scholarly journals Law Part of the Framework for Accountability in Policy Interpretation and Practice

2017 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 91
Author(s):  
Vanessa Abbasi ◽  
Karolina Marzieh
Keyword(s):  
Welfare Policy ◽  
Empirical Work ◽  
Work Practice ◽  
Legal Framework ◽  
Social Work Practice ◽  
European Convention ◽  
Ethical Practice ◽  
Academic Environments ◽  
Policy Interpretation ◽  
The Uk

Law can increasingly be seen as part of the framework for accountability in policy interpretation and practice. This is reflected in important judgments in the UK and European context, where courts have been proactive in challenging restrictive interpretations by agencies of their legal duties, or even by parliament in law-making that is incompatible with the European Convention on Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms. Without attention to the practice environment for legal and ethical practice, the role of law in welfare reform will be compromised, however robust the legal framework. Subsequently, empirical work has explored how social workers learn about the law, in both practice and academic environments, and how they use that learning. This paper considers the complex relationships between law, welfare policy and social work practice, to address the question of what role legal frameworks might play in achieving welfare policy and professional practice goals. These debates illustrate is the essentially contested nature of the relationship between law and practice and the delicate balance between law and ethics within a framework for professional accountability. It is hardly surprising, perhaps, that law is often seen by practitioners as alien and hostile territory.

Social workers’ peculiar contribution to ethnographic research

2016 ◽  
Vol 17 (3) ◽  
pp. 452-468 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gerald de Montigny
Keyword(s):  
Social Work ◽  
Social Workers ◽  
Ethic Of Care ◽  
Work Practice ◽  
Social Work Practice ◽  
Ethnographic Research ◽  
Ethical Orientation ◽  
Ethical Practice ◽  
Face To Face ◽  
The Face

Over generations, social workers have borrowed theories from sociology. However, sociologists have generally avoided borrowing theory from social work. By beginning with social work practice wisdom, we can unfold the complex elements organizing social work practice and by extension ethnographic research. Complexity and resulting uncertainty are antidotes for theoretical purity. Practice as grounded in life, that of client’s and social workers is inherently “dirty”, i.e., messy, disorganized, confusing, unfolding, and uncertain. Understandings and practices are accomplished in a connection of self to a profession, agency/organization, mandate and purpose, and ethical orientation, in interaction with colleagues and clients. Social workers take sides as they are grounded in an ethic of care. The challenge of developing an ethical practice in the face of difference, disagreement, disjunction, and conflict lead social workers to bracket, and hence reflect on the putative coherence of a “life world.” Face-to-face work with individuals rather than being a liability provides a source of knowledge and wisdom to inform social science generally.

Between empowerment and discipline: Practicing contractualism in social work

2018 ◽  
Vol 20 (3) ◽  
pp. 321-339
Author(s):  
Ida M Solvang ◽  
Truls I Juritzen
Keyword(s):  
Social Work ◽  
Social Workers ◽  
Welfare Policy ◽  
Work Practice ◽  
Social Work Practice ◽  
Disciplinary Actions ◽  
Contrasting Cases ◽  
Ethical Considerations ◽  
Professional Authority ◽  
Contemporary Development

SummaryAs a contemporary development in welfare policy, contractualism stipulates discretionary rights and obligations for each client, some of whom are quite vulnerable. The contractual design promotes empowerment, but entails sanctions for non-compliance. This article investigates how rationales of empowerment and discipline shape social work practice and uses a Foucauldian governmentality perspective to investigate interrelations between political objectives and individual practices. Two contrasting cases are used to explicate how rationales of empowerment and discipline simultaneously operate in social work within the contractual design.FindingsWith its emphasis on clients’ responsibility and empowerment, contractualism is a subtle yet efficient mode of governance, but disciplinary actions both rely on and undermine objectives of empowerment.ApplicationsSocial workers and clients must manoeuvre complexities as they exert empowering and disciplinary practices. These rationales of governance should be explicit and subject to professional and ethical considerations in the same way as other forms of professional authority directed at reliant, vulnerable clients.

