Implementing Community Social Work from a Social Services Department: Some Issues

Summary The proposal in the Barclay Report on the role and tasks ofsocial workers for ‘community social work’ as astrategy for social services departments is assessed The writerargues that the voluntary sector has significant roles and prioritiesoutside the social services, that government priorities forencouraging the voluntary sector emphasise other areas of workand that involving voluntary groups in official initiativesmay be seen as going against the independence of some groups.The motivation of groups and individuals in the voluntary sectorwill be important, but various research and practice shows thatindividuals, informal groups and mutual aid groups may be difficultto involve in a substantial programme. The climate of opinionin the field of volunteering and the social background of clients'neighbours may provoke hostility. Experience of community worksuggests that official initiatives may lead to resistance andconflict rather than involvement, and there may be ethical problemswith compulsion.     

African dreams of cohesion: elite pacting and community development in transfrontier conservation areas in southern Africa

In this paper we argue that there is a paradox in the managerial attempt of the South African Peace Park Foundation, to foster cohesion within the development of Trans Frontier Conservation Areas (TFCAs) in southern Africa by focusing on community participation and development. Cohesion is mainly found at the level of the elite – both European and African – promoting the idea of the TFCAs, which provides them with opportunities to develop ‘Super‐African’ identities, based on identifying with nature and the landscape rather than the nation‐state. The imagery about the African landscape on which this process is based has its roots in colonial and primitivist discourse on Africa and Africans which includes Africans in the concept of landscape, but only if apparently unadulterated by modernity. This ultimately presents a problem for the TFCA development and its aim to develop local communities: if local people would indeed economically develop, with all the material consequences, they would no longer belong in the inclusive European aesthetics of the African landscape.     

Beyond Corporate Responsibility: Implications for Management Development

Since the mid‐1990s we have witnessed the rise of numerous constructive and positive activities aimed at developing or enhancing corporate responsibility and corporate citizenship as well as anti‐globalization and anticorporate activism. And, of course, in 2008, we witnessed the meltdown of financial markets and numerous financial institutions as well as some major companies teetering on the brink of collapse. What is actually needed to create the world that many people want to live in may in fact be a new relationship between business and society, that is, new ways of looking at the corporation and its role in society, both in practice and in management education? We will argue that some initiatives, such as Corporation 2020, have already begun to explore these issues by taking a more holistic perspective on different purposes and roles of the corporation in the future. Management education, which has been severely criticized in the aftermath of the economic crisis, has an important role to play, but in a changed form. Implications for leadership and management education include the need to shift cognitive, moral, and emotional levels of development, renewed emphasis on balance both individually and socially, a less is more sensibility, a holistic systems perspective, and shifting the purpose of the firm to encompass not just shareholder needs, but also societal, stakeholder, and ecological needs and interests. In this article we explore some of the ways in which these attributes might be engendered in future leaders, at least in those management development and education programs interested in fostering a new wave of progressive leadership in management for the future.     

Social Objects, Causality and Contingent Realism

This paper is a realist argument for the existence of "social objects". Social objects, I argue, are the outcome states of a contingent causal process and in turn posses causal properties. This argument has consequences for what we can mean by realism and consequences for the development of a realist methodology. Realism should abandon the notion of natural necessity in favour of a view that the "real" nature of the social world is contingent and necessity is only revealed in outcome states. This, I argue, has both theoretical and methodological implications and I develop my argument through two case studies, of homelessness and ethnicity.     

A Consumer Study of Young People's Views on their Educational Social Worker: Engagement as a Measure of an Effective Relationship

Correspondence to Colin Pritchard, Mental Health Group, University of Southampton, Royal South Hants Hospital, Brintons Terrace, Southampton, SO14 0YG, UK. Summary This, the first ever consumer study of education social workers(ESWs), uses qualitative material and quantitative analysisby examining the views of 110 users of a county ESW service.Most pupils belonged to families with long-standing disadvantage;e.g. 53 per cent had unemployed fathers; over 70 per cent hadparents with disturbed personal and social relationships, 39per cent had a single parent; 30 per cent plus had mental healthproblems; and 10 per cent of parents had been in care as children,i.e. more than ten times the national average. The young people also had considerable disruption in their lives:for example 78 per cent frequently missed school; over 50 percent had school and peer difficulties; 30 per cent offended;over 30 per cent experienced bullying; 5 per cent were the subjectof child protection enquiries, 10 per cent had previously beenin care and 2 per cent had had an incident of ‘attemptedsuicide’ (50 times the national rate). They averaged sixmajor difficulties each. Despite these antecedents, 91 per cent of the young people demonstratedan ‘engaged’ relationship with their social worktrained ESW, with many examples of practical psychosocial helpbeing received. The concept of ‘engaged’ was statisticallyvalidated in the comparison of views between the ‘engaged’and ‘non-engaged’ research participants. The resultsindicate the value and effectiveness of a supportive rapport/relationshipas a vehicle to reach and to be of practical assistance to disturbedand disturbing young people.     

The recent history of Scottish child welfare

SUMMARY. During this century, the main features of child care policy in Britain have been the creation of a separate system of juvenile justice, the extension of state responsibilities for child protection and substitute care, a growing emphasis on foster care in preference to residential care, and increased professionalism and co-ordination of services. This article, the second in a two-part series, begun in issue 5(2) looks particularly at differences in child care policy between Scotland and England, the most striking of which has been in the juvenile justice arrangements. The Scottish children's hearings are fully committed to welfare principles, keeping young offenders and children in need of care and protection within a single system of decision-making.     

A SIMPLE MODEL OF OPTIMAL HATE CRIME LEGISLATION

We present a simple model of the effects of hate crime legislation. We show that even if the direct harm to victims of hate crime is the same as for other crimes, because of other differences in the effects it may still be optimal to exert a different level of law‐enforcement effort to deter or prevent hate crime. These differences also have previously unrecognized effects on the optimal level of effort by potential hate crime victims to avoid being victimized, thus affecting the efficiency of government policies that encourage or discourage such effort. In some cases, the optimal level of government effort may be lower for hate crimes than for other crimes. Our analysis suggests a role for policy tools that influence individual avoidance effort directly. We discuss the implications of our results for similar types of crime, including terrorism. (JEL K42, K14, D02)