Volume 54, Issue 4, June 2024

Ecosocial work examines and prioritises interconnections between the environment and social justice. This article suggests that ecosocial work should work to stop practices that simultaneously harm the environment and marginalised people around the world. Using examples from the military, prisons and disadvantaged communities, we show how both the environment and communities suffer at the hands of oppressive systems such as racism that influence institutions such as government and culture. We offer that ecosocial work and abolitionism (dismantling institutions that cause and sustain inequality and imagining and building new alternatives) have shared goals and complementary strengths and need to work together. To create a fairer world, we need to think of how systems of power and oppression that negatively impact both the environment and marginalised people can be challenged and disrupted. We end by encouraging social work researchers, educators and practitioners to incorporate abolitionist ideas into their work.

Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer or questioning (LGBTQ+) young people are more likely to be placed in foster and residential care. They also have worse physical and mental health than their peers. Even so, there is very little research about their lives in residential social care, and no previous published UK studies about them. This study addresses this gap and included significant involvement of LGBTQ+ young people with social care experiences. We interviewed twenty young people who were between sixteen and twenty-four years old, live in England, and have a broad range of LGBTQ+ identities. When analysed thematically, we found four themes: widespread discrimination; unmet health needs; the importance of some professional relationships and substantial resilience. Some groups of young people had greater challenges, such as those from racialised backgrounds. From the findings, we developed an explanatory model showing how there may be an interaction of influences creating an (un)supportive residential care environment. Although developed in the context of residential care, this model may be useful for other types of social care and we provide recommendations for social care policy and practice.

Research on the development of a positive living group climate in residential youth care focuses on the interpersonal relationships between the professionals and the youngsters who are placed out-of-home. We explore how the pedagogical climate might also take into account how youngsters practise and experience their relationships outside the residential youth care facility, for example, at school, in their family relationships and in leisure time activities. Residential youth care is not an isolated island but is part of a wider social living environment in which youngsters navigate through different places and build meaningful relationships with others. We carried out observations and interviews with professionals and youngsters in a residential youth care facility to explore the meaning of what happens at these places for the pedagogical climate. We introduce the concept of a citizenship climate in residential youth care to capture the synergy between residential youth care and the wider social living environment.

This article explores the life stories of young adults who grew up in care in Eastern Europe. Through the process of reflecting on these experiences, participants identified essential times in their lives that impacted them. The study participants’ common themes include poverty, child abuse, important relationships and moving on from care as a young adult. The findings suggest that many of the care leavers interviewed recount some positive experiences of their time in the orphanage.

Unlocking the relationship between religiosity and parenting practices in non-Western and non-Christian cultures, a study of 502 Israeli mothers from diverse ethnonational groups and religious backgrounds (31.6 per cent Jewish, 36.0 per cent Muslims, 16.8 per cent Christians and 15.6 per cent Druze) reveals the impact of religion on maternal use of psychological control and disciplinary methods. Our new study delves into the relationship between religiosity and maternal use of psychological control and punitive discipline in Israel. The findings reveal the significance and positive correlation between religiosity and parenting practices. We uncover the differences in parenting styles between Jewish and Arab mothers and see the role that religion plays in shaping family functioning. The results of our comprehensive research are based on a structured, anonymous self-report questionnaire survey. Intervention and prevention efforts aim to abolish maternal psychological control and punitive discipline should consider the variation between parents’ cultural and religious values, in order to design culturally sensitive and effective interventions.

Youth and parent voice have been encouraged to be included in making decisions about child welfare (CW) reform. However, few practice or policy initiatives have included these key actors. Additionally, few initiatives have levelled hierarchies by including youth, family and CW professional voices alongside one another. This study integrated these perspectives through an arts-based inquiry that utilised individual and relational poems to generate youth and professional recommendations for a transformed CW system that better supported youth. Thematic analysis was used to investigate the poems and sought to answer a research question: How can CW systems be reimagined to support young people in FC towards thriving through positive experiences and outcomes? The thematic analysis identified four themes including: Relationship-Building Is Central to Supporting Youth in Foster Care; Views on the Purpose of Child Welfare Systems Were Complex, Fragmented and In Flux; Experiences with the Foster Care System Elicited Emotional Responses from Young People and Professionals; and Actions to Support Youth Were Frequent, Varied, and Prescriptive. Results demonstrate needed changes to the CW system that support youth by centring relationship-building, empowering youth self-determination, and developing practices that build resilience for youth and professionals.