Time and change: UK social work and comparative European welfare policies since 1990

2020 ◽  
pp. 21-42
Author(s):  
Linda Bell
Keyword(s):  
Social Work ◽  
Social Workers ◽  
Work Practice ◽  
Social Work Practice ◽  
Welfare Regimes ◽  
Welfare Policies ◽  
Time Period ◽  
Background History ◽  
The Uk ◽  
Work Education

This chapter gives a brief contextual background history to ‘social work’. It emphasises the years after 1990. This period encompasses many policy and political changes and theoretical developments in the UK and internationally, which affect social work practice and education. This is the time period encapsulating the author's involvement with social workers and social work education. The chapter presents some comparative geographical locations partly to reflect aspects of this involvement with social work and contacts with social work and social workers in those places, as well as to reflect different kinds of welfare regimes and to indicate some different kinds of welfare professionals.

‘I Never Felt like an Illegal Immigrant Until Social Work Turned up at the Hospital’: No Recourse to Public Funds as Necropolitical Exception

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Natalia Farmer
Keyword(s):  
Social Work ◽  
Social Workers ◽  
Third Sector ◽  
Work Practice ◽  
Theoretical Work ◽  
Social Work Practice ◽  
Giorgio Agamben ◽  
Public Funds ◽  
Critical Scrutiny ◽  
The Uk

Abstract This article argues that the notion of ‘illegality’ has become a dominant aspect in social work practice for those who are subject to immigration control and have no recourse to public funds (NRPFs). Drawing together conceptual tools from the theoretical work of Giorgio Agamben and Achille Mbembé, necropolitical exception in social work will be explored to analyse how this has impacted upon racialised bodies within the UK immigration system. The findings presented in this article are based upon Ph.D. research conducted between July 2017 and October 2018 in Glasgow, Scotland, and includes ethnographic qualitative data from case studies with the Asylum Seeker Housing Project. It focuses on interviews that explore the lived experiences of those categorised as ‘illegalised’ migrants to examine the implications of necropolitical exception for those with NRPF, third sector caseworkers and statutory social workers. In framing those with NRPF as ‘illegal’, this article demonstrates that social workers have become drawn into agents of necropolitical exception that demands critical scrutiny.

Gender, Parenting and Practices in Child Welfare Social Work? A Comparative Study from England, Ireland, Norway and Sweden

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Karina Nygren ◽  
Julie C Walsh ◽  
Ingunn T Ellingsen ◽  
Alastair Christie
Keyword(s):  
Social Work ◽  
Child Welfare ◽  
Focus Group ◽  
Social Workers ◽  
Gender Equality ◽  
Family Policy ◽  
Work Practice ◽  
Social Work Practice ◽  
Structural Barriers ◽  
The Uk

Abstract This article explores ways in which gender equality, family policy and child welfare social work intersect in four countries: England, Ireland, Norway and Sweden. Over time, conditions for gender equality in parenting have improved, partly due to family policy developments removing structural barriers. These changes, however, vary between countries; Sweden and Norway are considered more progressive as compared with the UK and Ireland. Here, we draw on focus group data collected from child welfare social workers in England, Ireland, Norway and Sweden to compare these different contextual changes and how these are reflected in related social work practice decisions. The focus group discussions were based on a vignette, and thematic analysis was applied. Overall, welfare social workers are aware of the need to support gender equality in parenting, there is a heavy focus on mothers in child welfare practice decisions, and fathers are largely absent. Uniquely, we show that this is influenced by both a strong child-centred perspective, and a gendered risk perspective, in which fathers are seen to pose more risk to the children than mothers.

