Volume 52, Issue 3, April 2022

This article presents findings from interviews with foster carers who reflected on their experiences of a social pedagogy training programme in the UK. We explore the receptiveness of foster carers to the training and aspects that might have influenced receptiveness. We outline a typology of receptiveness and consider the perceived impact on their community of practice and compatibility with the existing children’s social care system. Understanding what affects an individual’s receptiveness to new programmes has broad applicability in social care and wider, as more sectors are tasked with providing high-quality services with less funding and smaller budgets. With a desire to both improve services and often having to save money, if service leaders can better understand ways to enhance openness and receptiveness of the participants on new programmes, then they might be able to better ensure its success.

Child and adolescent violence towards grandparent kinship carers is a significant and yet under-researched phenomenon. This study draws on data from thirty-six in-depth interviews which include grandparent carers who are experiencing such violence, and professionals from a range of backgrounds whose work intersects with this problem. The study highlights how the kinship care context shapes the violence, its impacts and, in turn, carers’ help-seeking practices. The findings highlight how social workers need to better understand the barriers that prevent grandparent kinship carers from asking for help and improve their responses to such requests. Key recommendations are made for social work practice.

The study examines differences in Muslim social workers (138) and Imams’ (forty-eight) recommendations regarding marriage/divorce and child custody by persons with intellectual disabilities and mental illness, based on case example (known as vignettes) simulating Sharia Court rulings. The Sharia Court is the Muslim religious court responsible for adjudicating matters of marriage, divorce, alimony, guardianship, inheritance and wills of Muslim litigants in the State of Israel. Muslim Social workers submit their recommendations to the Sharia judges regarding the custodial parent and the latter apply professional considerations based on the Legal Capacity and Guardianship Law, 1962. Based on Berger’s theory, we expected that Imams would tend to endorse Sharia court judges’ decisions more than would social workers and that the religiosity of the family of the person with a disability would strengthen the tendency for religious recommendations amongst all participants. We found that the results confirm our expectation regarding Imams following religious recommendation much more than social workers. Furthermore, Muslim social workers and Imams tended to consider the religious recommendation when the family of person with intellectual disability or mental illness was portrayed in the vignette as religious. Findings are discussed in respect to social work education and practice.

Young people from ethnic minority groups are at the centre of public concern in modern societies. Our article analyses the discourses held by social workers regarding their practice with young people from an ethnic minority group in Israel. Based on interviews with thirty-three social workers who work with young people of Ethiopian ethnic origin, we found three key discourses: the social inclusion discourse, the meritocracy discourse and the social conflict discourse. The first two discourses dominate the field. They are influenced by neoliberal perceptions of youth and of sociocultural group relationships and are blind to the influence of power relations between social groups. The third discourse, held mostly by social workers from the Ethiopian community, competes with the other discourses. This discourse is based on critical and contextual analysis of sociocultural group relationships that takes into consideration issues of power, discrimination and oppression. The findings call upon social workers to rethink professional practice with ethnic minority youth and to recognise and oppose oppression as an alternative to policy making, training and practice processes.

This article provides a framework for understanding a relationship-based recovery for families of people living with mental health distress. Recovery processes are strongly embedded within family networks, which can be composed of different individuals, relationships, roles and experiences. A relational framework that encapsulates the interaction of recovery experiences between different family members as well as grief and loss can guide clinicians to support family’s capacity to encourage recovery of individual members as well as ameliorating the family’s psychological distress.

The article draws on a qualitative research study exploring how social workers experience the law in their everyday professional practice, focusing on how mental health social workers experience assessment for compulsory admission under mental health law. The experience of assessment under mental health law is revealed as a relational process, involving a focus on the person in their environment in relation to others, such as family and professionals. The findings draw attention to ethical challenges realising human rights-oriented social work practice in an unjust mental health system. The article provides insights on the complexity involved in mental health social work practice, illuminating trust as an important concept. It is argued that realising human rights-oriented practice requires social work to develop practice and systems in response to a changing policy and practice context.

Recovery-oriented practice (ROP) is being steadily adopted worldwide. In clinical mental health, peer workers are becoming a part of the future. There is some literature about their views on ROP. However, there is a dearth of information about clinicians’ views about the implementation of ROP in mental health. This study sought perspectives from clinicians and was mixed methods couched within a narrative approach. It concluded that clinicians are committed to the implementation of ROP. They do not believe ROP is easy to implement; however, they do believe it can be successfully implemented in the clinical treatment setting. With the support of stakeholders, these findings may be used to aid the ongoing implementation of ROP into the study service.

Human rights work is an important part of the work that social workers do. The service-users they work with are often some of the most disempowered individuals in their communities, and social workers are uniquely placed to make sure their rights are upheld and fulfilled. However, social workers often work in very complex, uncertain, situations with limited resources, and having a primary focus on human rights is not always straightforward. This study explored the perspectives of nine mental health social workers in England, who were interviewed about their experience of making human rights a focus in their work. Social workers in the study agreed that human rights are an important aspect of their practice, but felt that they did not have the confidence to talk about human rights effectively. They described a lack of training on human rights after they qualified, and a lack of time, resources and support within their workplaces to build human rights into their practice. The findings suggest a need for further training for social workers in human rights, increased support for social workers to build human rights into their practice and for a language of human rights to be used more widely within their organisations.

