British Journal of Social Work - current issue

Editorial

Lymbery, M. — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 08:58:00 PDT

The Descriptive Tyranny of the Common Assessment Framework: Technologies of Categorization and Professional Practice in Child Welfare

White, S., Hall, C., Peckover, S. — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 08:58:00 PDT

The Common Assessment Framework is a standard assessment tool to be used by all professionals working with children for assessment and referral. The CAF is hailed as a needs-led, evidence-based tool which will promote uniformity, ensure appropriate ‘early intervention’, reduce referral rates to local authority children's services and lead to the evolution of ‘a common language’ amongst child welfare professionals. This paper presents findings from a study, funded under the Economic and Social Research Council's e-Society Programme. Our purpose in is not primarily evaluative, rather we illustrate the impacts of CAF as a technology on the everyday professional practices in child welfare. We analyse the descriptive, stylistic and interpretive demands it places on practitioners in child welfare and argue that practitioners make strategic and moral decisions about whether and when to complete a CAF and how to do so. These are based on assessments of their accountabilities, their level of child welfare competence and their domain-specific knowledge, moral judgements and the institutional contexts in which these are played out.

Abuse of Children in West Africa: Implications for Social Work Education and Practice

Sossou, M.-A., Yogtiba, J. A. — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 08:58:00 PDT

This article discusses the pernicious problem of several abuses of children and the lack of professional social work programmes to address the problem in three West African countries of Ghana, Nigeria and Togo. Despite inaccurate statistical data, available public information reveals an alarming ascendancy of the problem in the region. Abuse and neglect of children in the sub-region has become a very serious issue of violation of human rights, social justice and violence against children, which demands a call for action on behalf of the children. The article outlined the various incidents of child sexual abuse, child trafficking, child marriage, Trokosi and neglect of disabled children in the sub-region. Poverty and traditional cultural practices have been discussed as the main causes of this phenomenon. The implications for social work education, policy, research and practice have been discussed in addition to a call for enforcement of legislations and mass education of citizens in the sub-region.

Recent Policy Initiatives in Early Childhood and the Challenges for the Social Work Profession

Winter, K. — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 08:58:00 PDT

The Labour Government in the UK has announced, as part of its launch of The Children's Plan, that it ‘wants to make this country the best place in the world for children and young people to grow up’ in. This latest Plan is further evidence of the surge of interest that there has been in children (and, in particular, early childhood) over the last ten years in the UK and indeed elsewhere. Many of the recent policy and practice initiatives have implications for social workers working with young children. Yet, social work as a profession, in comparison with education, has remained relatively silent on these initiatives and it is hard to find any critical analysis of these developments in terms of either their underlying discourses or their implications for social workers. This article sets out to address these gaps by providing a critical analysis of: what types of knowledge regarding the early years have gained political currency; why and how this is the case; and what the implications are for the role and practices of social workers. The article proposes that discourses of ‘need’ and ‘provision’ mask more powerful discourses of economics, social control and risk avoidance, and it concludes by advocating more critically reflexive social work practice with young children and their families.

Family Intervention Projects: A Site of Social Work Practice

Parr, S. — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 08:58:00 PDT

Family Intervention Projects (FIPs) provide intensive support to ‘problem families’ and are a core element of the Government's Respect Action Plan (2006). Drawing on recent research findings from an independent evaluation of the FIP ‘Signpost’, this paper aims to offer a new insight into our understanding of FIPs. The paper draws attention to two key points. First, the organizational context within which Signpost has emerged is one dominated by a social work ethos. It is suggest that the FIP has been implemented in a way which has provided social work professionals with an opportunity to engage in the kind of creative practice that proceduralization, bureaucracy and managerialism have made impossible to achieve in mainstream social work arenas. Following on from this, the paper emphasizes the limitations of evaluating anti-social behaviour policy effects without due consideration of the local policy and practice context within which policies are embedded. The paper is not intended to discount important critical reflections on FIPs, but seeks to illustrate the gaps that can open up between political rhetoric and policy effect, demonstrating why we should not be too quick to foreclose the possibilities afforded to vulnerable families by this type of intervention.

Communication, Recognition and Social Work: Aligning the Ethical Theories of Habermas and Honneth

Houston, S. — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 08:58:01 PDT

The modern world is replete with ethical challenges of Orwellian proportions. The violation of human rights and misrecognition of identities are two of the most pressing examples. In this paper, the ethical theories of Habermas and Honneth are aligned as a way of addressing these specific challenges within social work. It is suggested that these theories are complementary, mutually rectifying and concordant at the meta-ethical level of analysis. The alignment is also justified, pragmatically, through the construction of three hypothetical vignettes demonstrating different kinds of practice dilemmas. The need for egalitarian communication and the imperative to recognize human identity in all its dimensions subsequently emerge as the two foundation stones for ethical deliberation in social work.

