The role of social work in the context of social disintegration and violence

Violence and the violence discourse are very similar from country to country: focus on youth, preponderance of males among perpetrators and victims, disproportionate involvement of migrants and indigenous people, greater prevalence with socioeconomic disadvantage and low education, and the impact of underlying factors such as political disintegration, exclusion from the consumer lifestyle, and inadequacies of social institutions. In social disintegration theory, the basic explanatory backdrop is the dynamic relationship of integration and disintegration between and within the different spheres: individual and functional system integration, integration into society, and integration into the community. (Relative) exclusion from work, consumption, and democratic processes combined with experience of socioemotional deficits seem to give a particularly strong boost to socially unacceptable forms of particularist integration and to favor collective and individual acceptance of violence. When subjects draw balances of personal recognition and of the achieved and achievable scope to organize their life, the latter orientations appear subjectively more likely to meet their expectations than socially (more) accepted modes of behavior.The central conclusion on social reactions to violence in general and professional social work in particular is that rather than relying on admonishment, punishment, or curative measures, or some combination of these, to combat violence, there is a need for wide-ranging long-term options for those acutely affected and at risk to have the long-term scope to organize their own lives-to experience life control, recognized integration, and development of competences. Those who experience being the organizer of their own life have no need of violence as a form of self-assertion.     

Die Kultur der scheinbaren Schamlosigkeit und ihre Bedeutung für eine Fehlerkultur

The culture of a seeming shamelessness and its significance for an error cultureThe author describes the culture of the seeming shamelessness and its significance for organization cultures in general and particularly for an error culture. He discusses the thesis of a new social character in the contemporary world and then he delineates the difficulties of the pioneer phase in organizations. The effects of a seeming shamelessness on organization cultures and especially on error cultures are discussed.     

Mental and Physical Health Trajectories of Norwegian Parents and Children before and after Union Dissolution

The aim was to examine the mental and physical health trajectories of mothers, fathers, and children before and after union dissolution. Register data covering the entire Norwegian population, and including information on consultations with general practitioners in 2006–2018, were used. Constant unobserved characteristics were controlled for with individual fixed effects. As judged by the number of consultations, mothers’ and fathers’ mental health deteriorates before the dissolution but improves immediately afterwards. In contrast, a worsening mental health among children before the dissolution is followed by an even more adverse development afterwards. There is only modest evidence of predissolution increases in noninfectious physical diseases, but more clearly rising numbers afterwards especially for mothers and daughters. Less adverse trends are seen for infections, although mothers experience a sharp temporary increase at the breakup time. On the whole, mothers’ health is more adversely affected by dissolution than that of fathers. Daughters may have a disadvantage compared to sons, but results vary across model specifications. The results suggest that effects on children's health do not operate through parents’ health. With respect to union type, the health changes before and after dissolution of a consensual union are not very different from those before and after marital separation.     

Imagining the ecosocial within social work

Aiming to explore how the ecosocial is imagined within social work research, this article engages with understandings of the relationship between the social and ecological realms when responding to the call for sustainability. A theoretical framework offering five possible imaginations of the ecosocial was developed: the holistic; the anthropocentric conflictual; the anthropocentric compatible; the ‘ecocentric’ conflictual; and the ‘ecocentric’ compatible. The material consists of international peer-reviewed articles referring to the ecosocial. The result reveals that the imagination of the ecosocial is heterogeneous. However, the holistic and anthropocentric compatible imaginations are common, while ‘ecocentric’ and conflictual understandings are rare, which confirms that nurturing social and ecological sustainability does not entail conflicting interests or rivalry but rather the opposite. This implies not only an ongoing widening of the notion of sustainability, in which the idea of limitations is re-installed, but also a possible re-definition of ‘the social’ so as to include the non-human.     

