Constructions of young migrants’ situations in kinship care in a Swedish suburb by social workers in a non-governmental organisation mentoring programme

2020 ◽  
Vol 19 (5-6) ◽  
pp. 901-916
Author(s):  
Maria Moberg Stephenson ◽  
Åsa Källström
Keyword(s):  
Social Work ◽  
Young People ◽  
Social Workers ◽  
Kinship Care ◽  
Work Practice ◽  
Social Work Practice ◽  
Structured Interviews ◽  
Policy Documents ◽  
The Social ◽  
Youth Centre

Young migrants defined as ‘unaccompanied’ tend to be constructed as a homogeneous group with specific vulnerabilities and strengths in social work practice. ‘Unaccompanied’ young migrants placed in kinship care in Sweden are constructed with further vulnerabilities. Such constructions of these young people and their situations may have consequences for how social support for them is designed. The aim of this study is to explore how the social workers employed at a non-governmental organisation mentoring programme construct young migrants’ situations in kinship care in a Swedish suburb, and if and how these constructions change during the course of the programme. Methods used are semi-structured interviews with the social workers at the youth centre where the mentoring work takes place and analysis of the non-governmental organisation’s policy documents. The results consist of three constructions of situations the young people are in: (1) loneliness and (a lack of) support in the kinship homes; (2) alienation in the local neighbourhood and the kinship home and (3) social, cultural and family contexts creating a sense of safety. The results show variation in how the mentors describe each situation with both vulnerabilities and strengths. This highlights a complexity in the constructions that contests the image of young migrants in kinship care as merely vulnerable. These results reveal consideration of individual differences and contexts, and are used to discuss how people’s struggles and resources can be dealt with in social work.

scholarly journals The Use of Metaphor as an Important Tool for Understanding Oppression

2019 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Susan Hillock
Keyword(s):  
Social Work ◽  
Social Workers ◽  
Work Practice ◽  
Social Work Practice ◽  
Structured Interviews ◽  
Qualitative Research Design ◽  
The Social ◽  
Research Findings ◽  
Written Assignments ◽  
Systems Of Domination

Using an anti-oppressive practice (AOP) theoretical framework and an exploratory qualitative research design, featuring semi-structured interviews and written assignments, a group of ten social workers were asked to describe their understandings of the concept of oppression. The study found that, in the case of these particular social workers, they used metaphor as a key conceptualization process to more vividly describe and understand the concept of oppression within their social work practice. This article analyzes eight categories of metaphor themes the participants used to explain their understanding of oppression: (a) pressure; (b) earth; (c) quest; (d) nature of society;  (e) seeing; (f) building; (g) dancing; and (h) water. The research findings are intended to open up dialogue and thinking about the concept of oppression, increase our knowledge base and understandings of oppression within social work practice, and assist the social work profession to build a stronger conceptual framework for understanding and naming oppression with the end goal of assisting social workers to better respond to and resist systems of domination.

Holding and Sharing Memories: The Significance of Social Work Recording for Birth Record Counselling

2005 ◽  
Vol 29 (4) ◽  
pp. 57-67 ◽  
Author(s):  
Julia Gannon
Keyword(s):  
Social Work ◽  
Social Workers ◽  
Work Practice ◽  
Social Work Practice ◽  
Specific Information ◽  
Structured Interviews ◽  
Birth Record ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of ◽  
Search For Information

Julia Gannon explores the findings of a study into the recording style and content of adoption files and the influences of these on the birth record counsellor's decision-making process. Her article focuses on the specific information shared or not shared with the adopted adult. It asserts that birth record counselling is one of the few tasks that propel the social worker back into the history of social work practice while simultaneously supporting service users through their search for information about their birth history and adoption. There is an emphasis on assessing how serviceable the recording style and content of adoption files are for adoptees. The research design involved semi-structured interviews with eight social workers currently holding birth record counselling cases. Four of the respondents were employed in local authority adoption teams and four were independent self-employed social workers in the field of adoption. The author's findings suggest that the knowledge birth record counsellors' gain from adoptees about how they experience their files has potential for practical application to social work practice in children and families teams today.

scholarly journals “It’s about the most needy children”: A Foucauldian analysis of school social workers’ responses to need in post-earthquake Canterbury

2020 ◽  
Vol 32 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Raewyn Tudor
Keyword(s):  
Social Work ◽  
Social Workers ◽  
Work Practice ◽  
School Social Work ◽  
Social Work Practice ◽  
School Social Workers ◽  
Children And Families ◽  
Structured Interviews ◽  
The Social ◽  
Foucauldian Analysis

