Young people negotiating and maintaining boundaries in youth work relationships: findings from an ethnographic study of youth clubs

‘Professional boundaries’ set limits on appropriate behaviours in the relationship between the service users and practitioners. The professional literature often assumes boundaries are maintained by the practitioners, occupational bodies, or organisational policy. However in youth work this is under-researched. An ethnographic study of four youth clubs in the North East of England into ethical practice revealed that young people were surprisingly adept at maintaining boundaries with the youth workers. These boundaries were negotiated and maintained through the young people's use of space, their willingness to interact with the workers, the way they shared information with the workers, and their inclusion of youth workers into their social networking. Young people also showed a sophisticated awareness of the organisational boundaries youth workers were operating within, and often cooperated in maintaining them with the worker. The article concludes by arguing youth workers should take seriously young people's ability and willingness to set and work within boundaries, and see their negotiation and maintenance as a mutual endeavour. However, this may provide a challenge to organisations with rigid policy-defined boundaries.     

The street-level delivery of activation policies: constraints and possibilities for a practice of citizenship

The debate on activation policies and challenges to social citizenship has to go beyond the level of formal policy and take into account also its operational and street-level dimension, which shapes what eventually arrives as policy on the ground. In this context, frontline practice plays a crucial role since it constitutes the very moment when activation policies encounter their target groups and real-world solutions have to be found. This article outlines a conceptual framework to approach frontline work within the context of activation and presents the main findings of a research project aimed at exploring the challenges, interpretations and reactions of frontline practitioners in Public Employment Services in the cities of Vienna (Austria) and Milan (Italy). The findings contribute to the debate on the constraints and possibilities for a practice of citizenship in a practice field whose challenges are often neglected both by social policy and social work research although it has become a central arena for welfare state intervention in which social citizenship, eventually, becomes manifest. Particular attention is paid to different framings of practice and to the questions whether and to what extent professionalising ‘activation work’ could counteract the precarious and highly individualised role of frontline practitioners in this ambiguous public domain.     

Attitudes toward poverty among exit students of undergraduate social work programs in eight Latin American countries

What is the attitude of Latin American undergraduate social work students toward poverty? An earlier study from Europe and other countries worldwide found that most graduating social work students who participated in the research were clear about the socio-structural causes of social problems such as poverty. Still, no data on this topic is available for Latin American countries. The aims of this study were: (1) to describe and to compare eight Latin American graduating undergraduate social work student groups regarding their attitudes toward poverty, as measured by two scales: Causes of poverty scale and Ways of dealing with poverty; and (2) to discuss some of the implications of the study for social work education and practice. Using a quantitative transnational-comparative design, a total sample of 525 nonrandomly selected, graduating undergraduate social work students from eight Latin American countries responded to a self-administered questionnaire. An individualistic attitude to understanding and to dealing with poverty emerged in the majority of the student groups. Multivariate procedures and inferential analyses demonstrated variations across the student groups. Implications for social work education and practice are discussed.     

Women who sacrifice themselves for everybody: qualitative research with mothers of disabled children

This study, from a feminist perspective, aimed at examining the experiences of women whose children with cerebral palsy received a treatment at a physiotherapy and rehabilitation center located in Ankara, Turkey. The study intended to reveal the perceptions of in-family roles of women with disabled children, their participation in public life, and their self-concept within the scope of feminist social work. Thus, the objective of the present study was to contribute to the understanding of the fact that non gender-blind services should be developed in this field on the basis of social justice and human rights, which constitutes the fundamental philosophy of social work. Qualitative research method was employed in the study where data were analyzed through content analysis. The findings of the study were interpreted under four main themes: the lives of the women with disabled children after their disabled children were born; being a woman within the scope of family life, participation in decision-making processes, and domestic division of labor; participation in public life and relations with women's associations; the self-sacrifice; and the suggestions of women concerning self-realization within the scope of self-concept.     

Resources reduction and welfare changes: tensions between social workers and organisations. The Italian case in child protection services

Within the field of studies on professionalism, this paper explores the changes in roles of social workers and the new tensions emerging in the relationship with their organisational contexts, due to the reduction of resources and the introduction of neoliberal and managerial policies in the welfare system. The paper is based on qualitative research carried out through 32 in-depth interviews with frontline social workers engaged in child and family services in Italy. The paper investigates how spending cuts have affected the relationship with the organisation arguing that the ways the cuts are implemented, as well as the room for professional recognition set by the organisation, are relevant. A four-character social worker typology is outlined, drawn from the intersection of two meaningful dimensions: sense of belonging and critical thinking. It is argued that a ‘critically engaged’ type points to a new form of professionalism that may emerge from the current crisis of the relationship between the organisation and social workers.     

Towards a sociology of risk work: A narrative review and synthesis

In this article, we define the concept of “risk work,” which aims to make visible working practices to assess or manage risk, in order to subject these practices to sociological critique. This article reviews and synthesizes existing published literature to identify components of risk work: (a) translating risk into different contexts, (b) minimizing risks in practice, and (c) caring in the context of risk. We argue that these three components of risk work raise important tensions for workers that have been inadequately explored in the literature to date. We propose that future research should additionally focus on practitioner subjectivity and identity in risk work. In addition, we argue that comparative research—across type of risk and different contexts—and methodological and theoretical diversity would enhance this emerging field of research.     

Fighting with Oneself to Maintain the Interaction Order: A Sociological Approach to Self‐Injury Daily Process

This article proposes an interactionist approach to self‐injury behavior in youth. Mostly based on in‐depth interviews with seventy people who self‐harm or who have self‐harmed at some point in their lives, it describes the process of daily self‐injuring. It shows that this practice consists less in the self‐harm in itself than in a liminal emotional state, composed of several successive steps, and that self‐injury makes sense because concerned individuals subjectively see it as the most practical of known activities for releasing emotional troubles, then maintaining the interaction order surrounding them.     

The Extent and Nature of Practitioners,Encounters with Alcohol and Other Drug Use in Social Work and Social Care Practice

This article considers the extent and nature of social work and social care practitioners' experience of working with service users whose lives are affected by the problematic use of alcohol or other drugs (AOD). It draws on the findings of a national study of ‘working with alcohol and drug use’ which was conducted in England in 2010–2011. The study reported here comprised an online survey of front-line practitioners (n = 597), complemented by 12 practitioner focus groups and interviews with 21 key informants from participating local authorities and substance use treatment services. This paper focuses primarily on data from one element of the survey. Findings indicate that the great majority of staff encountered service users who are affected by AOD problems at some level, although there were differences between groups of practitioners in the extent and nature of AOD problems for different groups of service users. The differential experiences of staff according to their client groups underlines the need for education and professional development not only to provide training on working with AOD but to ensure that training is contextualised and relevant to practitioners across the range of social work and social care services.     

Work–Family Conflict: Coping Strategies Adopted by Social Workers

There is a growing literature investigating the association between coping and work stress among social workers. An area that remains under-researched is the association between work–family conflict and coping. The present study explored the coping strategies adopted by social workers in dealing with the competing demands emanating from their work and family domains. In a larger study involving 439 Australian social workers, we analyzed the responses to two open-ended questions that explored the challenges experienced by social workers in meeting their work and family demands, and the coping strategies they adopt to deal with these challenges. The findings confirm that social workers experience work–family conflict and they adopt several coping strategies to deal with it including support from supervisors and colleagues, cognitive reframing, timely communication, setting clear expectations, time management, job flexibility and developing personal hobbies. We discuss the implications of our findings for social work policy and practice.