Training for Change: Early Days of Individual Budgets and the Implications for Social Work and Care Management Practice: A Qualitative Study of the Views of Trainers

Tue, 20 Oct 2009 08:58:01 PDT

Individual Budgets are central to the implementation of English government policy goals in social care. Like other consumer-directed or self-directed support programmes operating in parts of the developed world, they are envisaged as a way of increasing individuals' choice and control over social care resources provided by the public sector. While the opportunities they provide for people using services have been identified prospectively in the English context and reflect positive outcomes internationally, little attention in England has been paid to the potential impact on the redesign of social workers' and others' current roles and practice and the training that might be necessary. This article draws on the Department of Health-commissioned evaluation of the thirteen pilot Individual Budget schemes, which aims to evaluate outcomes and identify the contexts and mechanisms of those outcomes. The article focuses on a sub-set of the study that comprised an exploration of early training activities for social workers/care managers and wider stakeholders around the introduction of Individual Budgets. It is based on interviews with representatives from all thirteen pilot local authorities. What happens to social work in adult social services departments in England may be determined in part by these pilots; however, the article also highlights the role of those responsible for training in managing the demands upon social workers/care managers, in responding to their concerns and aspirations, and their possible responsibilities for training people using services in their new consumer roles.

Social Workers in Community Care Practice: Ideologies and Interactions with Older People

Sullivan, M. P. — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 08:58:01 PDT

Since the inception of the NHS and Community Care in 1990, there has been a proliferation of studies examining its implementation at the front line. Considerable attention has been aimed at understanding how it is that social work practitioners, charged with the responsibility to implement community care recommendations for older people, are doing so in a challenging care environment. How a practitioner's ideological frame of reference may impact on his/her practice interactions remains relatively unanswered. However, the course by which professional ideology matures and then directs practice would appear to both complex and multifaceted. The outcome is one that may render the professional both powerful and political, and one that may leave the older care recipient both vulnerable and stigmatized. This paper explores community care practice with older people, emphasizing the ideological underpinnings in practice and their influence on practice interactions. Social work practitioners working on older people's teams in two contrasting communities in England were interviewed to discuss their assessment and care management interactions with older people. Using grounded theory and Goffman's theoretical constructs within frame analysis, a conceptual model for practice emerged, reinforcing that practitioners' understandings of social events, anchored in government and professional discourse and individual perceptions about older people, enabled them to organize and influence the interaction to lead to a professionally determined outcome. The routine work of assessment and care management became very powerful in absence of strategic intention by the practitioner. A move to more strategic behaviour occurred when practice dilemmas required practitioners to intervene, informed by their professionally based values juxtaposed against those supported within official discourse. The findings provide an insight into how social work practitioners manage to deliver community care in a complex environment. The outcomes also reinforce the need for practitioners to develop an understanding of how they construct their social realities, as this may impact on the experience of community care for older people.

Accountable and Countable: Information Management Systems and the Bureaucratization of Social Work

Burton, J., van den Broek, D. — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 08:58:01 PDT

A key feature of new public management is the tendency to equate quality and accountability with documentation (Tsui and Cheung, 2004). Human service organizations increasingly rely on computer databases to compile and record client information and to demonstrate outcomes for quality assurance and accountability purposes. This has resulted in substantial changes in work practices, processes and relationships for social workers. This paper draws on interview data from social workers in several Australian agencies to examine professional interactions with, and response to, changes in their work after the introduction of new technologies. It particularly focuses on the shift of accountabilities from professional values and identities to organizational and bureaucratic accountabilities. The paper recognizes that while social workers have always been subject to organizational accountabilities, due to the changes in social service delivery and limited practitioner input into the implementation of new technologies, tensions between professional and bureaucratic accountabilities have intensified.

Speaking from the Margins: A Critical Reflection on the 'Spiritual-but-not-Religious' Discourse in Social Work

Wong, Y.-L. R., Vinsky, J. — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 08:58:01 PDT

This paper attempts to make visible the invisible Euro-Christian ethnocentrism and individualism in the ‘spiritual-but-not-religious’ discourse in social work. A critical analysis of the current literature on spirituality and social work, intertwined with the authors' personal narratives of spirituality and religion, calls into question the subject positions of social work authors who argue for differentiating spirituality from religion. We ask: From whose vantage point is the ‘spiritual-but-not-religious’ discourse produced? What gets legitimized and who gets excluded from this particular construction of spirituality? This paper deconstructs the power relations of race, ethnicity, and sexuality in the discourse of spirituality in social work. It destabilizes the assumption of spirituality as non-sectarian and inclusive. Contrary to many social work authors and educators' best intention of inclusivity, we contend that the ‘spiritual-but-not-religious’ discourse in social work may have inadvertently reproduced the process of colonial othering and further marginalization of racialized ethnic groups who are more often represented as ‘religious’.

