Teaching Clinical Social Work Skills Entirely Online: A Case Example

While numerous disciplines have eagerly embraced innovative educational technology, many social work educators have not been among early adopters. Social work's focus on the human connection and hands‐on practice skills can seem antithetical to technology‐mediated education. Nevertheless, social work programs are implementing distance learning and Internet‐mediated courses, and some schools are offering entire social work courses online. Leading the way in this regard is the Florida State University College of Social Work, which has developed and implemented the first CSWE‐accredited, entirely online Master of Social Work program. The purpose of this paper is to describe the development, design, and implementation of one skills‐based clinical course in this program, with the goal of sharing information in a way that will further the discussion of the risks and benefits of online education as well as provide guidance for educators who may be interested in developing a skills‐based online course in the future.     

Searching for a Capacity Building Model in Social Work Education in China

This paper contains our reflections about our experiences in employing a capacity building model for training social workers to conduct community development work in rural China. Unlike the conventional approach to social work practicum, our approach advocates an educational practice of capacity building; not only for local people and learners, but for educators as well. It stresses that the educator should assume a non‐expert role in relating to his/her students so that the students will do the same with local people. We challenge the concept of the social work educator as an expert because it gives a teacher the power and authority to dominate students, which disempowers students during the learning process. In the same vein, we challenge the desire of social work students to become experts in rural development, which in turn disempowers local people from taking charge of the future direction of their lives in rural China. The capacity building approach subscribes to a critical pedagogy that calls for a re‐invention of self by challenging tradition and culture, and by developing academic knowledge, the habit of inquiry and critical curiosity about society, power, inequality, and social change.     

'I know I signed something': older people,families and social workers' understanding of the legal aspects of entry to residential care

This purpose of this paper is to report findings that older people are legally vulnerable when entering an aged care facility, that social workers lack knowledge of the legal aspects of this move and do not necessarily view this information as core to their practice. The structure of social work services mirror the disjuncture older people and their families experience at this time and this may, in part, explain social work's lack of attention to these issues. Although many social workers are in contact with older people, the profession in Australia has been slow to develop a knowledge base to support effective practice with this group.     

Personal identity versus national identity among Hong Kong youths – personal and social education reform after reunification

This paper examines the use of Chinese traditions for the formation of a felt Hong Kong identity and a national identity among students in the personal and social education curriculum before and after reunification with China in 1997. This paper argues that the addition of China elements to the curriculum after reunification contributes to the continuous ambiguous identity of students, which is consistent with the results of various poll surveys about the civic identity of Hong Kong people in a larger context. This is because the personal and social education reform after reunification assumed a simple correlation between the patriotic feelings of students and their knowledge of China. It does not question how the promotion of an intensely unifying ‘cultural identity’ as political commitment is differentiated from the day-to-day ‘cultural experiences’ of students.     

Remeasuring ageing in Hong Kong SAR; or ‘keeping the demographic window open’

Hong Kong SAR has among both the lowest fertility rates and highest life expectancy in the world. Under the current calculation of the Old Age Dependency Ratio (OADR), Hong Kong is, understandably, ageing extremely rapidly. This is a cause of significant concern among policy makers. However, OADR assumes that the entire population aged above 65 is both ‘old’ and ‘dependent’, neither of which is clearly defined, and that all aged below 65 are active in the labour force. Furthermore, because the rate is fundamentally based upon a European/North American model of pension and retirement it is arguably less appropriate to areas of the world where retirement ages are more fluid and pension systems less developed. We apply and extend a method for Hong Kong, designed by Sanderson and Scherbov, to ‘remeasure ageing’ by taking remaining life expectancy as the constant, rather than years lived by using projected life tables and 1 × 1 population projections. In doing so, we show that Sanderson and Scherbov’s new ‘prospective’ measurements of ageing more accurately reflect the increased longevity and vitality of Hong Kong’s population. Rather than passively accepting fate as a ‘rapidly ageing’ population, East Asian economies can be active in rethinking society’s relationship to work and other activities across the life-cycle. By adapting existing measurements to take into account the different welfare regimes in East Asia, we can radically alter the timeframe in which population ageing becomes ‘critical’. This allows more time to develop a more holistic life-course view of the relationship between work, longevity and fertility and to actively tackle ageing in an optimistic way.     

The Legacy of War: An Intergenerational Perspective

Children of combat veterans are affected to varying extents by the physical and psychological aftermath of war as experienced by the parent. Traumatic experiences exist on a continuum; trauma related messages can be communicated by a parent who does not have Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. An intergenerational perspective explores the complex family processes by which those who did not experience the actual events come to exhibit varying degress of emotional, psychological and behavioral manifestations of their parents' traumatic experiences.     

Unemployment Protection and Family Policy at the Turn of the 21st Century: A Dynamic Approach to Welfare Regime Theory

This article contributes to the welfare state regime literature from a substantive and methodological perspective. At a very abstract level we confirm the relevance of the welfare state regime theory and stability for the period from 1971 to the end of the 1990s. However, by analyzing family policy and unemployment protection, we observe a dual transformation of the welfare state, consisting of a trend towards a ‘socialization’ of family policies and a retrenchment in unemployment insurance benefits. Our Multiple Correspondence Analysis (MCA) of the two policy domains captures the multi‐dimensionality of the decommodification and defamilialization concepts and visualizes welfare state developments over time in a Cartesian space. This dynamic analysis provides us with a nuanced understanding of welfare state regime stability and change.     

Understanding lifetime homeless duration: investigating wave 1 findings from the Journeys Home project

The variation in the amount of time people remain homeless has important policy implications with respect to reducing long‐term homelessness and designing more effective early intervention approaches. This paper examines the factors that influence lifetime homeless duration in Australia using data from the first wave of Journeys Home, a new national survey of individuals exposed to high levels of housing insecurity that employs more rigorous sampling methods than previously used. Those at increased risk of long durations of homelessness over their lifetimes include people who had less family support in childhood, shorter work histories and lower education levels. We also find evidence supporting the idea that people who first experience homelessness at a young age are more likely to experience persistent homelessness.     

Work integration social enterprises as vessels of empowerment? Perspectives from employees

Various countries across the East Asian region have witnessed the rapid proliferation of social enterprises, especially work integration social enterprises (WISEs) in the recent decade. Drawing from qualitative interviews with WISE employees and middle managers in Hong Kong, we examined what working in a WISE meant for employees with disabilities, and how such work differs from traditional service delivery organisations and other employment-support schemes. Three emergent themes, Meaningful Engagement, Individual-Based Empowerment and Relational-Based Empowerment, were identified as critical outcomes. Discussion pertaining to the role of WISE in the production of welfare and practice implications are presented.