Social Work Literature Research Articles

The Community Empowerment Framework: A Benchmark for Christian Social Work

Despite being a key concept in social work practice, community empowerment has been largely overlooked in the Christian social work literature. One potential explanation for the paucity of publication is arguably a lack of theoretical guidance from scholars who embrace both Christianity and social work. This paper sought to expand the literature by proposing, among other things, the Community Empowerment Framework (CEF) to guide practice within the Christian social work realm. The CEF contains the following nine principles: unit, purpose, power dynamics, needs assessment, inductive reasoning, solidarity, legacy, accountability, democracy, and identity. From these principles arise nine corresponding assumptions. This paper holds major implications for theory, research, and community practice.

Post-disaster social work research: A scoping review of the evidence for practice

The aim of this study was to understand the extent, range and nature of social work research activity after natural disasters and to identify the implications for future research and practice. A Scoping review methodology framework was used search of three databases: Web of Science, ProQuest and Informit was conducted to identify relevant studies between 2000 and 2018. Selection of studies was based on empirical research about social work and natural disasters and/or authored by social workers. Study selection found a total of 38 relevant articles. Charting the data was conducted and the following areas of focus were summarised: (1) interventions relating to psychosocial care, aid work and community work; (2) the effects of disasters on people and mediators of these effects; (3) social work education and challenges in disaster relief; and (4) measuring mental health outcomes of people who have experienced a disaster event. This scoping review has established that there is a range of social work literature focused on natural disasters that primarily examines social work interventions, the effects of disasters and social work education. Future social work research and practice needs to focus on the types and timing of interventions that promote positive recovery following natural disasters.

The Role of Identity in Motivating and Shaping the Experiences of Social Work Participatory Action Research Scholars

Participatory action research (PAR) and Community-based participatory research (CBPR) prioritize collaborative research approaches with the goal of social transformation. Themes from this qualitative study of 15 early career social work PAR and CBPR scholars indicate that they are strongly motivated to pursue these methodologies because of their own experiences with disempowerment as well as their connection to social work values. Participants reflected upon their experiences with marginalization (due to observed and unobserved identities/experiences), which fostered a commitment to emphasizing power sharing and elevating marginalized voices. Additionally, identity played a role in how researchers experienced doing PAR/CBPR. Researchers described being simultaneously an insider and outsider in the communities in which they worked, especially the ways that their status as university researchers impacted their positioning in the communities they considered their own. This article explores how identity motivates and presents challenges that scholars must navigate when pursuing PAR/CBPR. Additionally, findings indicate that some scholars who hold marginalized identities experience increased vulnerability within academia when they engage in PAR/CBPR. Such experiences may impact whose voices are represented in the body of social work literature.

The Influence of Social Exclusion on Posttraumatic Stress Reactions in Older Adult Veterans.

The relationship between social exclusion and posttraumatic stress reactions in aging veterans is a particularly timely issue, warranting greater attention in the social work literature. Research with military veterans indicates that the social marginalization resulting from racial and ethnic discrimination can exacerbate posttraumatic stress symptoms. This marginalization suggests an increased potential for emergent or recurrent trauma reactions in aging military veterans, as previous research has documented older adults' unique risk for social exclusion. The issue takes on greater relevance as increased numbers of Vietnam veterans enter older adulthood. Professionals working with military veterans should be aware of the social and cultural factors that play a critical role in posttrauma response and recovery.

Constructing a conceptual framework for professional identity development in international social work students: A meta-ethnographic review

There has been a significant increase of international students in Australian social work education over the past decade. Issues around international students’ language skills, cultural capital or competence, special needs and field education experiences have been explored in social work literature. However, the literature to date has a tendency to focus on international students’ deficits, or the strategies implemented to address the identified deficits. Professional identity, a critical aspect of social work education, remains an under-researched topic in international students. Professional identity development in social work is often considered a complex process which is influenced by interacting internal or external factors. For example, personal or cultural identities can contribute to professional identity development in social work students in general, while discrimination or institutional oppression is found to negatively affect professional identity development in social work students. Intersectionality sees a person’s identity as fluid and multifold, and offers a useful framework for understanding identity issues in international students. Applying the concept of intersectionality, this meta-ethnography reviews six qualitative studies, guided by the seven phrases established by Noblit and Hare. The findings show professional identity development in international students can be influenced by interacting personal, linguistic, professional, academic, cultural and social factors. An intersecting model incorporating the six identified key themes was developed to provide a conceptual framework for professional identity development in international social work students.

