Suchergebnisse

The social work profession, more than any other, is most hurt by the rampaging coronavirus (aka, COVID-19) pandemic given the scourge's pernicious impact on society's underserved and undervalued populations. More so, the pandemic has undermined the profession's historical value commitment to social justice and human rights while overturning our insistence on the importance of human relationships. The purpose of this essay is to explicate the nexus between social work and COVID-19 pandemic. While noting the deafening silence of the profession in the global discourse of the pandemic, it advocates for the urgency of our response if our profession is to attain significant public value amid the current loss of lives and threats to human rights. Strategies for our professional action, in flattening the curve of the contagion, are laid out.

Summary This article focuses on adult social work's response in England to high-risk domestic violence cases and the role of adult social workers in multi-agency risk and assessment conferences. The research was undertaken between 2013 and 2014 and focused on one city in England and involved the research team attending multi-agency risk and assessment conferences. Interviews with 20 adult social workers, 24 multi-agency risk and assessment conferences attendees, 14 adult service users at time T1 (including follow-up interviews after six months, T2), focus groups with independent domestic violence advocates and Women's Aid and an interview with a Women's Aid service user. Findings The findings suggest that although adult social workers accept the need to be involved in domestic violence cases they are uncertain of what their role is and are confused with the need to operate a parallel domestic violence and adult safeguarding approach, which is further, complicated by issues of mental capacity. Multi-agency risk and assessment conferences are identified as overburdened, under-represented meetings staffed by committed managers. However, they are in danger of becoming managerial processes neglecting the service users they are meant to protect. Applications The article argues for a re-engagement of adult social workers with domestic violence that has increasingly become over identified with child protection. It also raises the issue whether multi-agency risk and assessment conferences remain fit for purpose and whether they still represent the best possible response to multi-agency coordination and practice in domestic violence.

Although the STS literature on boundary-work recognizes that such work unfolds within a "terrain of uneven advantage" vis-à-vis gender, race, and other inequalities, reflection about that uneven advantage has been strikingly underdeveloped. This article calls for a retheorizing of boundary-work that engages more actively with feminist, critical race, and postcolonial scholarship and examines more systematically the relation between scientific boundary-work, broader structures of sociopolitical inequality, and boundary-workers' (embodied) positionality. To demonstrate the need for this retheorization, I analyze ethnographic and interview data on scientific boundary-work in the natural and social sciences in Portugal, showing that scholars' gender, sexuality, race, ethnicity, and nationality affect the success of their boundary-work. I suggest, therefore, that in unequal societies where credibility is unevenly distributed, the conditions are not in place for some scholars' boundary-work to work. I draw on Sara Ahmed (and J. L. Austin) to argue that we must conceptualize scientific boundary-work as always potentially performative, but not always successfully so, and explicitly interrogate the actual conditions of performativity. Recognizing the links between inequality, embodiment, and non-performativity in scientific boundary-work will enable STS to better understand, and hopefully transform, the relations between contingent struggles over scientificity and entrenched structures of power.

This volume focuses on work situations in Europe, North America and South-Africa, such as academic, medical and public sector, or business settings, in which participants have to make constant use of more than one language to cooperate with partners, clients, or colleagues. Central questions are how the social and linguistic organization of work is adapted to the necessity of using different languages and how multilingualism impinges on the communicative outcome of different types of discourse or genres. Thus, the authors are all interested in multilingual practices 'at work', which is to say how different forms of multilingual communication are managed, flexibly adjusted to, acquired, and/or improved in a given workplace setting that often calls for particular implicit or explicit language policies. Thus, this volume contributes to the study of workplace communication in a globalized world by drawing on different types of authentic data.

Summary This article brings together two key themes in recent public policy in England affecting social work practice: the value of having a paid job for social inclusion and increasing self-worth, and the personalisation of public services. The article draws on a mixed method evaluation of Jobs First, which was a government funded demonstration site project that aimed to show how personal budgets (a key mechanism for personalisation) could be used by people with learning disabilities, often with their families, to purchase employment support. The evaluation involved secondary analysis of case record data and 142 semi-structured interviews with a wide range of participants (we mainly draw on 79 interviews with professionals for this article). Jobs First is placed within the frame of Active Labour Market Policy (ALMP). Findings The attitudes of social workers to Jobs First were broadly positive, which was an important factor supporting employment outcomes. However, social workers' involvement was often limited to a coordinating role, undertaking basic assessments linked to resource allocation and ensuring that support plans, which had often been developed by non-social work practitioners, were 'signed off' or agreed by the local authority. Applications The study points to important elements of the role of social workers in this new field of practice and explores potential tensions that might emerge. It highlights a continuing theme that social workers are playing more of a coordinating, managing role, rather than working directly with individuals to support their choices.

Cover -- Halftitle page -- Series page -- Title page -- Copyright page -- Contents -- 1 An Introduction to Social Work Theory -- The view from below -- Ways of knowing -- Why are there so many social work theories? -- Reasons for choosing a particular social work theory -- Wondering why -- 2 Origins, Case Work and Social Reform -- Hard times -- Science and social science -- Charitable works -- Key messages -- 3 Cause and Function -- The pursuit of radical causes -- Modern causes -- Cause to function: case work and social reform in America -- Key messages -- 4 Psychoanalytic Theory -- Enter psychology -- All in the mind -- Talking cures -- The defence mechanisms -- Interpretation and insight -- Transference and counter transference -- The legacy of Freud and psychoanalysis -- Key messages -- 5 Attachment Theory -- Attachment behaviour -- Child abuse, neglect and trauma -- Uniting the developmental sciences -- Key messages -- 6 Behavioural Therapies -- Where is the evidence? -- Behavioural social work -- Social learning theory -- Respondent conditioning -- Operant conditioning -- The ABC of behaviour modification -- Two-factor model of behaviour -- Modelling and social skills training -- Working with ambivalence, the arrival of motivational social work -- Counting as social work -- Key messages -- 7 Cognitive Therapies -- Cognitive therapies and cognitive behavioural social work -- The treatment process -- The ABC of cognitive therapy -- Cognitive-behavioural social work -- Trauma-informed social work -- Trauma-focused cognitive behaviour therapy -- Key messages -- 8 Task-centred Work -- The pragmatic approach -- The problem-solving approach -- Task-centred work -- Going from strength to strength -- Key messages -- 9 Be Responsible, Think Positive -- Liberty and equality: the myth and reality -- Think positive -- The service user as expert.

In this commentary, the authors respond to challenges that Denzin's article poses. (See Denzin, this issue.) We draw upon our own experiences as qualitative social work researchers to reflect upon several issues, such as personal connections with research participants; the match between qualitative approaches and the complexities of practice; the roles of values such as social justice and empowerment; the centrality of theories; and the benefits of methodological pluralism. We agree with Denzin that social work has applied feminist, emancipatory, and culturally-based pluralistic values and frames of reference and that qualitative research can implement these values. To fully realize what qualitative approaches offer, however, members of the discipline must contend with obstacles related to opportunities for graduate training and for funding of qualitative research. We invite social workers and friends of social work to engage in dialogue about the nature and usefulness of qualitative research to social work.