Developing Social Work Students ’ Awareness of their Spiritual/Religious Identity and Integrating It into Their Professional Identity: Evaluation of a Pilot Course
AbstractRecent literature on social work reveals an increasing interest in including spirituality/religion in practice and social workers ’ need to engage more actively with clients’ religious traditions and spirituality. However, very few current practitioners have been taught how to do so. This qualitative study, conducted in a school of social work in southern Israel, evaluates the effect of an elective pilot course on social w ork and Judaism aimed at enabling students to develop an awareness of religion and spirituality. The data were gathered through a brief questionnaire administered at the end of the course, af...
Source: British Journal of Social Work - March 8, 2021 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
The Role of Self-efficacy in the Recovery Trajectory of Mental Health Consumers
In conclusion, SS might be improved by building a trusting relationship, providing information regarding health care choices, and improving consumer empowerment and QL can be improved by strengthening self-efficacy and empowerment. The recovery-promoting competitive model sho uld take cultural characteristics including traditional dependence on authority figures, into consideration in an Asian context. (Source: British Journal of Social Work)
Source: British Journal of Social Work - March 6, 2021 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
Capturing Practice Wisdom: Advancing the Empowerment of Women from Refugee and Migrant Backgrounds
AbstractInternationally, the evidence about the successful design of refugee settlement programs is limited. To help address this gap, we examined staff practices within a program that aimed to advance the education, employment and empowerment of women from refugee and migrant backgrounds in communities in Northern New South Wales and South East Queensland in Australia. We engaged staff in collaborative critical reflection about their practice. Viewed through intersectionality, our findings revealed the empowering practice of staff in program design, in the ways that they worked together as a team and in their collaboratio...
Source: British Journal of Social Work - March 3, 2021 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
Children Speaking against Home Arrest: Decolonising Racial Penologies
AbstractHome arrest (HA), an alternative rehabilitative sentence to the more punitive disposal of imprisonment, is utilised in a range of ways by criminal justice regimes across the world. However, its implementation contains the potential for intimate political intrusion. This paper engages with forty-one testimonials gathered from Palestinian children, young people (aged 12 –18 years) and their families, examining their experiences under HA in Occupied East Jerusalem. The analysis of their voices reveals how HA has affected children and young people’s intimate spaces, psyches and behaviour, and dismembered their rela...
Source: British Journal of Social Work - March 3, 2021 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
Social Work Faculty Engagement in Social Policy Practice: A Quantitative Study of the Canadian Experience
This article reports on a quantitative study of how Canadian social work educators engage in social policy practice. The first part of the article contextualises social policy in Canada, explains how social policy has been incorporated into Canadian social work education and concludes by posing the research question. The second part presents the study ’s findings of how and to what extent Canadian social work academics engage with social policy including its development, analysis and implementation. Thirty-one educators representing seventeen of Canada’s forty schools of social work responded to a standard questionnair...
Source: British Journal of Social Work - February 28, 2021 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
Think Family, Think Relationship: Factors Influencing Stronger Professional Relationships with Parents Diagnosed with a Mental Illness. A Qualitative Study
AbstractThis qualitative study explored how professionals and parents with mental illness experience their relationships with each other, what aspects of interaction promote a constructive relationship and the role of wider organisational and systemic factors. A purposive sample of 30 adult mental health and children ’s services professionals, and 21 parents completed semi-structured interviews. Professionals’ transparent, non-judgemental, empathetic and positive approach and ability to form partnerships and to share power with parents were keys in building trusting relationships with them. Professionals’ capacity to...
Source: British Journal of Social Work - February 28, 2021 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
Experiences with Technology Amongst an International Sample of Older Adults: Results from a Qualitative Interpretive Meta-Synthesis
This study concludes with implications for social work research and practice. (Source: British Journal of Social Work)
Source: British Journal of Social Work - February 27, 2021 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
Rights-Based Social Work and the Named Social Worker for Adults with Learning Disabilities: A Policy Intervention 50 Years in the Making
AbstractThere has been a renewed interest in professional and academic discourse in the reconceptualisation of social work with adults as a human rights-based approach. This is compatible with the social model of disability, which philosophically adult social workers make claims to align with. This was recently argued for when the Department of Health in England piloted a named social worker for adults with learning disabilities, whose behaviour challenged services. This paper discusses the conceptualisation of rights-based practice, its relevance and appropriateness for contemporary social work policy. Drawing on the reco...
