Introduction to the Special Issues on the Supervision of Staff and Field Education of Students

Two Special Issues of the Clinical Social Work Journal have been dedicated to building on the social work discipline’s tradition and commitment to the supervision of staff and field education of students. These issues bring together contemporary theorizing, clinical supervisory and field education practice experience and wisdom, and research studies to contribute to the knowledge base for practicing supervisors and field educators. As the first of the Special Issues, this issue has been dedicated to the supervision of staff. In this Introduction, we share the salient aspects of the articles published, as they relate to contemporary social work supervision, relational considerations within the supervisory dyad, models of supervision for fields of specialization, as well as measurement and evaluation. Implications are shared, with highlights and connections for practicing supervisors made throughout.     

Rendering sexism invisible in workplace narratives. A narrative analysis of female entrepreneurs’ stories of not being talked to by men

Entrepreneurism is widely regarded as being one way in which women can sidestep the sexism of male‐dominated institutionalized work environments and enter into a world in which men and women operate on a level playing field. Yet, in a corpus of stories of female entrepreneurs’ experiences, we noted that being ignored by men was a constant theme. Taking a social constructionist and narrative approach to identity, we analyse the gendered identity work that female entrepreneurs do in these stories and we seek to explicate the process through which female entrepreneurs do not evaluate being ignored by men as sexism‐in‐action. Using positioning theory as an analytical tool, we analyse these stories at three different levels: the here‐and‐now interaction between interviewer and storyteller; the there‐and‐then identity work of the characters in the storyworld; and the wider societal Discourses that the storytellers enact, and which are enacted by such identity work. Findings indicate that despite making gendered difference, inferiority and lack of agency relevant, the stories are not evaluated as sexism‐in‐action because the female entrepreneurs enact a postfeminist and neoliberal Discourse of freedom, autonomy and choice, rather than a feminist Discourse of discrimination and sexism.     

Tinder and humanitarian hook-ups: the erotics of social media racism

In March 2014, at the height of the popularity of the hook-up application Tinder, The Guardian published the “Seven Shades of Cliché” of user profiles claiming that Humanitarians of Tinder are the “creepiest ticket yet to laidsville.” Humanitarians of Tinder are Tinder users (a hook-up application) who have selected to present images of themselves in humanitarian or volunteer settings outside of the West (or Global North, developed world). With a Tumblr devoted to this subgroup of Tinder users, and mainstream media outlets including The Washington Post, The Atlantic, The Huffington Post, Yahoo News, and the feminist blog Jezebel following this story, Humanitarians of Tinder evoke dialogue about the intersections of sexiness and racialized benevolence. This article takes seriously Humanitarians of Tinder to think through the connections between social media hook-ups, racial affect, feminist studies humanitarianism, and racisms in development. It asks: why do people use humanitarian photos to generate hook-ups on social media? How does holding an African baby make someone “hot”?     

Endless Pressure: Life on a Low Income in Austere Times

Much has been written that details the decline in living standards following the ‘credit crunch’ in the UK. It remains that we understand to a lesser degree the lived reality of poverty through the Great Recession and into the era of austerity. This article draws on testimonies of 62 participants from low income households conducted in three different areas of the UK during 2012–13 to document the pressures that this period brought to bear on these households. According to these testimonies, the experience of poverty intensified in key respects: first, participants reported feeling, more than ever before, that they were ‘existing, rather than living’ due to the meagre budgets they were forced to live on; second, the precarious nature of work and social security contributed to a sense of insecurity that was all pervasive in our participants' lives; third, due to the pejorative political rhetoric and media coverage of poverty, our participants felt that their lives were placed under increased scrutiny which deleteriously impacted their wider relationships and sense of belonging. Our analysis demonstrates the profound consequences for those living on low incomes of the continued shift to residual forms of state welfare and the increased reliance on the ‘Big Society’ as a means to deal with the pressures identified in this article.     

Medicare and Amyloid PET Imaging: The Battle Over Evidence

We examine a recent dispute regarding the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services’ (CMS) refusal to unconditionally pay for amyloid positron emission tomography (PET) imaging for Medicare beneficiaries being assessed for Alzheimer’s disease. CMS will only pay for amyloid PET imaging when patients are enrolled in clinical trials that meet certain criteria. The dispute reflects CMS’s willingness in certain circumstances to require effectiveness evidence that differs from the Food and Drug Administration’s standard for pre-market approval of a medical intervention and reveals how stakeholders with differing perspectives about evidentiary standards have played a role in attempting to shape the Medicare program’s coverage policies.     

Poking a sleeping bear: the challenge of organizational recruitment for controversial topics

ABSTRACT

Researchers often approach employers to investigate employees’ work and family experiences. Organizational willingness to grant access to employees can vary, especially when the research topic is seen as controversial or contentious for the employer. This paper explores this methodological challenge using a research example from Manitoba, Canada, which explored the use of parental leave by male employees and the impact of managerial attitudes and corporate culture on usage. Sixty large employers were recruited with only seven of those organizations agreeing to participate. In this paper, the reasons organizations gave for declining to participate and the implications of their decisions for the research are examined. Although the final sample included 905 managers and employees, participating organizations tended to be employee-focused and family-friendly employers. Organizations declined participation for a variety of reasons: avoiding raising the issue with unions, awareness that their policies unfairly benefited female leave takers, and simply not seeing the relevance of a topic relating to men’s work–family experiences. A dialogue often absent from the literature, it is important to understand how employers can limit researchers’ access to employees on controversial topics. The existence of such barriers suggests alternative avenues to recruit participants directly when topics are contentious for employers.     

Staff Development as a School Climate Intervention to Support Transgender and Gender Nonconforming Students: An Integrated Research Partnership Model for School Counselors and Counselor Educators

ABSTRACT

This article posits that an integrative research partnership model can assist school counselors in addressing the marginalization of transgender students in schools through staff development. A methodological integration of action research and program evaluation through quantitative and qualitative data collection is explained, and a collaborative process is highlighted. A case example is provided to demonstrate the use of the design.     

Individualism and Marriage: Ideal Types for Making Sense of the Relationship between Self and Sacrifice

The question of how the individual and group relate is one that has long interested social theorists. Changes in family form and structure in the contemporary West resituate this question in a contentious public debate regarding how the prevalence of new family forms may contribute or be deleterious to the well-being of individuals and families. Sociological discourse on marriage and the family generally tends to mirror this debate by dichotomizing individualism and commitment and self and marriage, resulting in an obfuscation of our understanding of the forms and styles in marriage. In order to clarify and advance this discussion, we show how individualism and commitment are mutually required in a modern world. We follow this by outlining a logically-derived typology that, along with a committed individualist and a group conformer, includes two intermediate types: a self-regulator and a relationship negotiator. We empirically demonstrate the utility of these types by showing how they correspond with the ways that interviewees talk about marriage in six local congregations, and we suggest various social factors that may particularly impact the development of local marriage cultures. These types provide a theoretical frame for understanding how individualism and commitment are intertwined and require each other.     

Best practices for online Canadian prenatal health promotion: A public health approach

Background

Prenatal health promotion provides information regarding pregnancy risks, protective behaviours and clinical and community resources. Typically, women obtain prenatal health information from health care providers, prenatal classes, peers/family, media and increasingly, Internet sites and mobile apps. Barriers to prenatal health promotion and related services include language, rural/remote location, citizenship and disability. Online public health platforms represent the capacity to reach underserved women and can be customised to address the needs of a heterogeneous population of pregnant women.