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© British Association of Social Workers
Keeping Social Work Honest: Evaluating as Profession and Practice
Ian Shaw is Director of Graduate Studies in the School of Social and Administrative Studies, University of Wales Cardiff. His recent books include Evaluating in Practice (1996, Ashgate) and A Case of Neglect? (with Ian Butler, 1996, Avebury). He researches on homelessness, rough sleeping, prostitution, and on professional decision making. His book, Social Care and Housing (with Susan Thomas and David Clapham), is to be published by Jessica Kingsley in 1998
Alison Shaw is a doctoral student in the School of Policy Studíes at the University of Bristol. She was previously a researcher in the Department of Social Medicine at the University of Bristol, undertaking research on aspects of the interface between primary and secondary care. Her substantive research interests focus on the aspects of the sociology of the body, in particular experiences of embodiment in relation to ‘ideals’ of feminine behaviour. Her methodological interests centre on qualitative and feminist approaches to social research. Her book, The Body in Qualitative Research (with John Richardson), is to be published by Avebury in 1998
Correspondence to Ian Shaw, School of Social and Administrative Studies, University of Wales Cardiff, 50 Park Place, Cardiff CF1 3AT
Summary
The central argument of this paper is that social work needs a radical alternative to existing options for evaluating practice. Social workers at present are offered three choices. They are invited to choose between applying research, conducting research or adopting specific forms of empirical research-based practice (for example Everitt et al., 1992; Thyer. 1993; Fuller and Petch, 1995).
We touch briefly on reasons why we believe none of these options provides an adequate grounding for social work, referring especially to the growing call for social work to find new purpose through an empirical, research-based practice. If alternative approaches are to be persuasive, they must be fashioned from the materials of a new approach to research on social work practice— ‘one that is exploratory rather than confirmatory, building a model of evaluation from the practitioners' own accounts rather than superimposing an ideal model’ (Elks and Kirkhart, 1993, p. 555). The major part of this paper is taken up with evidence from research of this kind. The model of evaluating in practice with which we conclude the paper is simultaneously true to social workers' accounts of their practice, while offering a critical starting point for evaluating and refashioning that practice.
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