scholarly journals ‘Rising demand and decreasing resources’: Theorising the ‘cost of austerity’ as a barrier to social worker discretion

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-18
Author(s):  
CIARÁN MURPHY
Keyword(s):  
Social Worker ◽  
Child Protection ◽  
Child Protection Services ◽  
Radical Reform ◽  
Critical Realist ◽  
Documentary Analysis ◽  
Effective System ◽  
The Individual ◽  
The Uk ◽  
The Cost

Abstract The Munro Review of Child Protection asserted that the English child protection system had become overly ‘defensive’, ‘bureaucratised’ and ‘standardised’, meaning that social workers were not employing their discretion in the interests of the individual child. This paper reports on the results of an ethnographic case study of one of England’s statutory child protection teams. The research sought to explore the extent of social worker discretion relative to Munro’s call for ‘radical reform’ and a move towards a more ‘child-centred’ system. Employing an iterative mixed methods design – encompassing documentary analysis, observation, focus group, questionnaire, interview and ‘Critical Realist Grounded Theory’ – the study positioned the UK Government’s prolonged policy of ‘austerity’ as a barrier to social worker discretion. This was because the policy was seen to be contributing to an increased demand for child protection services; and a related sense amongst practitioners that they were afforded insufficient time with the child to garner the requisite knowledge, necessary for discretionary behaviour. Ultimately, despite evidence of progress relative to assertions that social worker discretion had been eroded, the paper concludes that there may still be ‘more to do’ if we are to achieve the ‘child-centred’ and ‘effective’ system that Munro advocated.

scholarly journals Cost of depression among adults in England in 2000

2003 ◽  
Vol 183 (6) ◽  
pp. 514-519 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christine M. Thomas ◽  
Stephen Morris
Keyword(s):  
Service Use ◽  
Working Life ◽  
Sickness Benefit ◽  
Community Based ◽  
Total Cost ◽  
Awareness Campaigns ◽  
Recorded Data ◽  
The Individual ◽  
The Uk ◽  
The Cost

BackgroundThe cost of depression in the UK was estimated at £33.5 billion almost: adecade ago. The shift to community-based management for depression alongside the availability of more accurate data have allowed these estimates to be revised.AimsTo calculate the total cost of depression in adults in England during 2000.MethodRecorded data on health service use by patients with depression were analysed and the cost of treating patients was calculated. The cost of working life lost was estimated from sickness benefit claims and the number of registered deaths of patients with depression.ResultsThe total cost of adult depression was estimated at over £9 billion, of which £370 million represents direct treatment costs. There were 109.7 million working days lost and 2615 deaths due to depression in 2000.ConclusionsDespite awareness campaigns and the availability of effective treatments, depression remains a considerable burden on both society and the individual, especially in terms of incapacity to work.

scholarly journals Cost of depression among adults in England in 2000

2003 ◽  
Vol 183 (06) ◽  
pp. 514-519 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christine M. Thomas ◽  
Stephen Morris
Keyword(s):  
Service Use ◽  
Working Life ◽  
Sickness Benefit ◽  
Community Based ◽  
Total Cost ◽  
Awareness Campaigns ◽  
Recorded Data ◽  
The Individual ◽  
The Uk ◽  
The Cost

BackgroundThe cost of depression in the UK was estimated at £33.5 billion almost: adecade ago. The shift to community-based management for depression alongside the availability of more accurate data have allowed these estimates to be revised.AimsTo calculate the total cost of depression in adults in England during 2000.MethodRecorded data on health service use by patients with depression were analysed and the cost of treating patients was calculated. The cost of working life lost was estimated from sickness benefit claims and the number of registered deaths of patients with depression.ResultsThe total cost of adult depression was estimated at over £9 billion, of which £370 million represents direct treatment costs. There were 109.7 million working days lost and 2615 deaths due to depression in 2000.ConclusionsDespite awareness campaigns and the availability of effective treatments, depression remains a considerable burden on both society and the individual, especially in terms of incapacity to work.

scholarly journals Børns tarv og børns ret: Varetages de nødvendige hensyn til barnet i børneforsorgssager?

