Author(s), International Journal of Social Welfare © 2009 Blackwell Publishing Ltd and the International Journal of Social Welfare. This article draws on a one‐year study visit to the University of KwaZulu‐Natal, South Africa, interviews with field supervisors and students in Japan and reviews of the national frameworks of education in Japan and in South Africa. In doing so, the authors identify the similarities and differences in social work education across the two countries and they explore some of the historical and socio‐cultural factors that might account for the differences. There are some identifiable peculiarities in social work education in Japan, especially with the coalescing of care work and social work education. The lack of differentiation between care work and social work makes it difficult to narrow the scope of social work education and practice. National social work standards have been approved in South Africa and regulatory frameworks for social work education and practice have been long accepted, thus rendering ‘social work’ a protected title and a profession that is more entrenched compared with social work in Japan. The codes of ethics in Japan and South Africa are discussed with specific reference to their control functions in South Africa. The article concludes by discussing these comparisons in relation to the Global Standards for Social Work Education.     

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.     

Diseased, maimed, mutilated: categorizations of disability and an ugly law in late nineteenth-century Chicago

The article places Chicago's "ugly" law—an 1881 municipal ordinance that fined "any person who is diseased, maimed, mutilated or in any way deformed so as to be an unsightly or disgusting object" for appearing in public—within the context of late nineteenth-century imaginings of disability. Drawing on the framework of disability studies, this paper demonstrates that nineteenth-century understandings of disability had little to do with the impairments of individuals but instead were tied to the status of the person with the disability. Examining the role of disabled people as workers, as bodies and as charity recipients reveals the hierarchies of disability in late nineteenth-century Chicago and demonstrates who the ugly law intended to restrict and, just as importantly, who it did not. While the law appears to be a blanket indictment of all physically disabled people, multiple sources indicate that the public expected disabled veterans, workers, and freak show performers to occupy the public realm; they therefore cannot be the intended objects of the ordinance. Instead, Chicago's ugly law was one of many pieces of legislation enacted in the wake of the panic of 1873 that attempted to eradicate street begging in general by specifically targeting beggars with disabilities.     

Forging Diaspora: Afro-Cubans and African Americans in a World of Empire and Jim Crow

ABSTRACT

Drawing on social histories of rumour, this article challenges notions of white and Afrikaner homogeneity which persist in the scholarship on late and post-apartheid South Africa. In so doing, it demonstrates the revisionist potential of rumour as a historical source, while reinserting class in a scholarship which privileges race as salient historical feature. The article focuses on Arrie Paulus, apartheid South Africa’s most prominent white trade unionist, infamous as the personification of working-class racism. Yet this defender of race-based privilege and staunch Afrikaner nationalist was haunted by a rumour: Paulus, it was whispered, was not actually white. The rumour circulated in reform-era South Africa and persists in the post-apartheid present. By examining the rumour surrounding Paulus’s racial and ethnic origins in terms of the functions it fulfilled within the particular contexts in which it appeared, this article exposes longstanding tensions around the politics of class characterizing Afrikaner society since the 1970s.     

社区照顾在残疾人社会保障中的运用

社区照顾最早产生于英国,自诞生以来,便以其新型的理念与模式日益受到各国学者和政府的重视。社区照顾作为一种专业化的照顾模式,在残疾人社会保障方面具有广阔的发展空间。本文试图将社区照顾的制度安排应用于我国残疾人社会保障事业,并探析我国残疾人社区照顾的模式,以推动我国残疾人社会保障事业向人性化、社会化、专业化方向发展。     

残疾人特殊性及其需求分析

近年来,我国残疾人社会保障事业取得了很大的成绩,残疾人社会保障和社会福利水平不断提高,但是我国残疾人社会保障还滞后于整个社会保障事业,残疾人的基本生活状况与健全人的生活水平还存在着较大差距,残疾人社会保障事业还滞后于经济社会的发展。本文认为残疾人社会保障不同于一般意义上的社会保障,只有在充分认识到残疾人特殊性及其需求的基础上,才能探索和建构出适宜残疾人的社会保障模式。     

(Mis)framing Higher Education in South Africa

The question of how to make higher education more inclusive has been a central concern in South Africa and elsewhere over the past two decades. However, in South Africa there remains a disjuncture between policy aimed at promoting inclusivity and the experiences of students and staff in the higher education sector. In this article, the relationship between equity of access and equity of outcomes and the expectations that follow from these policy imperatives are examined from the perspective of Nancy Fraser's normative framework of social justice. In particular, her notion of misframing is used to analyze the current situation in the higher education sector in South Africa. The article concludes that a focus on individual higher education institutions is not sufficient to gain a perspective on the social arrangements required for participatory parity in higher education; and, in fact, such a focus is an instance of misframing and thus a form of injustice.     