Our study is based on ten in-depth interviews with child protection social workers. We focus on the significance of the process of collecting and interpreting information from other professionals (boundary work), information which contributes to the social workers’ assessments and decision making. We found that despite the efforts made by the social workers to obtain and understand knowledge from other professionals, this knowledge transfer had limitations. These limitations can weaken the foundation upon which decisions in child protection services are made. We suggest that: (i) child protection services pay more attention to the boundary work; at the organisational level by facilitating collaboration between organisations and at the individual level by enhancing the social workers’ interpersonal collaborations skills and (ii) child protection research should include boundary work as an influencing factor on the decision-making process.

This study examines the association between parenting practices and child quality of life and the potential mediating effect of child self-esteem between the above-mentioned relationships. Our findings show that positive and negative parenting practices and child self-esteem are all associated with child’s quality of life. Moreover, the mediating role of child self-esteem has been identified in this study, indicating that a higher level of child self-esteem can strengthen the positive effects of positive parenting practices and alleviate the negative effects of negative parenting practices on child quality of life.

Understanding the capacity of child welfare (CW) organisations to deal with child abuse is complex. Sweden occupies a unique position in trying to balance high demands for CW and protection with a strong family support focus, which carries a risk of overlooking children in need of protection. This article explores the handling of child abuse cases by examining conditions affecting discretion and strategies for investigating child abuse, including police reporting. Analysis of interviews with Swedish supervising social workers showed that staff’s conceptions of the CW system influenced the handling, leading to different strategies for dealing with child abuse. This resulted in different practices and potentially unequal access to child protection and support, underscoring the importance of being particularly vigilant about discretion when both children and parents are considered clients: the child risks being lost as a subject with individual needs and rights. This article concludes that the interplay between knowledge and governance is central to equal child protection.

We conducted a qualitative research study to understand the attitudes of mothers of children with developmental disabilities (MCDDs) towards social support systems and the issues they experience on a daily basis. We recruited and interviewed ten mothers in Istanbul, Türkiye. Our findings reveal that mothers face a wide range of difficulties, such as mental health issues, social isolation and limited support from close family members and the Turkish government. Most importantly, they are deprived of employment and education opportunities. Our findings have crucial implications for research, policy and practice in social work. In recent years, Türkiye has begun investing in new social programmes and services. We hope that our findings help policymakers understand the short- and long-term challenges and ensure that upcoming programmes meet MCDD’s unique needs. The social work profession in Türkiye has a crucial role in advocating and providing services to ease mothers' difficulties. Interventions need to be at all levels to ensure that the holistic needs of MCDD are met.

One important task of social workers is to assist service users in taking up their social rights, but little is known about how social workers act as take-up advocates in their practice. This article reports on a study that examined how social workers engage in take-up advocacy and how they perceive its nature and goals. This study drew on interviews with forty social workers employed by an Israeli programme in which take-up advocacy was a core role. We found that the social workers adopted a holistic approach to take-up advocacy, emphasising the emotional and relational aspects of this process. They used it to pursue a wide range of goals and thought it was crucial to engage in take-up together with service users and not instead of them. Standing with, and not speaking for, was seen as an important characteristic of take-up advocacy. The social workers also described take-up advocacy as an emotional and therapeutic intervention. We concluded that the social workers adopted a unique care-oriented take-up advocacy model, representing an interesting alternative to the traditional legally oriented model.

This article asks questions about how mental capacity is best theorised for social work assessment and finds that it is a complex and disputed concept best understood using a ‘Social Model’ which situates it as a property of an individual’s relationships. Assessments are understood as a joint endeavour to which the quality of the relationship between assessor and assessed is of central importance. The present legal framework disincentivises but does not prevent capacity assessment based on a social model. Further research might identify ways in which assessment could further enhance the autonomy of the people involved. These findings have implications for social work research and education.

Whilst there is consensus that disabled people face substantial barriers to securing and maintaining paid employment, the nature of those barriers is debated between two key models: the individualised and social. We examine how Israeli social workers providing employment-related services are positioned in this debate. According to our findings, social workers tend to view disability as an individual matter, and accordingly address individual barriers to employment. Social barriers are usually discussed in terms of employers’ attitudes. Furthermore, social workers rarely apply legal tools such as antidiscrimination legislation. In discussing these findings, we emphasise the importance of social work education and social workers’ organisational context.