Profust reliability of linear and circular type F and G systems having two failure criteria under Markov dependency

In this study, the profust reliabilities of (n, f, k): F(G) and < n, f, k > : F(G) systems for Markov dependent components are investigated. Having two failure criteria are the common features of these four systems. The usage of both fuzzy approach and two failure criteria in the same system provides us more realistic approach to evaluate the reliability of more complex systems. The component configurations are examined for both linear and circular sequences and the working principle of systems are studied for both F and G systems. Under all these assumptions, the profust reliabilities of (n, f, k): F(G) and < n, f, k > : F(G) systems are obtained using the distribution of run statistics. Also a new membership function different from the linear membership function which is generally used in the literature is proposed. Some numerical results which allow the comparison of the systems from various perspectives and various figures for both linear and circular type systems are presented. Some special cases (between Markov – iid assumption, conventional – profust reliability) are also considered.     

The Merry-Go-Round of Meetings: Embracing Meetings in a Swedish Youth Care Project

Modern society has been called “a society of organizations,” and meetings are considered indispensable. However, a recurring cultural theme in contemporary working life is complaints about excessive and time-consuming meetings. The present article analyzes a contrasting case concerning a Swedish youth care project that employed a set of “coordinators” to maintain close contact with young people and their parents. Over time, these coordinators adopted an exceedingly administrative approach in which meetings with other professionals became more and more central. This article explores how an expanding meeting culture with strong social commitments can be generated from within interorganizational contexts, such as “projects,” and successfully competes with other concerns. Thus, the administrative orientation represents an example of the type of social interaction process that Simmel discerned as Eigendynamik or autonomous processes of social interaction.     

How Routine Patient‐Centered Monitoring Relates to Therapeutic Gains in Family Therapy: A Single‐Case Study

As routine outcome monitoring systems develop, questions emerge about how therapists incorporate feedback into their practice, and how this relates to therapeutic gains. A case of covert grief was monitored in each session with the Personal Questionnaire and the Helpful Aspects of Therapy instruments. At 4 months follow‐up, the Change Interview was administered. Individualized items facilitated access to the private views and needs of each member, which was useful for case formulation and ongoing personalization of the intervention. Qualitative feedback of treatment experiences helped therapists confirm the impacts of interventions, monitor therapeutic alliance, reformulate clinical hypothesis, and plan sessions. Therapists followed a critical triangulation process to decide the clinical meaning of feedback, according to his/her intervention model, expertise, and case‐specific context.     

Public response to welfare policy retrenchment: The importance of trust in implementing agencies. The case of early retirement in Sweden 1999–2010

There is a long-standing argument that citizensapos; trust in the state needs to be recurrently reproduced for policies to endure and that this also includes trust in its separate policy agencies. Such trust is likely to be more important for costlier policies, as, for example, social insurance schemes. The article explores whether short-term changes in welfare programme generosity affect peopleapos;s trust in the agency implementing the programme. Using the example of early retirement in the encompassing welfare state of Sweden, we study a decade of significant reform (1999–2010), during which the inflow to early retirement diminished greatly, as did citizensapos; trust in the implementing Swedish Social Insurance Agency (SSIA). We conclude that citizensapos; trust is higher when implementation is more generous. Indeed, a third of the drop in citizensapos; trust in the SSIA over the period can be explained by declining levels of generosity in early retirement, with people politically to the left responding with lower trust. Theoretically, we suggest, first, that trust in implementing institutions can function as feedback to policy and, second, that there is a basic relationship between more generous policy outcome and higher trust in encompassing welfare states such as Sweden.     

Value orientations and social attitudes in the holistic milieu

Based on a representative population survey for Germany this article investigates whether engagement in holistic activities is associated with privatized lifestyles and lack of social responsibility or with countercultural orientations and base‐democratic political commitment. To analyse this question, respondents who are engaged in holistic activities are divided into three groups that are compared with each other as well as with Christians and non‐religious people. The findings show that the three holistic groups are characterized by clearly different attitudinal patterns: Respondents engaged in body‐mind‐spirit activities have an affinity to self‐directed ways of life, post‐materialism and environmentalism. Holistic Christians try to combine the Christian ideal of altruism and post‐materialist orientations. Those who are attracted only to magical‐occult practices are primarily concerned with individualistic self‐improvement and correspond more to the image of the hedonist consumer at the esoteric marketplace.