Change,Complexity, and Challenge in Social Work Education in Aotearoa,New Zealand

Abstract

Social work education in New Zealand is undergoing considerable change as new registration and education policies take effect. Within a complex environment, the major force is the implementation of registration since the passing of legislation in 2003. Parallel to this is considerable change in tertiary education policy. Both the Social Workers Registration Act (2003) and the New Zealand Tertiary Education Strategy (2002) will have considerable impact on social work education. The present article explores the challenges of this environment and briefly considers strategies to ensure that the perspectives of key stakeholders are sought in the development of responses to this complex situation. Students, practitioners, social work educators and researchers, agencies, and the communities we ultimately serve all have a stake in what we do in schools of social work, but have different roles. A review of the system and nature of social work education may be timely.     

Beyond Global Summitry: Food Sovereignty as Localized Resistance to Globalization

Recently there has been a marked shift reflecting increased theoretical interest and political practices embracing strategies of localism or relocalization against neoliberal globalization. Specifically, individuals, farmers, and communities embracing the framework of food sovereignty have increasingly adopted localism tactics in response to the globalization of food systems, the corporate agribusiness model, and attendant food crises. The spread of the food sovereignty concept from the global peasants' movement Vía Campesina to locales as diverse as industrial France and the rural state of Vermont in the United States demonstrates the way in which food sovereignty has been appropriated in different international settings. Additionally, the turn toward localism merits further scrutiny as a reflection of an unsettling of forms of collective resistance at a moment of structural crisis in global capitalism. Localism as an alter-globalization tactic is still overshadowed by protest summitry and large-scale mobilizations, when small-scale micro-encounters arguably are part of a growing, broader, and more nuanced process of transnational diffusion of resistances, struggles, and reformulations over sovereignty at multiple political and social scales.

Recientemente ha habido un cambio que se refleja en el incremento de un interés teórico y prácticas políticas, que incluyen estrategias de localismo o relocalización contra la globalización neoliberal. Como táctica de respuesta a los sistemas de globalización alimentaria, a los modelos agroindustriales corporativos, y a las crisis alimentarias, los individuos, agricultores y comunidades responden abogando por la soberanía alimentaria, adoptando mecanismos locales. La propagación del concepto de soberanía alimentaria que parte de movimientos globales de campesinos ‘Vía Campesina’, en lugares tan diferentes como la Francia industrial y el estado rural de Vermont en los Estados Unidos, demuestra la manera como la soberanía alimentaria se ha apropiado de diferentes ámbitos internacionales. Además, el giro hacia el localismo merece un estudio más detallado, como reflejo de formas inquietantes de resistencia colectiva, en un momento de crisis estructural del capitalismo global. El localismo como una táctica alterna a la globalización, está todavía opacado por las protestas de las cumbres y las movilizaciones a gran escala, sin embargo los micro-encuentros son sin duda, parte de un proceso creciente, más amplio y con más matices, de la difusión trasnacional de las resistencias, los conflictos y la reformulación de la soberanía, a múltiples escalas políticas y sociales.

最近有一个明显的转向,反映出以地方主义或再地方化抵制新自由主义全球化的理论兴趣和政治实践在增长。具体来说,拥护粮食主权的个人、农民和社群越来越多地采用地方化策略来应对粮食体系全球化、公司化农业经营模式化和随之而来的粮食危机等。从全球性农民运动“农民之路”到地方如工业化的法国和美国农业州佛蒙特,粮食主权这一概念广泛传播,表明其已在不同国际场合被认可。此外,在全球资本主义发生结构性危机之时,这一本土化转向作为未成形的集体抵制的一种反映,值得进一步研究。地方化作为改造全球化运动的一种策略,其作用仍然被抗议峰会和大规模群众运动所掩盖,而小规模微观层面的抵抗是正在进行中的更广泛和细微的、在诸多政治和社会层面对主权进行抵制、斗争和重建的跨国扩散过程的一部分。     

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.     

'Tinged with Bitterness': re-presenting stress in family care

The provision of care within families, and specifically the difficulties within such relationships, has become the focus of much research, legislation and debate in recent years. This paper explores carers' and carees'[1] talk about 'stress', home-based care, and comments on how such talk is reflected in UK social policy. Carers' and carees' accounts are presented to theorise the construction of difficulties in the present relationship--focusing in particular on the taking up of or resistance to roles and responsibilities within the family. The way in which competing discourses and discursive strategies are deployed to achieve certain effects within the family, social services and other support agencies is also explored. Family care is re-presented with a focus on language, and a reflection on how such relationships can become tinged with bitterness.     

The way we were in 1983; Le Tour de Moonee Ponds Family Health Centre (by Appointment to the Queen)

In this paper, originally presented at the Sydney Family Therapy Conference in 1983, the author satirised the state of family therapy in Australia at the time, with its awe of overseas gurus, and in so doing mirrored some of our distinctive contributions to world culture. In her epilogue, the author briefly describes subsequent life events which have made her, twenty years later, a very different person, and a very different therapist as well.     

Operationalizing a QLR project on social change and whiteness in South Africa, 1770s–1970s

The Whites Writing Whiteness project is concerned with changes to the racial order in South Africa over a long time-period and connects ‘big numbers’ and work on very large archive collections with close textual analysis of particular documents. It uses longitudinal data within a Qualitative Longitudinal Research methodological approach, combining formal analysis with a sampling process. In operationalizing this, letters from the Findlay Family collection with thousands of documents, a group of around 190 letters by Elizabeth Price, and a small set of Gottlob Schreiner’s letters, are discussed. In doing so, useful conceptual and methodological tools for analysing other large longitudinal datasets are provided.     

Towards Extended Schools? How Education and Other Professionals Understand Community‐Oriented Schooling

The government in England is proposing that every school should offer extended services to children, families and communities. However, in the absence of agreed models of how such community‐oriented schooling should operate, its form will depend on how it is understood by the education professionals and their partners in other agencies who have to make it work in practice. This article draws on data from interviews with over 350 professionals to outline two such understandings. It suggests that they rest on different assumptions about fundamental social and educational issues and argues for a more open debate around these issues. Copyright © 2006 The Author(s). Journal compilation © National Children's Bureau.