2006 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 39-57 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tine Egelund
Keyword(s):  
Child Protection ◽  
Child Support ◽  
Child Neglect ◽  
Best Interest ◽  
Protective Services ◽  
Child Protection Services ◽  
Rights Of The Child ◽  
Legal Restrictions ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Children's Interests

Tine Egelund: Children’s interests and children’s rights: do cases about child support take necessary consideration of the child This article questions whether the Child Protective Services Act is in the best interest of the child and respects the rights of the child. The article illustrates the idea of the best interest of the child by reviewing the discourses on children’s needs in the Convention on the rights of the child, Danish legislation on child protection, and research on child neglect and abuse. It is argued that none of these sources offer clear guidelines for practice as to how to take the best interest of the child into consideration. In reality, the best interest of the child is decided by the individual social worker, who works within a framework with few legal restrictions, and whose assessments are based on scanty knowledge. The article demonstrates that children have few and limited rights in Danish legislation, and that the most important decisions about their fate rest on professional assessments, for which there are only few standards. In addition, studies show that the child protection services often violate the few rights that children have.

The experience of transnational social workers in England: some findings from research

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sue Hanna ◽  
Karen Lyons
Keyword(s):  
Social Workers ◽  
Child Protection ◽  
Labour Force ◽  
National Policy ◽  
Salient Feature ◽  
The European Union ◽  
Child Protection Services ◽  
The Public ◽  
Professional Environment ◽  
The Uk

This chapter is based primarily on the findings of a qualitative study conducted over 2011/12, funded by the Nuffield Foundation, which investigated the post-arrival integration, professional practice and development of transnational ‘Social workers’ (TSWs) that is, social workers who trained and qualified outside the UK, but who are now involved in delivering statutory child protection/safeguarding services in London and SE England. These workers are used primarily as a reserve labour force by local authorities to ‘plug gaps’ in statutory child protection services which are frequently characterised by high levels of staff turnover. The experiences of these TSWs are relatively under-researched and, despite austerity measures severely affecting the public social care sector, England remains a receiving country for TSWs, although more frequently now from inside the European Union. The wider national policy context, as presented in the literature, is described and reference is made to relevant findings from other research regarding the experiences of TSWs themselves. Evidence from this study demonstrates the challenges associated with entering a professional environment characterised by a far higher degrees of formalism, regulation and, risk-aversive practice than TSWs have encountered in their home countries. Findings will be discussed thematically and conclusions will be drawn to address how, for TSWs, regulation has come to illustrate the salient feature of statutory child protection social work in England

scholarly journals Emotional Interest Representation and the Politics of Risk in Child Protection

2018 ◽  
Vol 6 (4) ◽  
pp. 73-82 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jo Warner
Keyword(s):  
Child Protection ◽  
Speech Acts ◽  
Political Representation ◽  
Structured Interviews ◽  
Public Speech ◽  
The Public ◽  
Interest Representation ◽  
Documentary Analysis ◽  
The Uk

This article explores the emotional dimensions of political representation by British Members of Parliament (MP) in relation to child protection. The public speech acts and first-hand accounts of three MPs are drawn upon as examples. These highlight different forms of emotional interest representation that arise following the death of a local child from severe abuse or neglect and in response to anxieties in the community about risk. Firstly, I examine the role of the MP in seeking to embody their constituency in the public expression of collective emotional responses and to defend it from feelings of guilt and shame. Personal feelings of guilt and a consciousness of the politician’s role in attributing blame are then considered. Thirdly, I explore the role of the MP as trusted envoy for anxieties about risk to individual children within their constituencies. The article draws on Berezin’s concept of the secure state and Hochschild’s notion of politicians as feeling legislators, and is based on qualitative documentary analysis and semi-structured interviews with MPs. It is argued that the emotional processes outlined are central to understanding the problematic relationship between politics and state social work that fuels the cycle of crisis and reform in children’s services in the UK.