Managing multiple accountability perspectives and expectations in practice. A scoping review of the use of accountability mechanisms by social workers

ABSTRACT Social workers are accountable to many different actors (e.g. service users, peers, employer, government) who all have their own perspective on practice and how it should be accounted for. Little is known about how social workers account their work to these multiple actors. Therefore, we conducted a scoping review of recent studies to review which type of accountability mechanisms come to the fore and how social workers use these mechanisms in practice to account their work to these multiple actors. Inspired by the work of Bovens, Schillemans, and Goodin [2014. Public accountability. In M. Bovens, R. Goodin, & T. Schillemans, T. (Eds.), The Oxford handbook of public accountability (pp. 1–20). Oxford: Oxford University Press], we analysed the literature making use of the distinction between three types of accountability: professional, political-administrative and participative-democratic accountability. As broadly discussed in social work literature, the government and the management of social work organisations are influential actors and social workers struggle to implement managerial mechanisms because they are not always congruent with social work values and with the relational and contextual nature of the work. To uphold the professional accountability perspective in practice, social workers use street-level strategies which run the risk to decrease social workers legitimacy and to avoid an open dialogue about how accountability should be organised in social work practice. Our review also shows that although user involvement is an essential value in social work, relatively few studies report on mechanisms that can be used to empower citizens and service users in practice. We conclude that more research is needed to understand how social workers deal with the divergent perspectives on practice and still uphold professional standards of practice. Moreover, we conclude that more research is needed to gain a better understanding of how social workers manage the interaction between the use of accountability mechanisms in practice and the broader socio-political context in which they operate.

Case study method in terms of activity-competent approach to teaching social workers

The article substantiates the relevance of the implementation of the case study method in the educational process of social workers training, as well as explores the methodological features of its development and implementation in the field of social work. The article defines the concept of “case study”, examines the historical aspect of its development, provides an overview of various classifications, offers recommendations on the methodological support of the educational process using the case study method. Article examines intercommunication of “activity” and “competence” approaches in organization of educational process, it assists to get practical experience of future specialists. For this reason, an educational process should be filled with teaching forms and methods to promote forming the practical abilities and skills. The method of case study plays the special role among of them. The first attempts to use this method were observed in practice of charitable organizations at the end of XIX century in the USA for social workers teaching. With a lack of textbooks and methodical manuals for professional training of specialists, the case study became the primary teaching method that included fixation, discussion, diagnostics of the real case of client. With the passing of the time, after development of the plenty specialized social work literature, case study does not lose the actuality and importance in the American teaching process. The article observes different case study classifications offered in scientific literature, namely: classifications of L. Kottrell, R. Stacke, L. Stenhaus, R. Yin. The typology proposed by R. Yin includes analytical (explanatory) and descriptive type of case study. It should be drawn upon and considered as the most suitable for an educational process within the “activity” and “competence” approach. The attention is focused on requirements to teacher qualifications, qualitative and quantitative structure of students group.