Family Group Conferences: Partnership in Practice

1996 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 16-23 ◽  
Author(s):  
Murray Ryburn ◽  
Celia Atherton
Keyword(s):  
Social Work ◽  
New Zealand ◽  
Work Practice ◽  
Social Work Practice ◽  
Family Group ◽  
Family Group Conference ◽  
Model Based ◽  
The Family ◽  
The Uk

The quality of relationship between families and professionals is clearly crucial to the development of good social work practice, especially where the care and protection of children are concerned. After tracing the origins of the Family Group Conference in New Zealand, Murray Ryburn and Celia Atherton describe the procedure and explain how this model, based on a commitment to partnership, is being adapted and used in the UK.

scholarly journals From Aristotle to Arendt: A phenomenological exploration of forms of knowledge and practice in the context of child protection social work in the UK

2016 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 14-28 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joe Smeeton
Keyword(s):  
Social Work ◽  
Child Protection ◽  
Work Practice ◽  
Phenomenological Approach ◽  
Social Work Practice ◽  
Human Condition ◽  
Work Activity ◽  
The People ◽  
The Uk ◽  
Forms Of Knowledge

This paper attempts to explore the relationship between different forms of knowledge and the kinds of activity that arise from them within child protection social work practice. The argument that social work is more than either ‘science’ or ‘art’ but distinctly ‘practice’ is put through a historical description of the development of Aristotle’s views of the forms of knowledge and Hannah Arendt’s later conceptualisations as detailed in The Human Condition (1958). The paper supports Arendt’s privileging of Praxis over Theoria within social work and further draws upon Arendt’s distinctions between Labour, Work and Action to delineate between different forms of social work activity. The author highlights dangers in social work relying too heavily on technical knowledge and the use of theory as a tool in seeking to understand and engage with the people it serves and stresses the importance of a phenomenological approach to research and practice as a valid, embodied form of knowledge. The argument further explores the constructions of service users that potentially arise from different forms of social work activity and cautions against over-prescriptive use of ‘outcomes’ based practice that may reduce the people who use services to products or consumables. The author concludes that social work action inevitably involves trying to understand humans in a complex and dynamic way that requires engagement and to seek new meanings for individual humans.

scholarly journals Unequal Conditions of Care and the Implications for Social Policies on Young Carers

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chloe Alexander
Keyword(s):  
Family Life ◽  
Public Policies ◽  
Work Practice ◽  
Social Work Practice ◽  
Social Policies ◽  
Young Carers ◽  
Academic Knowledge ◽  
Social Opportunities ◽  
The Uk ◽  
The Impact

AbstractYoung carers are the subject of public policies in the UK, which aim to address their needs as a group experiencing disadvantage relating to their caring role. These policies are implemented in a way that aims to improve their health and their educational and social opportunities, but left unaddressed is a wider context of inequalities. Nevertheless, inequalities are a feature of the terrain upon which social policies for young carers are developed and implemented. Evaluation of the ways that young carers and their families are impacted by public policies demands an understanding of those inequalities. Academic knowledge of how experiences diverge as a result of multiple intersecting inequalities is so far limited. This paper reports from a study that aimed to contribute greater understanding of the interaction between inequalities, young carers, family life and social policies in England. Ethnographic research methods created a record of care, family life and the impact of social policies. Unequal conditions of care are an important feature of the lives of young people and their families with on-going caring responsibilities. Young carers and their families positioned at the intersection of inequalities of ‘race’/ethnicity, class and disability had different and unequal experiences of support. The paper discusses these findings and explores the implications for social policies and social work practice.

Conclusion

2018 ◽  
pp. 205-208
Author(s):  
Deanna Edwards ◽  
Kate Parkinson
Keyword(s):  
Social Work ◽  
Work Practice ◽  
Holistic Approach ◽  
Evidence Base ◽  
Social Work Practice ◽  
Risk Averse ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
Diverse Range ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
The Uk

This concluding chapter argues for the potential of family group conferences (FGCs) to lead to positive outcomes for families in a diverse range of social work practice areas. The research and evidence base, while patchy, is clear on this. Policy makers, practitioners, and advocates of the FGC process have a responsibility to ensure that the practice does not become marginalised by austerity measures and increasingly risk-averse practice contexts. After all FGCs not only embody the key principles of key social work legislation and policy in the UK but also the values of social work practice. Indeed, the principles of FGCs are clearly aligned to the International Federation of Social Work definition of social work and the model provides the opportunity for local authorities to become increasingly reflective of the holistic approach to social work practice.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document