Regulation or fragmentation? Directions for Social Work under New Labour

Summary This article reviews the modernizing agenda of New Labour forsocial work which has been articulated in the various changesfor social work and social care announced in the ‘QualityStrategy’. Focusing predominantly on arrangements foreducation and training, the article argues that, rather thanpresenting a coherent strategy, the structures and proceduresare fragmented and unco-ordinated at many levels. A major weaknessis that New Labour has failed to clarify where it places socialwork in the structures of a ‘modernized’ welfarestate.     

Applications to Social Work Programmes in England: Students as Consumers?

One of the most resounding impacts of the introduction of the new social work degree in England in 2003 has been an increase in the number of applications to social work courses. However, the processes used by applicants to reach decisions about where to study social work are little understood. This article reports data from six preparatory focus groups and four interviews (n = 38), 17 focus group interviews with first year students (n = 112) from nine social work programmes run in six universities, and 2,606 responses to three online surveys administered to first year students, which were collected as part of the national Evaluation of the New Social Work Degree in England funded by the Department of Health. They show that students use a range of sources to find out about social work education, with rising reliance on electronic media as an information resource. Although the majority cites convenience of location as the chief reason for selecting a particular university, academic reputation appears to be growing in importance. Observations from these data are discussed in the context of consumer behaviour in higher education and in social work education at a time when universities are developing marketing strategies to compete for students.     

Robust parametric tests of constant conditional correlation in a MGARCH model

This article provides a rigorous asymptotic treatment of new and existing asymptotically valid conditional moment (CM) testing procedures of the constant conditional correlation (CCC) assumption in a multivariate GARCH model. Full and partial quasi maximum likelihood estimation (QMLE) frameworks are considered, as is the robustness of these tests to non-normality. In particular, the asymptotic validity of the LM procedure proposed by Tse (2000 Tse, Y. K. (2000). A test for constant correlations in a multivariate GARCH model. Journal of Econometrics 98 (1):107–127.[Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) is analyzed, and new asymptotically robust versions of this test are proposed for both estimation frameworks. A Monte Carlo study suggests that a robust Tse test procedure exhibits good size and power properties, unlike the original variant which exhibits size distortion under non-normality.     

Training and services for kinship and nonkinship foster families

Researchers have raised concerns about the adequacy of the training and services for foster families in general and kinship families in particular. This study examines the training and services received by kinship and nonkinship family foster caregivers. The article compares kinship and nonkinship caregivers in terms of an array of training and services. The authors examine the demographic characteristics of these two groups and the problems of the foster children placed with them to better understand their needs. Consistent with previous research, levels of training and services received were inadequate for both groups. Contrary to previous research, few differences between kinship and nonkinship caregivers were found in training or services, in demographic characteristics, or in foster children's problems.     

Assessment Frameworks: A Critical Reflection

Increasing widespread requirements that assessment practiceconforms to generic guidelines contained in assessment frameworkshas been contentious and critiques offered on individual frameworkshave been assumed to apply to the concept of assessment frameworksmore generally. After comparing four assessment frameworks currentlybeing used in the UK, this paper argues that although some generalizationscan be made, for the most part, they are highly individual documentsin terms of range and depth of content, the extent to whichthey are evidenced and the quality of that evidence and implicitexpectations as to the skill bases of assessors. Furthermore,the introduction of assessment frameworks is not in itself apanacea to ensure good practice. Even with the most comprehensiveframeworks, social workers will still need comprehensive trainingin assessment and supervision of their practice.     

Testing for Structural Instability in Moment Restriction Models: An Info-Metric Approach

In this paper, we develop an info-metric framework for testing hypotheses about structural instability in nonlinear, dynamic models estimated from the information in population moment conditions. Our methods are designed to distinguish between three states of the world: (i) the model is structurally stable in the sense that the population moment condition holds at the same parameter value throughout the sample; (ii) the model parameters change at some point in the sample but otherwise the model is correctly specified; and (iii) the model exhibits more general forms of instability than a single shift in the parameters. An advantage of the info-metric approach is that the null hypotheses concerned are formulated in terms of distances between various choices of probability measures constrained to satisfy (i) and (ii), and the empirical measure of the sample. Under the alternative hypotheses considered, the model is assumed to exhibit structural instability at a single point in the sample, referred to as the break point; our analysis allows for the break point to be either fixed a priori or treated as occuring at some unknown point within a certain fraction of the sample. We propose various test statistics that can be thought of as sample analogs of the distances described above, and derive their limiting distributions under the appropriate null hypothesis. The limiting distributions of our statistics are nonstandard but coincide with various distributions that arise in the literature on structural instability testing within the Generalized Method of Moments framework. A small simulation study illustrates the finite sample performance of our test statistics.     

Changes in Admissions Work Arising from the New Social Work Degree in England

The business of admissions to higher education in England is a significant task for academic and support staff. This paper draws on the Evaluation of the New Social Work Degree Qualification in England (2004–2008) to describe the changes in admissions work for social work staff in higher education associated with the change from diploma to a degree level qualification for entry to the profession; to report how staff involved in admissions work are managing these changes; and to identify elements of admissions processes that are perceived to be fulfilling the new requirements of the degree and those which are identified as more problematic. The article draws on two telephone/email surveys of a national sample of social work programmes and on face-to-face in-depth interviews with a sample of teaching staff from nine social work programmes in six higher education institutions undertaken during 2005–2007. The work of admissions staff is rarely scrutinised in studies of higher education or specifically in social work programmes: this article discusses the spectrum of approaches. It recommends monitoring of the outcomes of practices in admissions work that are recasting Department of Health Requirements as the minimum.     

The robustness, reliabiligy and power of heteroskedasticity tests

Several tests for heteroskedasticity in linear regression models are examined. Asymptoticrobustness to heterokurticity, nonnormality and skewness is discussed. The finite sample eliability of asymptotically valid tests is investigated using Monte Carlo experiments. It is found that asymptotic critical values cannot, in general. be relied upon to give good agreement between nominal and actual finite sample significance levels. The use of the bootstrap overcomes this problem for general approaches that lead to asymptotically pivotal test statistics. Power comparisons are made for bootstrap tests and modified Glejser and Koenker tests are recommended.