Working with burns survivors: A social work approach

Abstract

Adjustment to a major burn may be a prolonged and demanding journey for patients, families and staff working with this client group. As well as recovering physically, patients must wok towards a psychological recovery by confronting a complex range of emotional responses to their injury. We outline the psychosocial impact of burn injury and suggest ways in which the social worker can assist in the adjustment process during the hospital admission both in the acute and the rehabilitation phases, including a case-management approach and the establishment of a support group for survivors.     

Gender and Infrastructure in the World Bank

This article conducts a critical analysis of the World Bank's current infrastructure strategy from a feminist perspective, arguing that failures to define gender and set meaningful targets and indicators have meant that gender has not been integrated into the implementation of infrastructure projects. It sets out three limitations to the Bank's approach to gender and infrastructure: lack of awareness of gender in the four sectors that comprise infrastructure; the Bank's narrow approach to gender equality and women's empowerment; and the failure of the Bank to mainstream gender in its current infrastructure strategy.     

Ordering the urban body: professional planning in early twentieth-century Britain

The early twentieth century has been regarded as a crucial period in the development of planning in Britain during which the key elements of the modern profession were put in place. At the time, planners represented their practice as a progressive answer to the environmental legacies of the Victorian era, capable of contributing decisively to the social and political reform of British society. Existing histories dealing with the subject uniformly locate planning within a historical trajectory that emphasizes its links with philanthropic experiment, reformism and the growth of the welfare state. This article scrutinizes such key propositions in order to show some of the ways that planning can be located within an alternative historical trajectory in which questions of orderliness, expert knowledge and government emerge to take priority. It examines the presence of rivalry among early professionals, the methodological commitment to civic surveying and the way planners sought to make use of the interconnections between space and social life to wield power over the environment and the private lives of urban dwellers.     

Being evaluated: a practitioner's view

The impacts of evaluation exercises on people and services being evaluated are examined, including those that are unintended. Using the example of a parents' centre in central London, the paper asks whether evaluators are measuring the right things, whether the resulting ‘evidence’ is valid, and what effects an evaluation may have on the service. It seeks to identify the features of research and evaluation exercises that are most likely to justify the time spent on data collection by leading to improvements in services for children and families. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Patterns of practice: An exploratory factor analysis of child and family social worker skills

There is relatively little research on the communication skills that social workers use in direct practice with families. This study explores patterns of practice skill found in child and family social work home visits. The study analysed 127 practice interactions in family homes, coding for seven dimensions of worker skill using a coding framework drawn from motivational interviewing. Exploratory factor analysis was employed to establish patterns of skill within the data and to group key dimensions of skill. The findings make two contributions. First, three fundamental dimensions of good practice emerged, which we characterize as care and engagement, good authority, and support for behaviour change. Second, in exploring the relationship between “care” and “control” elements of social work, skilled social workers were able to combine good authority and empathic engagement, whereas those who were less skilled in use of authority were also less good at engagement. This contributes to debates about care and control in social work. The usefulness of these dimensions for conceptualizing practice in child and family social work is discussed and directions for further research are suggested.     

Non‐governmental organisations and informal associations in service delivery for African migrants in China: Evidence of voluntary sector failure?

As the Chinese government has purposefully built economic, social and political links with several African states in recent decades, new patterns of international migration have emerged. Notably, mixed‐race families are increasingly visible in southern China, particularly Guangzhou, where there is a concentration of African traders. The few existing studies on this population have failed to pay attention to how, in the absence of state provision of or support for key public resources including health care and education, African‐Chinese families are raising their children. We examined factors contributing to NGO successes and failures in facilitating these families’ wellbeing and integration into mainstream society, drawing on the theory of voluntary sector failure. Mixed‐raced families are relatively isolated from mainstream society as well as formal/informal civil society organisations. We found select features of philanthropic paternalism, philanthropic amateurism, and what we term philanthropic mistrust, with implications for understanding voluntary sector growth in the Chinese context.     

