Bridging the gap between social work practice and community based welfare agencies

This article argues that social work in the UK needs to renegotiate its relationship with community welfare agencies. It begins by examining what we mean by local community and how welfare needs reflect complex non-linear dynamics unique to the local circumstances. It is argued that these are not always recognised in centralised policy agendas. The article broadly draws a parallel between policy issues for the European Community and for the national state. The drive for both is towards uniformity, which potentially fails to acknowledge the unique circumstances at both the national level between nations and the local level between communities.

The focus of the analysis is the lack of engagement with the subtleties of the local within the arena of social work education and practice. With the opportunity presented by the introduction of a new social work degree in the UK, the authors describe how a social work programme in Liverpool undertook a piece of research with the aim of creating an appropriate place for community welfare agencies in practice placements, the academic curriculum and, ultimately, with the next generation of social work practitioners. Eight welfare agencies within the proximity of Liverpool University, an area known as Toxteth, agreed to participate in the research to investigate what kind of placement module would enable local welfare agencies to engage meaningfully in the social work degree. Out of this process emerged a model for research based curriculum development involving local community agencies and academic institutions. More specifically for Liverpool, it placed the notion of social work's relationship with local community welfare at the heart of professional development for qualifying social workers, paving the way in this region of England for closer links between welfare agencies associated with civil society and professional social workers.     

The development of social work education in Russia since 1995

This article presents the findings of a four-year survey on the development of social work education in Russia from 1995 to the present day. Through a series of questionnaires, interviews and discussions with Russian academics, practitioners and students, the study looks at a variety of issues including the high rate of attrition. It focuses on aspects of students’ practice placements such as the type, length and quality of practice placements, the students’ workload and the supervision provided. It also looks at the contribution that international collaboration has made to the development of social work education in Russia.

The survey concludes that there is a need to enhance the overall package for social workers and raise the status of the profession in order to retain qualified personnel. Longer practice placements which start in the first year and are adequately funded and supervised are seen as the key to retaining new graduates. It concludes that although international projects have made a difference to those participating at the time, it is difficult to disseminate these benefits beyond the immediate region. Now that international funding to Russia has been reduced it is critical that any remaining funding is accurately targeted and properly coordinated.     

创新文化与写作的变革

文化是社会现实存在的反映。创新文化,是与时俱进的、反映社会现实存在的、满足社会需求的文化。写作是生产文化产品的行为过程,其变革,是向着创新文化的发展方向而同步运行的变革。写作变革运行的轨迹,应随着社会需求而转动;运行围绕的圆心,是创新文化。     

社会工作两极化趋势及专业定位的反思

社会工作专业从产生之初就产生了两极化的趋势,即萌生于慈善组织会社的注重提供个人服务的取向和产生于睦邻组织的注重环境的改造及建立共同利益的取向。Spetch和Courtney在《背叛的天使》一书中批判了社会工作者心理治疗化的现象,认为社会工作者是背叛的天使,远离了自己的服务对象,背叛了社会工作的使命。本文通过回顾社会工作两极化产生的历史,分析社会工作心理治疗化的原因及限制,同时通过回顾中国大陆社会工作产生的背景,反思社会工作专业化的定位。     

英语教学中的文化渗透

英语国家社会文化和汉语文化存在着很大差异,在英语教学中,不但要教会学生英语语言本身,也要传授给学生英语语言中所承载的社会文化内涵,使学生学到真正地道的英语,从而真正达到文化交流的目的。     

关于马克思社会有机体构成内容的文本分析

马克思的社会有机体理论是由前提性有机构成部分、基础性有机构成部分、上层性有机构成部分、观念性有机构成部分所构成的多维度有机整体。全面理解马克思关于社会有机体理论,有助于我们更加全面地认识人类社会发展的基本规律,也有助于我们深化对全面建设小康社会与积极构建和谐社会的认识。     

Neighborhood change from the bottom Up: What are the determinants of social distance between new and prior residents?

An important source of neighborhood change occurs when there is a turnover in the housing unit due to residential mobility and the new residents differ from the prior residents based on socio-demographic characteristics (what we term social distance). Nonetheless, research has typically not asked which characteristics explain transitions with higher social distance based on a number of demographic dimensions. We explore this question using American Housing Survey data from 1985 to 2007, and focus on instances in which the prior household moved out and is replaced by a new household. We focus on four key characteristics for explaining this social distance: the type of housing unit, the age of the housing unit, the length of residence of the exiting household, and the crime and social disorder in the neighborhood. We find that transitions in the oldest housing units and for the longest tenured residents result in the greatest amount of social distance between new and prior residents, implying that these transitions are particularly important for fostering neighborhood socio-demographic change. The results imply micro-mechanisms at the household level that might help explain net change at the neighborhood level.     

How publics react to situational and renewing organizational responses across crises: Examining SCCT and DOR in social-mediated crises

The prevalence of social media among networked publics calls for more research regarding how organizations can conduct effective crisis communication on social networking sites. Based on the situational crisis communication theory (SCCT) and the discourse of renewal (DOR) theory, this study examined how social media publics’ sentiments were affected by situational and renewing organizational responses in various clusters of crises. Twitter data of six crises representing three crisis clusters varying in the responsibility attribution (i.e., ambiguous, accidental, and preventable) were collected. We conducted a content analysis on organizations’ official tweets during crises (N = 59) and sentiment analysis on publics’ replies on Twitter (N = 4,340). The results showed that publics’ positive sentiments toward organizations were affected by organizational crisis responses that included instructing information, sympathy, systemic organizational learning, and effective organizational rhetoric. We recommend that crisis managers express sympathy toward publics as well as organizational learning that prevents a crisis from happening again.     

Developing a multi-level organization-public dialogic communication framework to assess social media-mediated disaster communication and engagement outcomes

Dialogic communication has long been viewed as vital for effective organization-public relations. Yet, it is under-theorized whether and how organizations’ disaster communication messages may embody dialogic communication principles, and how various dialogic features are associated with different public engagement outcomes on social media. Extending the Organization-Public Dialogic Communication (OPDC) framework to the context of social media-mediated disaster communication, we propose a multi-level framework to assess the dialogic capacity of Facebook messages sent by disaster management organizations during a natural disaster. Three levels of dialogic communication characteristics (i.e., message structure-level, topic-level, and linguistic level) are examined using content analysis and Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC). Results identified media richness, correcting, and confirming topics as three consistent predictors of public engagement of all types. Meanwhile, there exhibit greater variations regarding how other topical features and linguistic characteristics are related to public’s cognitive, emotional, and behavioral engagement during a disaster.     

Moving forward the dialogic theory of public relations: Concepts,methods and applications of organization-public dialogue

Advanced information and communication technologies and social media (Web 2.0) have significantly shaped every aspect of contemporary society since Kent and Taylor’s (1998) proposal of dialogic principles, which later evolved into dialogic theory of public relations. It is now time to move the theory forward. The special section aims to advance the dialogic theory of public relations by reviewing the scholarship in organization-public dialogue to pinpoint critical issues for its development and introducing studies that take the dialogue approach to examine a range of public relations practices in China. In this introduction, we first identify critical issues to be addressed for the development of the dialogic theory of public relations and then introduce the articles included in the section. We conclude by proposing research directions for the theoretical and practical development of the dialogic approach to public relations.