THEORETICAL PRINCIPLES OF FORECASTING THE COST OF A SOFTWARE PRODUCT

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pavlo Rodionov ◽  
◽  
Anna Ploskonos ◽  
Lesya Gavrutenko ◽  
◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Selection Process ◽  
Individual Characteristics ◽  
Successful Implementation ◽  
Software Products ◽  
Software Product ◽  
Continue Research ◽  
Cocomo Model ◽  
Factors Of Influence ◽  
The Individual ◽  
The Cost

The paper analyzes the factors that affect the amount of effort required to create a mobile application and its cost. It is established that the main factors of influence are the design of the application, its functionality, the type of mobile platform, the availability and level of testing and support, as well as the individual characteristics of the developer. Based on the analysis of information sources, the main methods and approaches to forecasting the cost of software products are identified, which include the COCOMO model, Price-to-win method, expert evaluation, algorithmic methods and the method of analogies. It is proposed to consider the method of analogies as a tool that allows you to make predictions about the cost of resources required for the successful implementation of IT projects based on the experience of similar projects. It is proved that the advantages of this method are the simplicity of its implementation and the clarity of the results obtained, which follows from the practical orientation of this tool. Among the limitations of the method of analogy is the mandatory need for reliable data relating to similar projects, as well as the difficulty of taking into account unspecified indicators. Taking into account the mentioned limitations of the method of analogies and on the basis of the analysis of scientific sources the possible directions of its optimization are determined. Thus, among the ways to improve the effectiveness of this method are those aimed at optimizing the project selection process, the data for which are used as a basis for forecasting. Attempts to improve the method of analogies by including parameters that were previously ignored by this technique seem promising. This in turn can lead to an expansion of the scope of the method of analogies and increase the accuracy of forecasts. As prospects for further research, the need to continue research in the field of optimization of the method of analogies with the subsequent practical verification of theoretical positions on the data of real projects.

FUNCTIONING OF THE MENTAL DEFENSES IN THE CONDUCT OF INTERROGATION WITHIN THE CRIMINAL PROCESS

2018 ◽  
Vol 28 (6) ◽  
pp. 2161-2165
Author(s):  
Hristo Ivanov Popnikolov
Keyword(s):  
Objective Assessment ◽  
Critical Conditions ◽  
Criminal Process ◽  
External Influences ◽  
Administration Of Justice ◽  
Individual Protection ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Individual ◽  
The Cost ◽  
Subjective Side

From the subject presented in the report it is evident that the pre-trial and the court bodies may, to some extent, be influenced both by the person of the accused and by his competence to participate in the criminal process. In this regard as an expert, the psychologist can offer invaluable assistance. Each expertise would assist all actors involved in the administration of justice on their objective assessment of the offenders, the understanding of their individual protection and the inherent self-justification during procedural actions. The involvement of psychologists in the criminal process is key to establishing the truth in the investigation, because every crime as an act has a subjective side, expressed in the psychic attitude of the perpetrator to the committed act. Establishing these psychological motives is a key point in the criminal process with a view to establishing the truth.Psychological protection stabilizes the personality in the critical conditions of counteraction, related to the elimination of the experiences of tension, anxiety, stress and frustration, leading to maximum mobilization of its resources and at the same time to their overpayment. Thus, the individual who is the subject of the process action is protected against the adverse external influences, but at the cost of a lot of effort and enormous loss of nervous-mental energy, which increases his own vulnerability instead of contributing to its reduction. The appearance and functioning of psychological protection can be significantly impeded by the interaction of the investigator with the accused. Even more complicated is the situation when it breaks the communication contact that may arise in the psychological alienation and self-isolation of the accused due to the desire to protect himself.Protective psychological dominance is a real psychic activity that investigators, investigators, investigators and judges need to take into account in order to effectively deal with their task and to overcome the resistance of the investigated persons and in a time to prove in a lawful and moral way their guilt and participation in the commitment of the crimes.

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