JOINING THE CALL TO INCORPORATE SUSTAINABILITY INTO THE CANADIAN SOCIAL WORK PROFESSION

A global concern about how unsustainable use of global natural resources engenders environmental, social, and economic injustices for the world’s most vulnerable population has been well established in the literature. Although the profession of social work has a long-standing tradition of advocating for social and economic justice, issues of environmental sustainability have yet to be fully incorporated into social work education and practice. While the connection between the natural environment and social work education is robustly emerging in Australian and American literature, the Canadian social work literature is also paying attention to issues of environmental sustainability. In response to the 2018 call by the Canadian Association for Social Work Education – Association canadienne pour la formation en travail social (CASWE-ACFTS) (2018) to revitalize efforts towards environmental sustainability in Canadian social work education, this article joins other Canadian social work educators to advocate for the profession to incorporate a novel global paradigm—sustainability—into social work practice. Drawing on relevant literature and other empirical studies, this article aims to increase our understanding of the critical impact of a lack of sustainability on Canada’s poorest, most vulnerable, and oppressed people (such as Indigenous Peoples), who often live in the most degraded environments and have no control over their own natural resources. I argue that incorporating sustainability into Canadian social work education and practice is achievable only if the professional bodies, namely the Canadian Association of Social Workers (CASW) and CASWE-ACFTS, provide institutional support by setting accreditation standards and ethical guidelines to reinforce sustainability in Canadian social work practice.

Psychosocial Intervention Needs and Psychiatric Social Work Practice

From the very beginning of the Social Work, human needs have long been part of the social work theory, practice and research as an implicit conceptual foundation but practically it has long been a neglected and contested concept in the published literature of social work though social work has been instrumental in meeting the various needs of individuals. Social Work Practice in the field of mental health is also not an exception for the same. The need of an hour is to explicitly discuss the role of social work in meeting the human needs on the research and literature; the practice of which has already begun. It will have a significant influence on the contemporary practice of Psychiatric Social Work as well in India.       
 Keywords: Psychiatric social work, psychosocial intervention, needs

Conscientious Objection in Social Work and Healthcare: A Philosophical Analysis

AbstractHealthcare and social work would seem to have a lot in common. Both of them involve professional care, even if the methods and the targeted needs are different. However, they differ strikingly in the place accorded to conscientious objection (CO). The right of healthcare professionals to refuse to perform or authorise certain lawful services is well protected by the law of most Western jurisdictions. In addition, these conscience rights have been subject to a good deal of discussion in the medical ethics and medical law literature. In contrast, there seems to be very little scope for CO among social workers and very little discussion about CO in the social work literature. I examine the possible reasons for this difference, and then investigate the sort of things that a social worker might plausibly object to. In the end, I defend the position that social workers should not be permitted to express a CO, although I accept that they have other avenues for expressing legitimate dissent.

Working social assemblages: Towards a new geography of social work

AbstractThis paper explores possibilities for extending the geographical imagination in academic studies of social work. It notes how current “geographical” research is extensive and diverse—including interests in social and natural environments, practice settings, and global issues—but argues for a change whereby it is more explicitly informed by, and cast as, human geography. Part of this change would involve a transition in basic enterprise, whereby researching social work geographically shifts from being a one‐way effort on the part of academic social workers, to being a two‐way project also involving geographers. Another part would be an important theoretical transition whereby a broadly posthumanist geographical imagination is developed. Moving beyond humanistic privileging of a sovereign subject, this might emphasise distributed agency and a range of more‐than‐human actors, processes, and forces. Specifically, with this theoretical transition in mind, adopting a recently developed posthumanist theoretical typology, attention is paid to how research might be framed around three spatial processes always at play in the emergence and expression of social work. For each of these processes, resonance is acknowledged in existing social work literature, and final consideration is given to quite specific questions that could be asked and expertise that could be tapped.

‘The Love That Dare Not Speak Its Name’: The Role of Compassion in Social Work Practice

AbstractThe concept of compassion has little prominence in social work literature or in social work curricula, in contrast with those of nursing. This is despite compassion being a valued attribute of social workers from the perspectives of service users. This article considers the meaning of compassion, possible reasons for its absence from social work parlance and its potential contribution to social work practice. Whereas empathy is seen as comprising affective and cognitive components, compassion is defined in terms of affective and behavioural elements. More specifically, compassion is perceived as comprising both of ‘feelings for’ the person who is suffering and a desire to act to relieve the suffering. The desire to act is distinct from the act itself. Focusing primarily on the ‘desire to act’ component of compassion, the article suggests that the emotional health and mental well-being of social workers may be enhanced, rather than jeopardised, by acknowledging, facilitating and nourishing compassionate relationships with service users. It proposes that the emotional risks to social workers emanate not from the toll of feeling compassion for those in distress, but rather from a thwarting of their desire to act to alleviate suffering. It is argued that organisations have an important role in facilitating compassionate practice and possible avenues are considered to bring compassion into the fold of social work education, practice and research.

