© British Association of Social Workers
Including Families in Residential Work: Educational and Agency Tasks
Gale Burford completed a Masters degree in Social Work at the University of Washington. Currently he is completing a doctoral dissertation at the University of Stirling. He worked as a social work practitioner, supervisor and manager before being appointed Assistant Professor of Social Work at Memorial University, Newfoundland where he currently teaches. He has trained resident ial workers in the US, UK and Canada.
Stephen Casson is a graduate of Cambridge University, and has a Diploma in Applied Social Studies from the University of Nottingham. He worked as a probation officer in London before being employed in corrections in Canada. He currently manages residential and day-care facilities for the City of Newcastle. His training experience with practitioners and managers of residential care has been in North America and the U K.
Correspondence to Stephen Casson, Social Services Department, Civic Centre, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE1 8PA, England.
Summary
This paper identifies obstacles to the inclusion of families by residential establishments. A review of the literature indicates that the notion of including families is a worthwhile consideration, but that few programmes have committed themselves with sufficient energies over time to test the worth of this assumption. To bring families centre stage a set of obligations is proposed to managers and certain principles from the family dynamics literature are identified for inclusion in the training curriculum of residential workers.