Building the Unsettling Force: Social Workers and the Struggle for Human Rights

Community organizing for human rights provides a platform for social workers to be actively engaged in dismantling systems of oppression. Using a case study of Women In Transition, this article emphasizes strategies for organizing for economic human rights, including opportunities and challenges in using the human rights framework. Recommendations and implications for the social work profession are discussed.     

Exploring the Educational Experience of a Social Work Student with a Disability: A Narrative

Social work educators seem to have mixed feelings about the development of open and distance learning in Britain and the USA. Open and distance learning has tended to be marginalised. It has been compared unfavourably to campus based programmes, but there has been a lack of research on this topic in the United Kingdom. However, research in the USA indicates that open and distance learning social work students have a high degree of satisfaction with teaching and learning approaches compared with those on campus based programmes, while student outcomes and level of achievement have been at least comparable to those on ‘traditional’ programmes.

Some criticisms of open and distance learning in the UK are examined. These include narrow, mass produced, ‘assembly line’, mechanistic, isolating, individualistic approaches. Advantages of open and distance learning in the UK are considered, such as well organised teaching packs, flexibility and individual choice in pace, time and place of learning with especially good learning opportunities for mature women with family commitments. Improvements are advocated, centred around developing more opportunities to rehearse and develop practice skills, encouraging more divergent, critical thinkers operating from a more pluralistic knowledge base and the empowerment of students in collectives.     

Counselling problem drinkers and social work education in Scotland

The high incidence of alcohol related problems in Scotland and in the caseloads of Scottish social workers is noted. Exploration is made of the movement away from the disease concept of alcohol misuse and institutional treatment to an emphasis on counselling in the community. Social work education has neglected these developments. Barriers to successful individual counselling interventions are examined. These include deficiencies in course content, fieldwork, placements, organisational contexts and the attitudes of students, social workers, social work educators and fieldwork supervisors.

An examination is made of some models of alcohol related problems. Developing the ability of social work students and social workers to intervene successfully with individual problem drinkers includes highlighting the significance of much existing knowledge and skills, while considering some additional and specialised knowledge, accompanied by the provision of appropriate support and supervision.     

Fostering global dialogue: Conceptualisations of children's rights to participation and protection

The children's rights and child protection sectors are at a critical juncture: will they evolve to reflect and respond to changing conceptualisations in the 21st century or will they continue to reproduce 19th- and 20th-century preoccupations with saving child victims? Informed by systematic reviews of the English- and Latin American academic literature in Spanish and Portuguese and key informant interviews with international stakeholders, this paper fosters global dialogue with some Global South and Global North perspectives about the interconnections of children's rights. It explores current conceptualisations of child participation and protection, and concludes that children's rights will only progress after recognition of limitations inherent to current conceptualisations.     

COVID‐19 and the gender gap in work hours

School and day care closures due to the COVID‐19 pandemic have increased caregiving responsibilities for working parents. As a result, many have changed their work hours to meet these growing demands. In this study, we use panel data from the US Current Population Survey to examine changes in mothers’ and fathers’ work hours from February through April 2020, the period of time prior to the widespread COVID‐19 outbreak in the United States and through its first peak. Using person‐level fixed effects models, we find that mothers with young children have reduced their work hours four to five times more than fathers. Consequently, the gender gap in work hours has grown by 20–50 per cent. These findings indicate yet another negative consequence of the COVID‐19 pandemic, highlighting the challenges it poses to women’s work hours and employment.     

Happiness and marginalization rates for internal Mexican migrants and the native-born population in Baja California,Mexico

More than 3.3 million people were internal migrants in Mexico in 2010 (INEGI, 2011a). This internal migration has played an important role in the growth and expansion of cities in Mexico, particularly in the country's northern border region. Growth in the municipalities has been driven by neoliberal economic policies and factors of globalization. This paper considers the level of happiness and marginalization for those who were born in and those who migrated to the two largest municipalities in Baja California, Mexicali and Tijuana. This study finds that there are not many differences between the native-born and migrants’ expressed level of happiness and marginalization level but there are differences in the municipalities. From these findings, the importance of place, its nature as well as manmade characteristics, and people are more important factors than marginalization or place of birth to finding happiness.