Revisiting hegemony: A Gramscian analysis for contemporary social work

This paper presents theoretically informed commentary on the concept of hegemony. This is achieved through recourse to the work of hegemony’s originator, the Sardinian social theorist Antonio Gramsci. There is renewed interest in Gramsci’s work within social theory. To date, existing social work literature makes the case for a more direct engagement with Gramscian theorisation. In this paper, the proposition is that Gramsci’s work holds the potential to progress contemporary practice. In seeking to realise this, however, at least one obstacle is encountered. It is argued that a degree of dialectical opposition exists between two themes prevailing in social work practice and pedagogy. This can be problematic for practitioners who are seeking to create civil society change. In the first instance, critical postmodern epistemologies support practitioners to uncover embedded hegemonic assumptions. In the second instance, more conservative managerial–technicist epistemologies also vie for space in wider social work pedagogy and practice. In this context, it is argued that better ideological and theoretical integration of these competing themes would be beneficial for social workers seeking counterhegemonic practice. Overall critical commentary in this paper rearticulates the importance of Gramsci’s hegemony for social workers in the present time.

EXPLORING THE LEADERSHIP SKILLS OF PRE-SERVICE SOCIAL WORK STUDENTS: IMPLICATIONS FOR SOCIAL WORK EDUCATION

The importance of leadership is discussed widely in the social work literature. However, little is known about the leadership skills of social work students and factors affecting their development in the environment specific to higher educational institutions (HEIs). This research aimed to find out what skills pre-service social work students had related to leadership and to determine if significant differences existed in terms of such predictor variables as level and form of study, employment status, and involvement in co-curricular activities. The research employed the quantitative approach based on a descriptive cross-sectional survey involving a sample of 158 social work students from three Ukrainian universities. The research group consisted of 88% female and 12% male respondents, aged between 19 and 31. Data were obtained through the Student Leadership Outcomes Inventory, which contained 60 items measuring skills on 8 scales: (a) self-management, (b) interpersonal communication, (c) problem-solving and decision-making, (e) cognitive development and critical analysis, (f) organization and planning, (g) self-confidence, (h) diversity awareness, and (h) technology which served as outcome variables. All items were rated along a 5-point Likert scale, from poor (1) to excellent (5). The results of the research revealed lower than average levels of leadership skills and existing significant differences by outcome variables for the sample population. The findings suggest the need to strengthen the leadership skills of social work students through the implementation of formal and informal developmental activities and recognition of leadership participation within the social work curriculum. Keywords: descriptive cross-sectional survey, leadership development, leadership skills, pre-service social work students, social work.

Reflexivity: Doing Research with Women in a Mental health Care Facility


 
 
 Reflexivity has been recognised as a crucial strategy in the knowledge generating process and applied in qualitative research to legitimate, validate and question research practices and representation, as well as evaluating the quality of qualitative research. Reflexivity in the social work literature have impacted in research and practice. However, the effect of researcher’s perspectives on the data collection and interpretation process by using reflexivity has not been examined in the mental health research in Malaysia. Thus, this paper aims to explore the role of methodological reflexivity in a qualitative research with Chinese women with mental health problems in a residential care setting in Malaysia. The researcher’s and participants’ interaction and experiences, as well as emotional context during interviews that affect the data interpretation and data collection process are discussed. Greater understanding on their experiences in the care centre has been generated by focusing on these women as an “abled-body” rather than people with disabilities. Recognition of the researcher’s feelings and experiences have enriched the research method and analysis, as well as informing the practice for social workers, health practitioners, and students who work with women with mental health problems.
 
 

Universal Basic Income, Poverty, and Social Justice: A Moral and Economic Imperative for Social Workers.

