Looking,listening and learning: A rationale for involving student social workers in dementia care

This paper promotes the inclusion and development of learning opportunities in the field of dementia care for student social workers studying for the Diploma in Social Work at both undergraduate and postgraduate levels at the University of Hull in the UK. The importance of these learning opportunities is indicated in the light of changing demography, health and social care, and developments in training and learning for social work practitioners. The research base and prior professional experiences of the staff team at the University of Hull allowed for the further development and promotion of these learning opportunities.     

Exploring Professional Stereotypes and Learning for Inter-professional Practice: An Example from UK Qualifying Level Social Work Education

This paper explores the concept of stereotyping from UK social work students' and educators' perspectives. It discusses findings from an exploration of inter-professional practice with two cohorts of final year social work students in a UK university. The authors adapted a questionnaire to initiate discussion about inter-professional working with BA and MA students participating in a specialist child and family social work module. This paper analyses students' responses to the questionnaire and explores wider issues relating to professional stereotyping and identity, discussing the usefulness of these concepts for social work education and collaborative practice. Results suggest that student social workers held both positive and negative assumptions about specific occupations/professions (such as medicine), and that these acted as a mirror or tool for reflecting back their own views of social work identity/ies. We argue that this pedagogic exercise in identifying stereotypical assumptions about ‘others’ may encourage the building of a positive sense of ‘own’ professional identity. We further suggest that students should be encouraged to construct a core social work identity that is dynamic and responsive to changing contexts.     

Building collaboration between school and parents: issues for school social workers and parents whose young children exhibit violent behaviour at school

This research explores the perceptions of 60 parents whose children, aged from three to nine, had been involved in bullying, as defined under the Safe Schools Act and the Code of Conduct. Some of these children had been suspended from school, while others were potential candidates for suspension. These parents were recruited from Ottawa's two French-language school boards to participate in qualitative interviews between June 2000 and June 2002. The aim of this research was to cast new light on the perceptions of parents and schools with regard to their relationships, and on the role of school social workers in maintaining and enhancing collaborative partnerships.

The desire of some parents to be involved in the decisions concerning remedial action taken to address their child's aggressive behaviour touched a raw nerve in some schools. Nonetheless, when schools and parents ultimately recognize the daily challenges that both parties face, and a shared plan of action develops therein, the path to effective collaboration becomes clear. Early intervention on the part of school social workers gives them an edge in their efforts as mediators. They seize every opportunity to initiate different collaborative approaches between schools and parents, so that the issue of bullying can be handled in a more respectful way for everyone.     

Task parallelism in distributed supply organizations: a case study in the shoe industry

This paper describes the application of the parallel integration evaluation model (PIEM) in an industrial case study. The PIEM model is based on modelling the interactions among supply network parties. It generates the parallel configuration of production and supply servers yielding the minimum total production and supply time/cost for the system, Φ. The design solution recommended by the model obeys the tradeoff that parallelism introduces into the networked supply operating system: while direct-production/supply time Π decreases, the overhead of interaction time among the networked parties, T, increases. The interaction time comprises two delay generating factors, limiting the implementation of massively parallel supply networks: the delay due to communication, negotiation, and coordination among the parties, K, and the congestion delay Γ at shared resources in the supply network. These two types of delay factors are positively correlated with the network's degree of parallelism, Ψ, and they affect inversely the total production supply and delivery time of the organization. The PIEM model has been applied to the case of a globally distributed shoe supply network. The resulting recommendations yielded significant savings of about 35% of the annual operating costs. Following the success of this case study, the model has been generalized and implemented as a supply network design optimization tool.     

Virtual Teams versus Face-to-Face Teams: An Exploratory Study of a Web-based Conference System*

Many organizations are forming “virtual teams” of geographically distributed knowledge workers to collaborate on a variety of workplace tasks. But how effective are these virtual teams compared to traditional face-to-face groups? Do they create similar teamwork and is information exchanged as effectively? An exploratory study of a World Wide Web-based asynchronous computer conference system known as Meeting Web™ is presented and discussed. It was found that teams using this computer-mediated communication system (CMCS) could not outperform traditional (face-to-face) teams under otherwise comparable circumstances. Further, relational links among team members were found to be a significant contributor to the effectiveness of information exchange. Though virtual and face-to-face teams exhibit similar levels of communication effectiveness, face-to-face team members report higher levels of satisfaction. Therefore, the paper presents steps that can be taken to improve the interaction experience of virtual teams. Finally, guidelines for creating and managing virtual teams are suggested, based on the findings of this research and other authoritative sources.