INTRODUCTION: After the 2011 Canterbury earthquake, the provision of school social work was extended into a larger number of schools in the greater Christchurch region to support discussions of their practice priorities and responses in post-earthquake schools.FINDINGS: Two main interpretations of need are reflected in the school social workers’ accounts of their work with children and families. Firstly, hardship-focused need, which represented children as adversely influenced by their home circumstances; the interventions were primarily with parents. These families were mainly from schools in low socioeconomic areas. Secondly, anxiety-based need, a newer practice response, which emphasised children who were considered particularly susceptible to the impacts of the disaster event. This article considers how these practitioners conceptualised and responded to the needs of the children and their families in this context.METHOD: A qualitative study examining recovery policy and school social work practice following the earthquakes including 12 semi-structured interviews with school social workers. This article provides a Foucauldian analysis of the social worker participants’ perspectives on emotional and psychological issues for children, particularly those from middle-class families; the main interventions were direct therapeutic work with children themselves. Embedded within these practice accounts are moments in which the social workers contested the predominant, individualising conceptualisations of need to enable more open-ended, negotiable, interconnected relationships in post-earthquake schools.IMPLICATIONS: In the aftermath of disasters, school social workers can reflect on their preferred practice responses and institutional influences in schools to offer children and families opportunities to reject the prevalent norms of risk and vulnerability.

Purchasing Power and Self-Determination: Social Worker Perspectives

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charlotte Bailey ◽  
Debbie Plath ◽  
Alankaar Sharma
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Social Work ◽  
Social Workers ◽  
Work Practice ◽  
Social Work Practice ◽  
Self Determination ◽  
Purchasing Power ◽  
Service Users ◽  
Structured Interviews ◽  
Management Approaches

Abstract The international policy trend towards personalised budgets, which is designed to offer people with disabilities purchasing power to choose services that suit them, is exemplified in the Australian National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS). This article examines how the ‘purchasing power’ afforded to service users through individualised budgets impacts on social work practice and the choice and self-determination of NDIS service users. Social workers’ views were sought on the alignment between the NDIS principles of choice and control and social work principles of participation and self-determination and how their social work practice has changed in order to facilitate client access to supports through NDIS budgets and meaningful participation in decision-making. A survey was completed by forty-five social workers, and in-depth semi-structured interviews were conducted with five of these participants. The findings identify how social workers have responded to the shortfalls of the NDIS by the following: interpreting information for clients; assisting service users to navigate complex service provision systems; supporting clients through goal setting, decision-making and implementation of action plans; and adopting case management approaches. The incorporation of social work services into the NDIS service model is proposed in order to facilitate meaningful choice and self-determination associated with purchasing power.

Ethnic Minority and Majority Social Workers Working with Ethnic Minority Clients: Culture-Bound Professional Interventions and Burnout among Arab and Jewish Israeli Social Workers

2021 ◽  
pp. 104973152110494
Author(s):  
Eugene Tartakovsky
Keyword(s):  
Social Work ◽  
Ethnic Minority ◽  
Social Workers ◽  
Ethnic Minorities ◽  
Work Practice ◽  
Social Work Practice ◽  
Personal Accomplishment ◽  
The Social ◽  
Majority Culture ◽  
Professional Interventions

Purpose This study tests a new bicultural model of social work with ethnic minority clients. We examined how often social workers applied professional interventions rooted in the minority and majority cultures and how the choice of interventions affected the social workers' burnout. Methods: The study was conducted in Israel, and the research samples included Arab ( n = 300) and Jewish ( n = 210) social workers. Results: We found that Arab and Jewish social workers more often used interventions rooted in the minority than in the majority culture. More frequent application of both types of interventions was associated with a higher level of personal accomplishment in both groups of social workers. However, the connection between interventions rooted in the majority culture and burnout was positive among Jewish and negative among Arab social workers. Discussion: The implementation of the obtained results in social work practice with ethnic minorities is discussed.

3. Social work with individuals and families

2015 ◽  
pp. 34-57
Author(s):  
Sally Holland ◽  
Jonathan Scourfield
Keyword(s):  
Social Work ◽  
Social Context ◽  
Social Workers ◽  
Social Worker ◽  
Therapeutic Intervention ◽  
Case Manager ◽  
Work Practice ◽  
Social Work Practice ◽  
Working Relationship ◽  
The Social

Much professional social work practice is carried out with individuals and their families. Social workers aim to attend to the person’s social context rather than only the specific problem being presented, and they work in a manner that is relationship-based. It is also generally accepted that using a strengths-based model approach produces a more productive working relationship. ‘Social work with individuals and families’ considers the origins of social work; the different ways of directly providing practical help or therapeutic intervention to individuals and families; how the social worker as case manager will be responsible for overall planning, co-ordination, and reviewing service provision; and how social work has become more client-centred and citizen-directed.