Modern technology threatens to dramatically alter the U.S. labor economy, but the crumbling social safety net may be insufficient for affected workers. Some advocates propose to address these converging problems through universal basic income (UBI). Authors conducted a preliminary review of social work perspectives on the topic of UBI. They found very little relevant literature, especially among American scholars. Existent social work literature frames UBI as an alternative to the neoliberal welfare state and mass unemployment. Social workers also contribute a critical social justice orientation to UBI scholarship in other disciplines. Grounded in the NASW Code of Ethics, authors argue that it is imperative for American social workers to seriously consider UBI as an answer to growing inequality and the unique expertise that social workers offer as allies of marginalized populations.

Reflections on Importing Critical Race Theory Into Social Work: The State of Social Work Literature and Students’ Voices

ABSTRACTCritical race theory (CRT) has recently been imported into social work knowledge and included in the title or search term of 20 published social work studies, but little is known about how it is impacting social work practices. This study describes the experiences and perceptions of 21 diverse graduate students in a public, urban university with a nationally accredited MSW program using CRT as its theoretical foundation. Students unanimously embraced CRT as a theory for their careers, but found it confusing and extremely challenging to learn, resulting in contentious and unresolved questions about its applications in social work practices. Despite its resonance in their personal lives as well as those of their clients, these students could not describe how their CRT-infused MSW education would help them reduce racism, marginalization, and oppression or increase social, economic, and environmental justice, and many were frustrated by this gap. Recommendations to clarify, refine, and expand CRT imported in social work practices are offered to enhance its usefulness in accomplishing goals of increasing social justice for social work client populations.

Teaching About Racial and Ethnic Diversity in Social Work Education: A Systematic Review

ABSTRACTLittle of social work literature provides evidence of best teaching practices for preparing social work students to work with clients from historically excluded racial and ethnic groups. A systematic literature review was conducted to assess studies published in the United States during the 10-year period (2007–2016) that examined: (1) social work educators’ pedagogical interventions for teaching about racial and ethnic diversity, (2) components of those interventions, (3) methodological designs to evaluate the interventions, and (4) the students’ learning outcomes. Following the systematic review protocol, the authors identified and assessed twenty-five studies (qualitative, quantitative, and mixed-methods). The studies reflected a variety of teaching interventions, such as diversity courses and projects, instructional technology, and cultural immersion programs. While many reported positive student learning outcomes, as a whole, the studies lacked methodological rigor and sound theoretical grounding. Although social work education attempts to prepare students for multicultural practice, the field lacks an intentional and systematic approach to teaching about racial and ethnic diversity and evaluating learning outcomes in social work students. There is an urgency to expand the empirical evidence on social work diversity education, particularly concerning teaching about race, racism, and Whiteness.

Development and Validation of a Field Evaluation Instrument to Assess Student Competency

ABSTRACTThe Council on Social Work Education (CSWE) issued new requirements for social work educational programs in 2015, identifying a new set of competencies for students to be effective social work professionals. Social work programs are expected to measure students’ competencies to demonstrate the effectiveness of their education. However, few measurement tools that focus on these revised competencies have been published in the social work literature, and consequently, social work educators lack sufficient tools to accurately measure students’ performances. This article reports on the development and validation of the Field Evaluation Instrument (FEI), a tool designed to assess the 2015 social work competencies of social work students in the generalist practice context. It documents the development of the FEI, which was informed by the existing literature, and the CSWE’s Educational Policy and Accreditation Standards, as well as item development and survey design procedures. The resulting 69-item, 9-scale FEI demonstrated excellent factorial validity, strong internal consistency, and robust external validity as evidenced by the positive correlations with students’ grade point average in the social work major. The FEI fills an important gap in social work education by contributing a valid tool to assess the CSWE competencies. Further implications for social work education are discussed.

Amassing rural power in the fight against fracking in Maryland: A report from the field

ABSTRACTSocial workers can mobilize vulnerable populations to shape policy decisions about industrial practices that could have adverse impacts on their wellbeing. One such practice is hydraulic fracturing or “fracking” to extract oil and natural gas from shale rock deposits. There is scant social work literature on mobilizing opposition to fracking despite a proliferation of literature from other disciplines. This article documents the campaign in Maryland that led to the adoption of the first legislative ban on fracking in a U.S. state with shale gas reserves, using social movement theory to identify factors that led to this successful outcome.