This article discusses the challenges of researching culturally sensitive subjects, such as spirituality and mental health, and the value of inviting participants at the recruitment stage, to bring to the interview a self-selected object that had some meaning for them in relation to spirituality. The study interviewed mental health service users and mental health social workers about their perceptions of the relationship between spirituality and mental health and how, if at all, spirituality is included in their practice. This article considers the ways in which the object contributed to the interview process and developed from being an interview aide to being a method in its own right. The discussion also considers when participants chose not to bring an object and the ways in which exploring this further enhanced their understanding about spirituality in both service users and social workers’ lives.

The use of temporary agency workers (TAWs) in social services has become widespread in Sweden and other countries. There are concerns that this use has negative consequences, but we have little knowledge about how and for what TAWs are used. This article focuses on how TAWs are utilised in the PSS and the impact this has on (i) the preconditions for TAWs and (ii) the work environment for permanent employees. The results show that TAWs are contracted to do the same type of statutory social work as permanent social workers, but they are often given the most complicated cases and cases with tight deadlines. Due to the demands of expedient case administration, the supportive aspects of social work are sometimes deprioritised in their work. Permanent staff report that the use of TAWs can help relieve their workload and provide new knowledge, but it also has negative effects on work development, group dynamics and causes additional work. TAWs are often hired during times of crisis, have little or no introduction and are frequently excluded from meetings and social activities. The strained situations in which TAWs are hired to help remedy may paradoxically hinder favourable usage.

This article first analyses China’s political ideology and socio-cultural values and examines the evolving professional identity of Chinese social work. It then extends the theoretical debate on universalisation–indigenisation occupying the international and Chinese social work community through the lens of culturalism. Finally, it shows the way in which contemporary social work in China has evolved from an interplay of internal forces, especially the central government taking political control through social policy to regulate the profession, and external universalising project, such as the international definition of social work and global education standards. It argues that Chinese social work has become a blend of Western and indigenised knowledge still in search of a unique identity.

This study indicates that in the Chinese context, work–family conflict is a prominent issue faced by social workers and can further lead to their turnover by adversely affecting their psychological sense of belonging to the organisation. As such, specific strategies should be adopted to help social workers to ease work–family conflicts and increase their sense of identification and belonging to their organisations, thus effectively addressing the issue of staff turnover in Chinese social work organisations.

Adult social work practice in England has been subject to multiple forms of regulation to ensure quality of services. Whilst national bodies previously undertook top-down inspections, in 2011, the policy shifted to network approaches and local accountability. Within this new sector-led improvement, peer challenges were promoted as an effective means for identifying opportunities to improve practice. Peer challenge is a process of engaging with a wide range of stakeholders and experienced peers from relevant service areas to offer an objective review of service. There is little evidence though, on whether peer challenges contribute towards improving adult social work practice. We adopted a mixed-methods research design to examine the contribution of peer challenges and the processes involved through which these contributions may be achieved. Our findings show that in the short term, peer challenges have benefits including, an understanding of the internal practice and external contexts, strengths and limitations of social work practice, and the perspectives of external peers on opportunities to improve practice. The design, commitment to transparency and trust by all parties enables honest reflection and a shared learning experience. To understand long-term impacts, we suggest establishing formal follow-up processes together with developing key baseline indicators to track impacts.

This article investigates how child welfare social workers have assessed the leadership of their first-line managers over a period of fifteen years. Questionnaires were collected in the same geographical areas in 2003, 2014 and 2018. The results show that child welfare social workers assessed the leadership of their first-line managers as increasingly empowering, supportive and fair over the years. In light of previous studies showing that child welfare managers experience less optimal conditions for their leadership, the results are surprising. How is it possible that the first-line managers, despite their own descriptions of a more difficult leadership situation, are seen as more supportive, empowering and fair in their leadership from the social workers’ perspective? Potential explanations as to why assessments have improved are discussed.

Reflexivity is an important component of rigorous, high-quality social work research. However, conceptual frameworks to support reflexivity in social work research projects have been under-developed. This article advances a Critical Reflexive Framework (CRF) underpinned by concepts of identity, translocational positionality and epistemic privilege to further enable reflexivity in social work research. We argue for its widespread adoption to enhance rigour, integrity and quality of social work research.