scholarly journals ENHANCING THE WELLBEING OF DIVORCED PERSONS THROUGH SOCIAL WORK SERVICES: SERVICE-USERS’ EXPERIENCES AND SUGGESTIONS

2021 ◽  
Vol 57 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Rembuluwani Mbedzi ◽  
Heiletje Marili Williams
Keyword(s):  
Social Work ◽  
Service Users

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.

Conclusion

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Liz Beddoe ◽  
Allen Bartley
Keyword(s):  
Social Work ◽  
Social Workers ◽  
Good Practice ◽  
Active Role ◽  
Service Users ◽  
The Social ◽  
Country Specific

This chapter summarises the recurring themes and lessons from the preceding substantive chapters and reflects upon their implications. It draws together the different issues, laws and culture in social work across the five countries examined, and compares the country-specific challenges raised in the chapters. The editors make recommendations for how the social work profession can take a more active role in the transition of Transnational Social Workers, and highlight good practice in preceding chapters. Finally, they comment on the need for more research in the area, including with service users.

scholarly journals From clients as fellow citizens to service users as co-producers of social work

Social Work ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 141-156
Author(s):  
Peter Beresford ◽  
Suzy Croft
Keyword(s):  
Risk Assessment ◽  
Social Work ◽  
Probation Officers ◽  
Service Users ◽  
Work Skills ◽  
Youth Justice ◽  
Income Security ◽  
Social Work Training ◽  
Work Training ◽  
Probation Service

Social work training remained the required pattern for probation officers for the first half of the last fifty years. With the abandonment of that link probation has gradually shifted its focus from ‘advise assist and befriend’ to surveillance and risk assessment. With that shift has come incoherence in management and organisation culminating in the disaster of Transforming Rehabilitation, the flagship reform introducing the private sector and payment by results. The policy on adult offenders is contrasted with the relative success of the Youth justice Board.Despite the absence of relationships from probation service publicity material, social work skills are required to engage with the issues of housing, employment and income security which blight lives of offenders after discharge.

scholarly journals Social services departments: success or failure?

Social Work ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 21-36
Author(s):  
Terry Bamford
Keyword(s):  
Social Work ◽  
Financial Crisis ◽  
Local Government ◽  
Social Security ◽  
Social Services ◽  
Care Management ◽  
Community Care ◽  
Service Users ◽  
Child Deaths ◽  
Security Funds

Social Services departments, created after the 1970 Local Authority Social Services Act, survived for nearly half a century. Their ability to meet the vision set out in the Seebohm Report was compromised by curtailment of expansion after the financial crisis in 1975. Their reputation was damaged by a number of widely reported child deaths in which social work was seen as passive and ineffective. Severe criticism followed when they were viewed as over active as in Cleveland and Orkney. As a result social services were seen as toxic in deprived communities. Despite winning responsibility for community care in the 1990 NHS and Community Care Act, departments suffered, first, from the requirement to spend the bulk of transferred social security funds in the independent sector and secondly from the prolonged squeeze on local government spending. The potential of care management for innovation and empowering service users was never fully realised.

scholarly journals What do social work students think social work research is?

2016 ◽  
Vol 24 (2) ◽  
pp. 19-26
Author(s):  
Anita Gibbs
Keyword(s):  
Social Justice ◽  
Social Work ◽  
New Zealand ◽  
Work Values ◽  
Research Training ◽  
Social Work Students ◽  
Service Users ◽  
Research Project ◽  
Social Work Research ◽  
Social Work Values

In New Zealand, social work students often undertake social work research training as part of their first qualification in social work. The focus of this article is to consider what social work students think social work research is and whether they think social work research should be part of normal, everyday practice or not. Forty-three social work students from Otago University participated in a small research project during 2009 aimed at exploring their constructions of social work research. They emphasised that social work research should be compatible with social work values like empowerment and social justice, and bring about positive change of benefit of service users. 

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