Social Work and Its Complexity in Aotearoa New Zealand

2020 ◽  
pp. 16-36
Author(s):  
Shahul Hameed ◽  
Anthony Raman
Keyword(s):  
Social Work ◽  
New Zealand ◽  
Social Workers ◽  
Work Practice ◽  
Social Work Practice ◽  
Aotearoa New Zealand ◽  
The People ◽  
The Social ◽  
Chaotic Nature ◽  
Developed World

The Social workers need to call on a broad range of sources of bodies of knowledge and respond to the complexity and its chaotic nature of situations arising in social work profession. There appears to be dire need to consider the use of (a) the theoretical knowledge into practice by being more caring and supportive with the aim of (b) disentangling the various elements of a complex system and enhancing the resilience both of the people involved and the social and organizational systems that they are inter-twined with people lives. The current acknowledgement of the bi-cultural framework by the Aotearoa New Zealand Association of Social Workers (ANZASW) is no doubt a positive move towards infusing indigenous practice frame work into dealing with the chaotic nature and complexity of the social work profession in New Zealand but still remains to be seen in actual social work practice .The purpose of this chapter is to attempt to explore the potential of infusing Indigenous bodies of knowledge into practice against the background of the complexity nature of the social work profession in a developed world like New Zealand.

Managing Risk in the Pro-Empowerment Era of Mental Health Care: A Cross-Cultural Study of Social Work Perspectives in Hong Kong and Sydney

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jialiang Cui ◽  
Limin Mao ◽  
Christy E Newman ◽  
Chi Kin Kwan ◽  
Kari Lancaster
Keyword(s):  
Mental Health ◽  
Risk Management ◽  
Hong Kong ◽  
Social Work ◽  
Social Workers ◽  
Cultural Influences ◽  
Work Practice ◽  
Social Work Practice ◽  
Structured Interviews ◽  
Assessment Guidelines

Abstract Risk management and empowerment have become key features of social work practice. Despite their increasing salience, relatively little is known about the perspectives of mental health social workers regarding how they navigate competing risk management approaches in modern practice that supports empowerment. The socio-cultural influences on risk management have also received insufficient attention in social work research. Focusing on these issues, this paper explored the perspectives of social workers in two geographically and culturally distinctive settings (i.e., Hong Kong and Sydney). Data were collected through semi-structured interviews with frontline social workers and were analysed using thematic analysis. Similar views were expressed by participants in both settings regarding assessment of clients’ readiness for risk-taking. Differences were identified in their practices of negotiating the perspectives of other key stakeholders and can be attributed to the influences of distinctive cultural and socio-political contexts. These insights may contribute to the development of more systematic, localised and practice-based risk assessment guidelines for mental health practitioners working towards the empowerment of clients.

Rationale for Innovation, Intrapreneurship, and Entrepreneurship in Social Work Practice

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Monica Nandan ◽  
Gokul Mandayam
Keyword(s):  
Social Work ◽  
Social Workers ◽  
Work Practice ◽  
Social Work Practice ◽  
Social Value ◽  
Complex Dynamic ◽  
Sustaining Change ◽  
The Social

Social workers possess several skills, values, and perspectives that enable them to practice as social innovators, intrapreneurs, and entrepreneurs. Given the complex, dynamic, and challenging contexts for social work practice, these strategies become essential for social workers to continue creating social value and good. The article defines these strategies, describes the rationale for social workers to practice in a socially innovative, intrapreneurial, or entrepreneurial fashion, draws parallels between these strategies and social work practice, and builds a case for the social work curriculum to include contents related to these strategies to assist graduates in creating and sustaining change.

The Migrant Family: Some comments on Social Work Practice with non-English speaking migrants.

1976 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 35-43 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joan Snyder
Keyword(s):  
Social Change ◽  
Social Work ◽  
Social Workers ◽  
Social Worker ◽  
Work Practice ◽  
Social Work Practice ◽  
Central Focus ◽  
The Social ◽  
Migrant Family ◽  
English Speaking

The description of the P. family — their anxieties, hardships and frustrations will be a familiar story to social workers working with non-English speaking migrant clients, regardless of whether the social worker is employed by ethnic or sectarian agencies or the wider general agencies such as government departments, municipal councils or independent organizations. This attempts to investigate some of the ways in which social workers can attempt to help and support the migrant client from a different ethnic group in his struggle to create a new life in Australia. The P. family's story will be used to illustrate some of the major areas of difficulty faced by a migrant family and a number of social work roles and strategies are suggested which might be employed in seeking to bring about social change. The implications of ethnicity for social work practice in a multi-cultural society form a central focus of concern. Finally, general comments and suggestions will be made about the role and responsibilities of the social worker in the multi-cultural society.

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