Suchergebnisse

In 2015, the University of Southern California School of Social Work convened the Social Work Innovation Roundtable with the goal of rigorously discussing the role of innovation in social work science and research. We convened a group of senior scholars in the field of social work along with emerging scholars (doctoral students and early career professors or researchers) to debate the practice of innovation, the nature of innovation, and how innovation may move social work forward. We posed the following questions to presenters and discussants: (1) Is innovation the enemy of science? (2) Does innovation have a role in science? and (3) Are innovation and scientific ideas simply different? During the course of 2 days, we argued over different perspectives on science and innovation with our colleagues. Out of those debates, this special issue of Research on Social Work Practice emerged.

Social innovation is defined by novelty and improvement. This definition requires social work practice to be more effective or efficient than preexisting alternatives. Practice innovation is accomplished by leveraging technical, social, and economic factors to generate novel interventions, diffusion or adoption of the interventions into broader use, and identification of the value created by the new approaches or processes. Innovation in social work practice is fundamentally hindered by the foundational trifecta on which the profession is built: (a) the structure of social work education, (b) diffusely focused professional organizations, and (c) siloed professional environments. This article explores the elements of social work education, professional organizations, and practice environments that impede innovation and offers recommendations for changes in each sector that can facilitate innovation.

The field of social work does not currently have a widely adopted method for expediting innovations into micro- or macropractice. Although it is common in fields such as engineering and business to have formal processes for accelerating scientific advances into consumer markets, few comparable mechanisms exist in the social sciences or social services. Given that beta testing is successfully used to scale innovation in business and engineering, why is there no method for beta testing in social work? Could this be the reason that innovations in social work practice remain decades behind scientific research findings? This article explores reasons for the scarcity of options for scaling innovation in the field of social work and proposes a method for shortening development cycles for social work innovations to ensure that advances reach consumers—and ultimately improve their lives—more quickly.

We examined factors influencing informed assent, initial involvement, and ongoing involvement in HIV-focused CBPR research for African American children. Study participants (n = 170) were recruited from the Collaborative HIV and Adolescent Mental Health Project and completed an interview format designed to assess attitudes about research activities. Data were analyzed using a mixed-methods approach. Three themes emerged via quantitative and qualitative data analysis: (1) motivation for the child to participate in the research; Revised (2) trust in researchers; Revised and (3) understanding of the informed assent process. Findings from this study can help researchers develop procedures facilitating ethics boards to assess the appropriateness of child assent in HIV-focused community-based participatory research.