Cognitive and organizational ergonomics in the transition of the new integrated center of control of an oil refinery: human reliability and administration of changes

The conception of a product is closely tied to its adaptation level to the users. In this view, designers are increasingly oriented to survey the needs and features of the users. This paper aims at developing a diagnosis of employees working in high-complexity activities in a petrochemical company, in light of the physical and operating changes in the Integrated Center of Control; assessing the reception sensibility to changes; assessing the cognitive pattern of the group; and making suggestions that might eliminate or minimize the difficulties in the transition process of the change, in order to reduce the adaptation period. The field of study comprised 111 production, transfer and storage operators, forming 5 groups of desktop activities. The stages of the study followed the following flow: survey of the prescribed tasks and organizational structure; Concentrated Attention test; application of the Work and Disease Risks Inventory (ITRA, Portuguese acronym); and structured psychological interview. The ITRA results pointed to a serious cognitive cost (3.83) for all five groups, this being the largest intervention focus. The items: division of task contents (3.52), social professional relationships (2.93), quality of the physical environment (2.91), physical cost (3.24), emotional cost (2.71), freedom of expression (3.77), professional fulfillment (3.41); experience and suffering (2.75), lack of recognition (2.18) and physical injuries (2.07) were considered critical. Meanwhile, social damages (1.64) and psychological injuries (1.35) are bearable. As to the Concentrated Attention test, most workers registered average level. In the individual interviews, workers showed that larger involvement in the process of physical, organizational and operational change in the desktops and on field works was required, as well as the follow up of implementations, so as to reduce the adaptation process and prevent rework (furniture, equipment, noise, form of communication with the area and training for the changes). As a result of the findings handed to the management and returned to the workers, several actions were implemented on ergonomic non-conformities found in the analysis. It is possible to prove the importance of the insertion of cognitive and organizational ergonomics in the building projects of new facilities for high-complexity activities in petrochemical plants.     

Organizational ergonomics of occupational health methods and processes in a Brazilian oil refinery

Organizational ergonomics refers to the optimization of social technical systems, including their organizational structures, policies and processes. The relevant topics include communications, management of resources, work projects, temporal organization of work, team work, participative project, new work paradigms, cooperative work, organizational culture, network organizations and quality management (IEA, 2000). The purpose of this study was the reorganization of the methods and processes of the occupational health sector (SMS/SO - Portuguese acronym of the area) of a petrochemical company. The work involved thirty professionals: a coordinator, two occupational physicians, one cardiologist, one occupational dentist, two occupational nurses, eleven occupational health technicians, one social worker, one nutritionist, one phonoaudiologist, one ophthalmologist, one biochemist, two ergonomists, three administrative assistants, one administrator and one psychologist, during a six-month period. The methodology that was used sought to establish a cooperative alliance focused on change, transformation and acquisition of skills, reflecting directly on the attitudes and performance of the leaderships and their work teams. In addition to the feedback practice, the following supporting tools were used for the study's success: "Functional Polyvalence Matrix", "Management of Failures", 5W2H", "6M", "5 Why" and "process mapping". The intended results after the organization ergonomics restructuring process will allow the leader to help his or her team to make a diagnosis of the problems, identify options, develop strategies, establish targets and action plans, remove barriers, review contexts and implement the business management fundaments: planning, organization, management, coordination and control. The transformation possibilities allow us to consider some hypothesis: Before: Focus only on results. After: Engage collaborators to create sustainable results. Before: Operating profile. After: Tactical/strategic profile. Before: Find errors. After: Value effort and development. Before: Listen to what is being said. After: Understand what is being said. Before: Create fears of the consequences. After: Create room for risk. Before: Be the one who approves and decides. After: Be the cooperative support.     

‘I Was Quite Amazed’: Donor Conception and Parent–Child Relationships from the Child's Perspective

Donor conception and parent–child relationships were explored from the child's perspective. At ages 7 and 10, interview data were obtained from children in 31 donor insemination, 28 egg donation and 51 natural conception families. Children were also administered the MacArthur Story Stem Battery and a family map. Children in all family types reported close and affectionate relationships with their parents, irrespective of the lack of a genetic link between the parent and the child. Of those children who were aware of their donor conception at age 10, most demonstrated an understanding of, and had positive feelings about their donor conception.     

Disability and the anti‐obesity offensive

This paper expands a discussion begun by a fat activist in the UK disability literature to argue that fatness is a disability issue. Some ways in which fat people are oppressed by the same ideological practices and values that oppress (other) disabled people are explored. Fatness has typically been excluded from consideration by disability scholars and in this lacuna an equivalence is drawn between attitudes to fatness and psychological distress within disability studies. In conclusion, it urges discussion on theoretical perspectives of disability that embrace fatness and sees this as a prerequisite to developing strategies that enhance both disability and fat rights.