How do you solve a problem like Maria? Family complexity and institutional complications in UK social work

ABSTRACT

This paper draws on UK data from an international, comparative project involving eight countries. The study examined how social workers’ conceptions and definitions of family impact on the way they engage with complex families, and how social policies that frame social work context impact on the way social workers engage with families. Focus groups were held in which social workers from four service areas (child welfare, addictions, mental health and migration) were asked to discuss a case vignette. Several factors were embedded in the vignette to represent a realistic situation a social worker may come across in their day-to-day work. Social workers clearly identified the complexity of the family’s situation in terms of the range of issues identified and candidate ‘causes’. However, typical first responses were institutional, looking for triggers that would signify certainty about their, or other agencies’ involvement. This resulted in a complicated story, through which the family was disaggregated into individual problem-service categories. This paper argues that understanding these processes and their consequences is critical for exploring the ways in which we might develop alternative, supportive professional responses with families with complex needs. It also demonstrates how organisational systems manifest themselves in everyday reasoning.     

Some things in life can’t be ‘Googled:’ A narrative synthesis of three key questions in outdoor education.

In countries worldwide, Outdoor Education (OE) offers rich possibilities for learning. OE has been researched for many decades; however the field lacks an integrating framework for its different historical, geographical and disciplinary conceptualisations. The outcomes of OE programmes are well documented and appear diverse, yet also have common attributes suggesting there is scope for unifying approaches. Although substantive barriers to the conduct of OE programmes have been identified, these have seldom been synthesised. This paper offers a narrative review of the literature addressing three key questions designed to look rearward at where OE has come from: (i) how is OE conceptualised, and what theoretical models have been used in OE? (ii) what evidence exists regarding the effectiveness of OE programmes? (iii) what are the barriers to conducting OE programmes? The paper then advances onward with an integrated framework for reconceptualising OE and providing insights into how the field may be strengthened and augmented.20124     

Unwelcoming communities: youth observations of racism in St. John's,Newfoundland and Labrador,Canada

While studies of racism have focused primarily on large urban centres, its effect on young visible minorities living in smaller centres has only recently been given increased attention. Using data collected from over 850 surveys, this article will analyse junior and senior high school students’ observations of racism. The results suggest that youth living in St. John's, Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada believe that racism is more as a problem at the provincial- and national-level despite overwhelming evidence that they have witnessed it at their school and in their city. While for these youth racism is both fluid and contextual, they also employ a number of strategies in order to appear non-racist.     

Do Painless Environmental Policies Exist?

This paper reports an experimental test of the Porter Hypothesis that environmental regulations create innovation offsets that would not otherwise be undertaken. Using a process analysis framework to consistently account for non-separabilities in production and pollution abatement practices, the findings suggest productivity gains can appear to be greater with environmental regulations than without even though they are not. This result which would seem to support the Porter argument, is the result of inadequacies in the methods used to decompose the influences to productivity change. Thus, the experiments offer one explanation for why it has been difficult in practice to reject the hypothesis.     

Does the Refugee Experience Overshadow the Effect of SES? An Examination of Self-Reported Health Among Older Vietnamese Refugees

Is the consistently poorer health of Vietnamese refugees relative to whites due largely to differences in socioeconomic status, demographic characteristics, and health risk behaviors or the residual impact of the trauma of war and resettlement? Using data from a population-based household survey we use multinomial logistic regression to assess the self-rated health and activity limitations of Vietnamese refugees aged 55 and older compared to whites, adjusting for demographics, socioeconomic status, and lifestyle characteristics. Vietnamese refugees report poorer health and are more likely to report activity limitations than whites. While substantial differences in characteristics exist between the two groups, they explain little of the health differentials. Demographic and socioeconomic factors do not explain the health differential between older Vietnamese refugees and whites, although their lifestyle exerts a protective effect. The trauma of war and the stressful context of immigration likely contribute to the poorer health of Vietnamese refugees.     

Loneliness,immigration background and self-identified ethnicity: a nationally representative study of adolescents in Denmark

Migration is an increasing worldwide phenomenon that creates multicultural societies with a growing number of adolescents who have experienced a process of migration or who have an ethnic background other than that of the majority. Migration may lead to loss of social relations and create challenges related to acculturation in the new country. These experiences may induce feelings of loneliness. Research on ethnic and migrant disparities in loneliness among adolescents is limited and inconsistent. The purpose of this study was to examine how adolescents’ immigration background and self-identified ethnicity are associated, independently and combined, with loneliness. We used data from the Danish 2010 Health Behaviour in School-aged Children survey which included a representative sample of 3083 13- and 15-year-olds. The results suggest that immigrants but not descendants of immigrants have an increased risk of loneliness compared to adolescents with a Danish origin. The results also suggest that adolescents’ self-identified ethnicity plays an essential role but differently for immigrants and descendants: identifying with the Danish majority was protective against loneliness among immigrants, whereas identifying with an ethnic minority group was protective against loneliness among descendants.     

Social media and policing: A review of recent research

Studies of social media's impact on policing have emerged in several disciplines, including criminology, sociology, and communications. Despite their insight, there is no unified body of knowledge regarding this relationship. In an attempt to synthesize extant work, bring coherence to the field, and orient future scholarship, this article summarizes research on social media's implications for practices and perceptions of order maintenance. It does so by identifying how social media's technical affordances empower and constrain police services. By offering new opportunities for surveillance, risk communication, and impression management, emergent technologies augment the police's control of their public visibility and that of the social world. However, they also provide unprecedented capacities to monitor the police and expose, circulate, and mobilize around perceived injustice, whether brutality, racial profiling, or other forms of indiscretion. Considering these issues promises to enhance knowledge on contemporary directions in social control, organizational communication, inequality, and collective action. Suggestions for future research are also explored.     

The Interaction Order and Musical Sound: Shopping with Erving Goffman

Drawing on qualitative interviews and extending insights provided by Erving Goffman (1983, 1971), this article argues that music plays a crucial role in the interaction order of retail environments. I suggest music permeates these locations of consumption; shoppers are presented as perceiving musical sounds as both “territorial offenses” and sounds that can also represent an “intimate ally.” Crucial here is the nature of territoriality that manages an individual's exposure through the symbolic and literal placement of boundaries around the self, covering and protecting the self while navigating public space, tacitly securing rights in relation to others, and minimizing encroachments upon the “territories of the self.” I contend that when shopping, participants can feel “at home” in these locations thanks in part to the role of music but also in other cases actively avoid these situations, using privatizing music as a means of regaining auditory discretion. The contribution of this article extends Goffman's formulation of the interaction order, accounting for the dual role that music represents, as both a territorial offense and an intimate ally for shoppers.