Increasingly, cities’ more vulnerable and culturally diverse neighbourhoods are the context of violent conflicts linked to inequality, discrimination and a public institutional lack of recognition of ethnic minorities’ equal rights. Social outbursts such as London (2011) or Husby’s (Stockholm, 2013) riots are amongst the best-known recent examples. The frequency and the intensity of these conflicts are only expected to worsen as COVID-19 economic impact takes hold. This article introduces a new theory, the ‘Theory of Rupture Frames (TRF)’, which explains violent conflicts in vulnerable neighbourhoods with high sociocultural diversity. The ‘TRF’, the authors argue, can guide social work’s preventative and healing-oriented interventions facing the conflicts. This is in relation to the TRF’s potential for (i) contributing to the theoretical understanding of this type of conflict and for (ii) offering a tool for guiding the assessment of needs and strategic planning of social work-led actions in the context of the affected neighbourhoods.

Loud voices, threats, intimidation and actual violence—these are the images many of us associate with the term ‘conflict’. This is all scary stuff, but disagreements do not always have to be disagreeable and differences do not have to be destructive. Sometimes, trying to avoid conflict escalates tensions. This paper seeks to de-mystify the term ‘conflict’ and to offer a series of vignettes that adult learners will find accessible and constructive. Why is this important? If one is working for change it is rare that everything proceeds smoothly. It follows that finding ways to engage with difference, with disagreement, is what progressive social workers have to be able to do. This provocative paper is about becoming more conflict capable.

Social work is an institution that promises effects: its service users should be better off after a measure than before. The paper addresses the related assumption of causality. The central causal mechanism of social work, it is argued, lies in the interactions between professionals and service users. This kind of causality can do justice to the complexity of social work and the agency of service users.

This study aims to explore the educational and resettlement experiences of Burmese refugee children in the USA. Transition and migration are difficult for refugees due to the demands associated with adjusting to a new way of life in a different environment and even more so for children, as the events co-occur with the developmental changes they experience. The study has employed in-depth interviews to examine the subjective experiences of the study participants. The current study’s findings revealed that refugee children’s experience is a series of interrelated events and interaction. Their first-year school experience causes struggles in adapting to their new school environment; limited English proficiency often hinders interaction with teachers and peers. Being bullied because of their lack of English proficiency was found to be the most challenging aspect of school adjustment within their new school environment. Notably, study participants also talk about their future aspirations. They are also aware that going to college and getting a degree would help fulfil their dreams. Participants also shared their experience regarding the parental support they receive towards their future goals and aspirations.

There is a growing body of scholarship on arts-based methods in social work practice, theory, education and research. This article focuses on social work education and the use of a methodology called Visual Thinking Strategies (VTS) where students learn by looking at artwork and discussing what they observe with peers. The article draws on the literature to consider how this approach that has been incorporated into medical, nursing, some allied health and inter-professional educational settings could be integrated into social work courses to support skills-based competency, critical inquiry and creativity. Links discovered between VTS, critical inquiry and visual literacy highlight the relevance, and the potential of this methodology to advance social work students’ skills in observing, processing and communicating reasoning to peers in situations of ambiguity, which are critical for assessment and decision making in their future practice. The article highlights the need for research to evaluate the use of VTS in the context of art-based pedagogies in social work.

Embracing the spirits of managerialism, the Department of Social Welfare of Hong Kong adopted the Lump Sum Grant Subvention System (LSGSS) to fund service organisations whilst granting them management autonomy. Social worker turnover rates have increased since the new system was introduced, and the study examines how organisational management practices affect social worker turnovers. We found that starting salaries of social workers and income inequality between social workers and managers affect the odds of emerging social worker turnover. Meanwhile, hiring practices that replace social worker positions with lower-paid jobs and lack of peer support in larger service organisations increase the odds of both emerging and severe turnovers of social workers.

Under the LSGSS, service organisations could adopt flexible employment terms to hire social workers, but there needs to be an adequate bottom line for the minimum salary of social workers and upper limits of salaries of the management staff. Service organisations under the LSGSS also need to restrain from replacing social worker positions with lower-paid job titles in the name of cost control. Organisations should as well invest in team building activities for social workers, especially in larger organisations, to facilitate peer support and an intimate organisational culture.

The study indicated that professional identity was indirectly related to turnover intention mediated by job burnout; professional identity was not significantly related to turnover intention amongst social workers holding a social work degree, whilst the significant relationship could be found amongst their counterparts in China. The results provide possible new methods for solving the turnover problem of social workers. First, some measures should be taken to promote professional identity as well as reduce job burnout. Social work educators should give great priority to the development of professional identity in education and training. The government and social work organisation managers should listen to the voice, respect the opinions and take into account the concerns of social workers. Social work organisation managers should create a supportive working climate to reduce job burnout. Social workers should be trained to strengthen their self-care skills to resist job burnout. Second, a formal social work education should guide social work students to realise the gap between professional identity and other conflicting values to better prepare them for professional practice.

Social workers in Canada are experiencing insecure employment and difficulties in practice during the COVID-19 pandemic.

‘SW 2020 under COVID-19’ is a free online magazine. It was established as a forum for people to raise issues connected to social work and COVID-19. It ran for five editions during the first UK lockdown (from March to July 2020). In that time, it published 100 articles authored by people with lived experience, practitioners, students and academics. It contained a far higher proportion of submissions from the first three groups of contributors than traditional journals, and attracted submissions from all four countries in the UK, as well as a number of international submissions. This journal article is based on an analysis of the content of those 100 articles. The analysis provides insights into some of the key questions around policy and practice changes connected to social work during this period. These questions include:

• What were the key challenges for those providing and receiving social work services under COVID-19?

• What were the key policy and practice developments and their implications, both positive and negative?

• What was the experience of living, and of bereavement, during this time?

And, what does the upsurge in social work activism during this time herald for social work’s future?