Violence,Negligence and Suicidal Tendency among Physically Disabled Street Children

This study was carried out among physically disabled street children (PDSC) in the city of Dhaka in Bangladesh. The aim of the study was to explore violence, negligence and suicidal tendency among PDSC. To do this, 30 PDSC (15 male and 15 female) were conveniently selected and interviewed with an interview protocol developed by a step‐by‐step process. The results of this study revealed that all the participants experienced physical violence but female children were more likely to experience sexual violence than male children. Violence against disabled children came from both family members or relatives and other people. As with violence, all the participants experienced some sort of negligence, again both from family members or relatives and other people. More importantly, this study found that more than half of the physically disabled children had suicidal tendency to some extent, i.e. some thought of committing suicide at least once in their life, while others attempted to commit suicide due to the sufferings that came with disability. This study concludes with some policy implications, particularly: providing counseling to parents and the disabled children; training of the service providers who provide services to disabled persons; and building awareness through mass media.     

The post-1994 transformation of social work in South Africa

This article examines the transformation of social work in South Africa in response to the transition to a developmental welfare approach. Always moulding and shaping itself in response to its social context, social work in South Africa, as elsewhere, is a reflection of the broader political landscape. In South Africa the social work profession has struggled to assert its independence and become self-regulating. It is unique in the Western world in that since 1978 it has been regulated by a legislatively constituted statutory council. While the profession has tried to transform itself in the new democracy, outside pressures have found it wanting and deeply divided. Thus, despite progress in other areas social workers have not yet been successful in forming a strong, united professional association and this severely limits its ability to lobby politicians and advocate on behalf of clients. It seems, however, that the tide is turning and social workers are gaining recognition but, once again, the challenge remains deciding on the extent to which the profession cooperates with the government's agenda for change. Social work educators took the lead in setting education standards in response to higher education policy and are also playing a part in devising practice standards through their involvement in the social work board which falls under the umbrella of the Council for Social Service Professions. However, education and practice are somewhat out of step and professional unity remains a pressing issue on social work's transformation agenda.     

Personal Assistance for Disabled People – The Norwegian Experience

This article presents data from a survey of all disabled people in Norway who receive personal assistance in the municipalities that have been granted subsidies from the state. It concentrates on the following issues: – Who are the users of personal assistance? What distinguishes them from other disabled people? – What dimensions has personal assistance as a service? How has it influenced the total service to the recipients and how is this composed? – How do the users value the service? To what extent does it seem to fulfil the aims of self-dependence and sovereignty for the users? The article concludes that personal assistance seems to be a suitable instrument to reach the goals of full participation and equality of status for disabled people in Norwegian society. The main challenges which personal assistance will meet in the future are the financing of the arrangement and how the principles of user-determination could be implemented and transferred to other services without losing its ideological base.     

The progress of child protection in South Africa

Child abuse in South Africa is a serious and escalating problem. In this article, the writer reflects on the response of the South African government and civil society organisations to the problems experienced by practitioners in their management of child abuse during the past decade. This response must be understood within the context of South Africa's transition from a past characterised by state-enforced discrimination, exclusion and inequity. The article focuses on the child protection service system and draws attention to a review conducted in the nine provincial departments of social development across the country. It discusses the recommendations of the review in light of international literature on child welfare and lessons learnt over the past ten years. Despite the progress in policy formulation, implementation remains a major problem regarding child protection in South Africa.     

'Mingling together': promoting the social inclusion of disabled children and young people during the school holidays

The promotion of social inclusion of disabled children and their families is currently high on the UK political agenda. Research shows that disabled children and their families are highly disadvantaged, both economically and socially. This paper reports some of the findings of a qualitative study, entitled On Holiday! , which involved analysing the views of 297 people across six local authority research sites in England including 86 disabled children and young people. The study showed that many disabled children and their families experienced high levels of social isolation and exclusion during out-of-school periods and during the school holidays in particular. The paper recounts some of the experiences of disabled young people and their families and ways in which local authorities can promote their social inclusion. We argue that disabled young people and their families can only be truly socially included and empowered when all levels of the local authority (managers, officers and elected members) recognize the rights and entitlements of disabled children and have the political will and commitment to implement them.     

