Training Counselors to Use Computer‐Assisted Career Guidance Systems More Effectively: A Model Curriculum

A model graduate training curriculum that emphasizes the counselor's role in assisting clients in the effective use of computer‐assisted career guidance (CACG) systems is described. This 4‐module graduate training program emphasizes client readiness and exploration using CACG systems, skill building and simulation exercises, and service learning with career clients. The study is evaluated from the perspectives of counselor educators, counselor trainees, and career clients. Findings from 4 institutions support the efficacy of a model curriculum for graduate training and the beneficial outcomes of using CACG systems under appropriate conditions.     

Research as Social Work: Participatory Research in Learning Disability

The social-work literature has already made links between socialwork and research, and has argued in favour of practitioner–research.This paper turns the argument around and looks at how researchcan come to look and feel like social work. This happens particularly,but not exclusively, in participatory research in the learning-disabilityfield, especially in auto/biographical or life-story research,where long-term research relationships are more in evidence.Drawing on the participatory research methodology literature,and her own oral and life-history research, the author exploresthe areas in which research comes to emulate social-work practice.There are, of course, practical and ethical issues to be addressedand, as the author concludes, safeguards are needed to clarifyroles and foster openness in research relationships.     

Advocacy in Practice: The Troubled Position of Advocates in Adult Services

This paper is a review, and critical appraisal, of the theoryand practice of advocacy. Advocacy is not social work, but itsprinciples and values resonate closely to those espoused bythe British Association of Social Workers (BASW, 2002). In thispaper, we interrogate the assumption that advocacy is necessarilyalways a positive and enabling experience. Indeed, we suggestthat the use of advocacy can be contested from the point ofthe view of the service user (the advocacy partner¹), the advocateand from professionals working with advocates (or positioningthemselves as advocates). Drawing on recent research that evaluated advocacy servicesin Nottinghamshire, we discuss some of the key tensions. Inparticular, we consider the reality of the advocate’srole, including where it relates to and differs from socialwork, and the issue of whether advocacy can be part of whata social worker does anyway. We also review, briefly, the dilemmasarising from professionals acting as advocates, especially inrelation to being independent of services.     

Ethical Guidelines for Study Abroad: Can We Transform Ugly Americans into Engaged Global Citizens?

Study abroad has become a common experience for American socialwork students. However, there is little guidance for facilitationof such courses in an international context. As a result, thereis a risk that students and facilitators can perpetuate theprivileged and ‘Ugly American’ image. Providingguidance for prevention of such mistakes, the authors presenta conceptual model for international learning, based on an ethicalframework founded on personal values and supported by traditionalethical principles and values. Included are the pillars of socialjustice and human rights, community capacity, dignity and worthof the person, self-determination, boundaries, competence, facilitatedlearning in a safe environment and integrity. Finally, consciousness-raisingas professionals, respectful engagement in context, and interculturalcompetence are discussed.     

Working with victims: Being empathic helpers

Responding to victims empathically requires integrating two apparently opposite realities: seeing the victimized person as vulnerable and innocent while recognizing that person as influential and culpable. When this integration is too painful, helpers disidentify from and project onto the victim, becoming either Disaffected Others or Emphatic Sympathizers and further contributing to the client's victimization. To be Empathic Helpers we need supportive communities in which we explore our painful feelings around vulnerability and culpability so that we can maintain our identification with our victimized clients and lead them to a full understanding of themselves and their experience.     

Research and empowerment: involving people with learning difficulties in oral and life history research

This paper takes as its central theme the argument that inclusive learning disability research has the potential to be empowering for the people who are involved in it. The author draws from two oral and life history research projects to explore the multiple uses of story-telling and the multi-layered picture of learning disability history that emerged. People with learning difficulties were involved in all stages of the research process, contributing their stories as oral and life historians but also co-researching written records in a bid to know and understand more about their own and other people's past lives. The research enabled participants not only to tell their stories but also to reflect on them, to develop new insights into their meaning and to see them in a wider social and political context.