Source: British Journal of Social Work - February 23, 2021 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
Social relationships and their connection to mental health for young people who have been in the care system
AbstractThe mental health of young people is a pressing concern in global development. However, there is little research on how young adults report their own mental health. The interview data gathered in this study (n = 74) explored young adults’ well-being during the transition period from care to independent living under an English local authority and in Finland. Participatory action research methods were employed. The interview schedule included 71 open and closed questions, and was analysed by content and summarised using the SPSS software application and Excel tables. The themes concerning mental health and soci...
Source: British Journal of Social Work - February 23, 2021 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
Today in Light of Yesterday: An Exploration of Workers ’ Childhood Memories in the Context of Child Protection Practice
AbstractChild protection workers are routinely faced with emotionally intense work, both personally and vicariously through the traumatic narratives and experiences of parents and children. What remains largely unknown is how child protection workers ’ own childhood memories might influence the manner in which they experience and are affected by those narratives. The aim of this explorative study was to use Interpretive Phenomenological Analysis as a research methodology to answer the research question, ‘In what ways do social workers experi ence, and make sense of, their own childhood memories in the context of their ...
Source: British Journal of Social Work - February 22, 2021 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
‘Private Family Arrangements’ for Children in Ireland: The Informal Grey Space In-Between State Care and the Family Home
This article explores evidence which shows that the use of such arrangements is motivated partly by a concern for subsidiarity, and partly by necessity: they provide a source of placements in cases where regulatory requirements and a lack of resources would otherwi se make the placement challenging or impossible. However, this strategy carries significant risks. Private family arrangements receive less support and oversight from state authorities than formal care placements, and family members providing care under this model have no legal rights or responsibil ities in respect of the child(ren). This places the child(ren) ...
Source: British Journal of Social Work - February 22, 2021 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
An Implementable Conversation Between Foucault and Chinese Virtue Ethics in the Context of Youth Social Work
AbstractRecently, virtue ethics has been increasingly considered as one of the most appropriate alternative ethical frameworks for youth social work internationally and in China. Extant literature has the tendency to emphasise cultural difference and neglect the universality of (virtue) ethics; instead, this article aims to inspire a balanced theoretical conversation on similarities between western (Foucauldian) and Chinese virtue ethics (mainly classical Confucianism and Daoism) supported by examples from case studies. Three areas are addressed: (i) similarities in the interior (personal) dimension and the exterior (relat...
Source: British Journal of Social Work - February 20, 2021 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
Social work legitimacy: democratising research, policy and practice in child protection
This article analyses the concept of legitimacy as applied to the use of power in statutory social work with children and families in the UK. It draws on literature from police studies and criminology, in which the concept is a stable one that continues to be heavily researched and analysed. Police and social workers bear comparison in respect of legitimacy because of the significant powers they use on behalf of the state with direct implications for the civil and human rights of their fellow citizens. The article defines legitimacy in theoretical terms before applying the concept to social work. Here, perceptions of fairn...
Source: British Journal of Social Work - February 16, 2021 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
Time for a Well-Deserved Tribute to Social Work ’s Research Resilience and a Call for a Long Overdue Debate
As readers will notice, our first issue for 2021 is an extensive one. The number of articles published in the current issue has almost doubled. Such change reflects both the continued support our journal has received from the social work community as well as the perseverance social work academics have shown during the extraordinary times, we live in. Indeed, the flow of articles submitted to our journal has not declined, as one might have expected, during the lockdown. Instead, the urgent bio-political and broader socio-political dilemmas, exposed by the impact of COVID-19, have triggered a renewed interest in, and subsequ...
Source: British Journal of Social Work - February 16, 2021 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
Research End-User Perspectives about Using Social Work Research in Policy and Practice
This study examined research engagement and impact from the perspective of research end-users working in human services. In-person or telephone interviews were conducted with forty-three research end-users about how they used research and interacted with researchers. Content analysis was undertaken to identify engagement strategies and thematic coding was employed to examine underpinning ideas about research translation into practice. Participants were involved in many types of formal and informal research engagements. They viewed research translation as a mutual responsibility but indicated that researchers should do more...
Source: British Journal of Social Work - February 14, 2021 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
