Inter-agency Approaches to Domestic Violence and the Role of Social Services

Correspondence to Gill Hague and Ellen Malos, Domestic Violence Research Group, School for Policy Studies, University of Bristol, 8 Woodland Road, Bristol BS8 1TN, UK. Summary The development of inter-agency initiatives as a response todomestic violence is currently enjoying widespread popularity,and was the subject of a Home Office Circular in 1995 encouragingthis approach as one of the principal planks of government domesticviolence policy. The Domestic Violence Research Group in theSchool for Policy Studies at the University of Bristol has completeda national study of inter-agency approaches to domestic violence,supported by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, and this paperexplores some of the themes identified in the research and therelevance of multi-agency domestic violence initiatives to socialworkers. Social services departments and voluntary sector socialwork agencies have a key role to play within inter-agency workof this type. The research indicates, however, that, while somesocial workers are active within inter-agency domestic violenceforums, social services could often take a more active rolewith firm commitment from management. It could be suggestedthat social services organizations cannot afford to be absentas the new policy direction offered by inter-agency initiativescontinues to grow in the future, which looks almost certainto happen. Some of the areas explored in the paper are: powerdifferentials between member agencies; the participation (andsometimes the marginalization) of Women's Aid and the refugemovement within multi-agency work; equalities issues; and theinvolvement in inter-agency projects of women and children whohave experienced domestic violence.     

Deprivation and Drug Addiction: A Study of a Vulnerable Sub-group

Summary The results of this survey confirm those of an earlier one,5and suggest that a young person who both uses illicit drugsand has a history of court findings, either for delinquencyor for 'being in need of care and protection', should be lookedupon as at considerable risk for future progression to narcoticuse. This progression is not simply a correlate of delinquencyor of remand home admission, as only one out of 100 controladmissions was discovered to have subsequently used narcotics.Moreover, this risk is not borne equally by all drug takersas, even on admission, there were significant mean differencesbetween the progressor and non-narcotic groups. The items whichwere most effective in distinguishing the three groups werethose relating to prior personality abnormality, prior psychiatricreferral and difficulty in relating to their peers and to adultsevidenced in their school and work reports. These differencesare thus of prognostic importance and may aid the identificationat an early stage of those soft-drug takers who are most vulnerableto the dangers of subsequent progression to narcotic and intravenousdrugs     

Deprived Adolescents: A Use for Groupwork

Summary This article describes a group for deprived adolescent boysreferred to a child guidance unit for violent, anti-social andwithdrawn behaviour in school. The referred behaviour is relatedto its aetiology in environmental and fragmented family conditionsand the suitability of group work as providing a containingor 'holding' situation is discussed in relation to other formsof treatment available. The behaviour and role of the therapistis considered, as are the limitations of what can be achievedin provision of this kind     

Social Work and Criminal Justice in Scotland: Developments in Policy and Practice

Correspondence to Dr Gill Mclvor, Social Work Research Centre, Department of Applied Social Science, University of Stirling, Stirling FK9 4LA, Scotland. Summary In the last five years major changes have occurred in the provisionof social work services to the Scottish criminal justice system.The present article charts recent developments in statutoryand voluntary community-based social work services to offenders,locating them in the context of contemporary penal policy. Thecontribution of social work at various points in the criminaljustice process is discussed with particular reference to theintroduction of national standards and full central fundingof statutory social work services. The new funding arrangementshave, it is suggested, provided an impetus to the developmentof statutory services but at the expense both of services notcurrently subject to the 100 per cent funding mechanism andof increased central government control. The article concludesby outlining the challenges to be faced by social work departmentsover the next few years, including an ever-widening remit andthe uncertainties surrounding local government re-organization.     

Sudden death in infancy

SUMMARY. Sudden death in infancy is now one of the commonest cause of death in young children in the United Kingdom affecting two to three per 1,000 livebirths. A number of background factors are associated with an increased risk of sudden death and the aetiology is likely to be multifactional. Some of these background factors are reviewed together with possible causes. The relationship with child abuse is discussed. While the aetiology and therefore methods of prevention remain uncertain, it is clear that families who suffer this form of bereavemem need support and counselling. The response of one health authority to the challenge of cot death is described.     

Social Work with Homeless Families

Correspondence to John Stewart, Lecturer in Social Policy, Lancaster University, Department of Applied Social Science, Cartmel College, Lancaster LA1 4YL. Summary This article examines the inter-connections between social workand housing issues, agencies, and practice in the area of familyhomelessness. It is based on interviews with specialist practitionersat the beginning and end of the 1980s. Policy contexts are examinedto identify the expectations held of social services departmentswithin a corporate responsibility. Analysis of what social workersdo in working with homeless families highlights practical supportthrough the homelessness process and dilemmas over child protection.The guidance on the new children and community care legislationcontinues the marginalization of this specialism, which is variouslymisunderstood, misrepresented, or ignored from the housing policyand research side, whilst on the social services side, althoughformally ignored, it is in practice expected to discharge statutoryresponsibilities in an area fraught with conflicts.     

Wresting Memory from the Violence of the Present: Rape,Martyrdom, and Double Narrative in Paul Friedrich's Agrarian Revolt in a Mexican Village*

Abstract Post-Modernist critiques of ethnographic method tend to reduce research and writing to only writing and erase the traces of the researcher's field experience that may appear in a text. Such critiques confer more power on the ethnographer or oral historian than he or she possesses. I argue that researchers invariably manoeuvre within political contexts in order to obtain knowledge, and that the intersubjective interaction between scholar and subject creates both silences and visibilities in the final text. In Agrarian Revolt Paul Friedrich constructed a revolutionary counter memory against his own hidden master narrative of opportunism, betrayal, and political violence. Yet partly due to his interaction with members of the competing political clans, he replicated in his counter-memeory the crucial premises of the ruling clan's ideology: the ‘doctrine of genealogical unity’ and its correlates of blood descent and female purity.     

Feelin' groovy♪: appropriating time in home‐based telework

In this paper we present some findings from an empirical study into teleworking that challenge the received wisdom that principles of efficiency and speed determine the organisation of public and private lives. Instead, we make a case that emerging forms of work organisation such as telework entail opportunities for some individuals to rethink the relationship between life and work and to engage in questions of ‘how to live one's life’. Drawing on our research study, which combined participant observation with interview conversations with 25 teleworkers and their families, we argue that teleworking, the epitome of flexibility and instantaneousness, can, rather than always contributing to the acceleration of life, provide potential for regeneration, re‐evaluation and slowing down.     

Social Work Intervention in Community Service

Gill McIvor, Research Fellow, Social Work Research Centre, University of Stirling, Stirling FK9 4LA. Summary The recently introduced National Standards for Community Serviceschemes in Scotland recognize that certain offenders on CommunityService may experience personal difficulties that interferewith their ability to comply with the order of the court andrecommend that where necessary advice and help should be providedto assist completion. A study of twelve Scottish Community Serviceschemes revealed that in spite of their often being acceptedfor Community Service because of the absence of obvious instabilityin their lives, many offenders encountered personal difficultieswhile completing their orders and those who did had a higherincidence of absence from placement. The relatively few instancesof intervention by Community Service staff that were found weremainly of a practical nature. Two schemes were, however, identifiedas offering a more intensive social work service which may haveenabled certain offenders who would not otherwise have doneso to complete their Community Service Orders. The practicalimplications of increased intervention by Community Servicestaff are discussed as is the possibility that such an approachmight enable schemes to deal successfully with a higher proportionof offenders who would otherwise have received a custodial sentence.