Putting the ‘public’ into public service delivery for social welfare in South Africa

Mubangizi BC, Gray M. Putting the ‘public’ into public service delivery for social welfare in South Africa Int J Soc Welfare 2011: 20: 212–219 © 2010 The Author(s), International Journal of Social Welfare © 2010 Blackwell Publishing Ltd and the International Journal of SocialWelfare. The privatisation of some essential services in South Africa has raised severe difficulties for those for whom the idea of fees for services is quite foreign and who, in any case, cannot afford to pay for services. The government has developed several initiatives to educate people about the need to pay for services provided by local government, the largest of which was the Masakhane fees‐for‐services campaign. This article describes two recent initiatives that seek to engage local citizen participation, namely, Integrated Development Plans and izimbizo (or traditional forums). These are examined along with the challenges faced by local government in promoting citizenship participation in service delivery within a decentralised system of governance. The article concludes with some recommendations on how citizen participation can be enhanced so as to make the ‘public’ visible in public service delivery and thus improve social welfare 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.     

The political participation of social workers: a comparative study

This article reports on a comparative study that examined the political participation of social workers in KwaZulu-Natal province in South Africa, the state of New South Wales (excluding the Hunter region) in Australia, and New Zealand. Each of these contexts had roughly the same number of social workers, that is, approximately 1,200. It was found that social workers in New Zealand tended to be more politically active than their counterparts in New South Wales and KwaZulu-Natal, and the reasons for this are examined. In the process, New Zealand is presented as a case study of the way in which social work has responded to its political context. Finally, conclusions are drawn as to the engagement of social workers in the policy cycle and of the need for them to become more active politically.     

Children and young people with a hidden disability: an examination of the social work role

Summary There has been little research attention paid to the natureand extent of social work intervention with children and youngpeople with invisible impairments. The recent study describedhere found that children and young people with a hidden andstigmatizing impairment received a social work service whichwas at a minimal level. The children and young people were affectedby physically induced incontinence, and described how they facedan environment which created particular tensions. Their parentsconcurred with this overall picture and reported unmet needs.Recommendations are made about social services input, but itis recognized that the level of social services interventionavailable to these families may, in part, be a reflection ofa low priority assigned to disabled children generally. It isargued that, although such an assignment is a common picturein recent research about social services provision to disabledchildren, a change in priorities is needed which recognizesthe importance of coherent support to disabled children as ameans of improving their environment and thereby reducing families'stress levels and the likelihood of abuse or rejection.     

憨老家庭生存状况的个案研究

憨老家庭是指老迈家属照顾智障者的家庭。本研究对憨老家庭物质条件、精神状态、家庭内部支持和家庭外部支持四个方面的生存状况做初步的了解。研究方法：选择三个憨老家庭进行半结构的个案访谈。结果：（1）憨老家庭有居住和经济收入等基本物质保障;（2）老年监护人和残障子女之间有很好的支持;（3）憨老家庭的社会保障和福利主要来源于国家对老年人的政策;（4）社会支持系统对憨老家庭的支持还有欠缺。     

Disability as the Basis for a Social Movement: Advocacy and the Politics of Definition

Many people with disabilities do not identify themselves as disabled or choose not to be part of a politically active community of disabled persons. This paper discusses both the barriers to the formation of a social movement of disabled people and the ways in which these barriers have been overcome. The role of public policy in the evolution of this movement is discussed, as are the current status and prospects of the disability rights movement.     

The Mentally Handicapped and Their Professional Helpers

Summary This article discusses visits paid to fifty-three families witha severely mentally handicapped adult living at home, most ofwhom were also quite severely disabled physically. Varying reactionsto the services offered by general practitioners and mentalwelfare officers are described and those factors influencingthe generally poor opinion of mental welfare officers' servicesare discussed. The importance of the daily routine of the familiesis emphasized and the difficulty of the mental welfare servicein providing services or practical assistance which helps withthe daily routine. Finally it is suggested that the social servicesshould see a greater part of their work as helping and enablingthe community to do better, and with less strain, the caringit does already and that this means that the planning of servicesneeds to start from the locality in which the handicapped personlives