Effectiveness of Welfare Organizations: The Contribution of Leadership Styles, Staff Cohesion, and Worker Empowerment

Boehm, A., Yoels, N. — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 08:58:01 PDT

Numerous recent studies reveal the contribution of leadership and leadership style, in particular, to effectiveness in different organizations (Sosik et al., 1998; Ogbnna and Harris, 2000; Hoyt and Blascovich, 2003; Hullinger, 2003; Berson and Avolio, 2004), including the field of welfare organizations (Gummer, 1995; Arches, 1997; Fisher, 2005; Mary, 2005). These publications suggest a preference for the transformational, compared with the transactional, leadership style. However, the studies reviewed do not examine the contribution of organizational leadership compared with other aspects of organizational life. Using the previous studies as its point of departure, the present research examines the contribution of the leadership styles of the directors in welfare departments to the effectiveness of the social workers in these organizations. However, it also undertakes another task, by comparing the contribution of leadership style to effectiveness with that of staff cohesion and social worker empowerment. Thus, the findings and discussion presented in this paper compare the respective contributions of three central levels of the organization to effectiveness—the administrative level (director's leadership styles), the staff level (staff cohesion), and the individual level of the social worker (worker empowerment). The research examines this issue in a public welfare department in Israel.

Use of Residential Care in Europe for Children Aged Under Three: Some Lessons from Neurobiology

Bilson, A. — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 08:58:01 PDT

This critical commentary reviews the research into the use of residential care for children aged under three years and looks at some of the explanations that can be found for this in neurobiology. There continue to be high numbers and rates of these vulnerable children in institutions not only in the former Soviet states, but also in Western Europe. The new research provides strong evidence on the negative consequences for these children, particularly for those who remain in institutional care beyond the age of six months. Explanations from neurobiology sit well beside understandings drawn from attachment theory and start to show the mechanisms for this and also the ability of the brain to compensate.

Social Work with Adults with Disabilities: An International Perspective

Zavirsek, D. — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 08:58:01 PDT

A Textbook of Social Work, Brian Sheldon and Geraldine Macdonald, London, Routledge, 2009, pp. xvii + 429, ISBN 978-0-415-34721-1 (pbk), {pound}20.99

Doel, M. — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 08:58:01 PDT

Children, Families and Social Exclusion: New Approaches to Prevention, Kate Morris, Marian Barnes and Paul Mason, Bristol, The Policy Press, 2009, pp. iv + 161, ISBN 978 1 86134 965 1 (pbk), {pound}21.99

Jack, G. — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 08:58:01 PDT

Effective Practice in Health, Social Care and Criminal Justice: A Partnership Approach, 2nd edn, Ros Carnwell and Julian Buchanan (eds), Maidenhead, Open University Press, 2009, pp. xvi + 342, ISBN 978 0 335 22911 6 9 (pbk), {pound}24.99

Popple, K. — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 08:58:01 PDT

Black Issues in Social Work and Social Care, Mekada Graham, Bristol, The Policy Press, 2007, pp. xi + 195, ISBN 978 1 86134 845 6, {pound}18.99

Christie, A. — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 08:58:01 PDT

Assessment in Social Work, 3rd edn, Judith Milner and Patrick O'Byrne, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2009, pp. ix+278, ISBN 9780230218628 (pbk), {pound}19.99

Holland, S. — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 08:58:02 PDT

The Pink Guide to Adoption for Lesbians and Gay Men, Nicola Hill, London, BAAF, 2009, pp. viii + 221, ISBN 978 1 905664 68 9 (pbk), {pound}12.95

McDermott, J. — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 08:58:02 PDT

Social Work and Migration: Immigrant and Refugee Settlement and Integration, Kathleen Valtonen, Aldershot, Ashgate, pp. 218, ISBN 978-0-7546-7194-7 (hb), {pound}55.00

Soroya, B. — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 08:58:02 PDT

Mental Health Still Matters, 2nd edn, Jill Reynolds, Rosemary Muston, Tom Heller, Jonathan Leach, Mick McCormick, Jan Wallcraft and Mark Walsh (eds), Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2009, pp. xiv + 386, ISBN 978 0 230 57729 9 (pbk), {pound}23.99

Sapey, B. — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 08:58:02 PDT

Permanence in Foster Care: A Study of Care Planning and Practice in England and Wales, Gillian Schofield and Emma Ward with Andrea Warman, John Simmonds and Jane Butler, London, British Association for Fostering and Adoption, 2008, pp. 189, ISBN 978 1 905664 57 3 (pbk), {pound}12.95 * Achieving Permanence in Foster Care (Good Practice Guide), Gillian Schofield and Mary Beek, London, British Association for Adoption and Fostering (BAAF), 2008, pp. 105, ISBN 978 1 905664 58 0 (pbk), {pound}9.95

Hothersall, S. J. — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 08:58:02 PDT

Books Received

Tue, 20 Oct 2009 08:58:02 PDT