Social Work Process Research Articles

Globalization and the technocratization of social work

Few commentators have focused on how globalization has impacted on social work practice. This article demonstrates the significance of global ization on the process of intervention and the labour process in social work. As a result of global market forces, needs-led assessments and re lationship building have given way to budget-led assessments, increased managerial control over practitioners and bureaucratised procedures for handling consumer complaints. Led by the purchase-provider split in service provision as the British state's response to the market discipline imposed by the privatization of the welfare state, these changes seek to reorient social work away from its commitment to holistic provisions and social justice towards technocratic competencies which are the purview of the externally direct bureaucrat.

Child protection revisited: balancing state intervention and family autonomy through social work processes

ABSTRACTThis paper explores selected findings from a qualitative study of the 1989 Children Act, which examined ways in which the new definitions of significant harm were being interpreted in practice. Significant harm is seen as a major site where state intervention and family autonomy are balanced, especially through establishing thresholds for intervention. The data are analysed in relation to the social work processes of assessment, intervention and evaluation. These are seen as a series of interactions between families and practitioners, in which goals are identified, methods used and resources mobilized. Key decisions and levels of change address the paramountry of the child's welfare. These processes are also under‐pinned by new legislative requirements. The practitioners displayed their professionalism during a period of transition and change. Social work processes facilitated non‐judgemental practices which empowered the families in the difficult circumstances of their lives. The paper concludes that balancing state intervention and family autonomy requires social work of a high order and a profound understanding of complex issues.

Black practice teachers: A review of some literature and its meaning for social work education and practice

This article offers a critique of literature on blach perspectives as it relates to practice teaching and black practice teachers in social work education and practice. The article is based on the literature review of a small scale research study I recently undertook to look at the numbers of black practice teachers in four statutory agencies and the contributions such practice teachers offer to social work education and practice. The research was based on the notion of ‘black perspectives’. The findings show that although large numbers of black workers are interested in becoming, and fit CCETSW's (1989) criteria of two years post qualifying experiences to become practice teachers, few are encouraged and supported to do so. Both the literature and the research findings highlighted that black practice teachers have a great deal to contribute to social work education and practice and are therefore essential to the process of social work in benefiting black and white communities. This article therefore attem...

Social Policy Development: The Strengths Perspective

Methods of social policy development, like methods of social work intervention at the direct interpersonal level, have typically been problem focused and pathology oriented. The strengths perspective, which posits that the strengths and resources of people and their environment rather than their problems and pathologies should be the central focus of the helping process in social work, can be used to reformulate problem-focused, pathology-centered approaches to social policy development. This article makes the argument that integration of the strengths perspective into the social policy-making process can provide policy practitioners with new tools for conceptualizing social needs or problems, a more inclusive approach to policy formulation, and an expanded array of empowering policy options. Methods for initiating this integration are also discussed.

Empowerment in Social Work Practice with Older Women

Literature describing the interface of ageism and sexism on older women, the majority of the nation's elderly population, has resulted in the knowledge that they are a population at risk. Empowerment is a social work process and intervention that has been recommended for work with oppressed populations and with women. An analysis of traditional, feminist, and social work conceptualizations of empowerment, however, identifies issues that are problematic for social workers. This article suggests reasons for broadening the definition and concept of empowerment to allow social welfare professionals to better speak to the multiple needs of women in their later years.

A disappearing act: the differing career paths of fathers and mothers in child protection investigations

This article analyses the links between the nature of child protection referrals and subsequent disposal, showing how mothers and fathers are subjected to markedly different investigative and intervention ap proaches. The bureaucratic mechanisms of child protection systems are examined to show how procedures impact on the social work process. Data obtained during the author's recent experience of child protection investigation referrals as a social worker in a small north ern city is used to illustrate the inexorable contraints of the system on social workers.

Evaluating Social Work Effectiveness

Evaluation in social work social work effectiveness review of evaluative strategies methods of data collection the social work process service based outcomes client based outcomes monitoring and effectiveness studying cost-effectiveness disseminating the results of research conclusions.

Client-Focused Recording: Linking Theory and Practice

The current use and teaching of recording is explored. The development of the use of records for worker accountability and the loss of recording as part of the social work process is traced historically. An alternative to the medical model (problem-oriented record) is proposed based on a client-focused model that espouses social work values.

Hospice

Social work's response to hospice, as a new form of social caring, is portrayed by a social work process paradigm, conceptualized from the practice and research experiences of the authors. Guidelines are suggested for working with patients, families, care providers, and other concerned persons through the four phases of hospice care. As changes occur in the patient and the hospice settings, the participants join together to bring about a satisfactory fit between the person needing care and the environment. By anticipating the needs and reactions of the terminally ill patient to each transition in the care process, the social worker assists in orchestrating proactive interventions through the continuum of hospice care. Future research studies are recommended for determining what difference social work actions make toward ensuring a "safe passage."

Ethical Dilemmas in Applying Second-Wave Information Technology to Social Work Practice

Ethical Dilemmas in Applying Second-Wave Information Technology to Social Work Practice

Travelling hopefully: Anti-racist practice and practice learning opportunities

This article has been written in response to the current developments in social work education which seek to make anti-racist practice a central requirement of social work training and to make it into a central component of good social work practice. In the present context in which social work is undertaken this will not be an easy goal to achieve without considerable commitment and attention to the detailed content and process of social work and the learning opportunities it offers. The article focuses on how the teaching of anti-racism on social work courses is then followed through in placement experience and highlights the difficulties that can occur. It describes part of an on-going development and monitoring process initiated with college and practice based teachers at Bath University which is seeking to improve practice at a local level. It includes a questionnaire sent to practice teachers and students, a practice teaching workshop and the development of a monitoring system for use in future place...

Social Work Practice: Integrating Qualitative and Quantitative Data Collection Techniques

In this article the authors review issues of the quantitative and qualitative paradigms of research, and they describe and critique each paradigm's data collection techniques. They conclude that the social work process—assessing, intervening, and evaluating the interactions and transactions of people with their situations and en-vironments—requires the integration of data types and sources and collection techniques from both paradigms.

Ethical Considerations in the Psychosocial Process

The author presents and discusses the findings of a research study on ethical issues identified by clinical social workers at all phases of the social work process. Results indicate the need for ethical skills in the role-coping repertoire of practitioners and suggest content for training in ethical problem solving.

Book Review: Annotated Bibliography for Christian Social Ministries: Planning: Self-Evaluation and Planning for Human Service Organizations, Social Work Process

Book Review: Annotated Bibliography for Christian Social Ministries: Planning: Self-Evaluation and Planning for Human Service Organizations, Social Work Process

A Guide to the Peer Review Process for Clinicians

FOR CLINICAL social workers in volved in providing direct interve tion to patients or clients of health, men tal health, and human services, this is the age of accountability. Demands for ac countability that affect clinical social workers (as well as other mental health professionals) are both internal and ex ternal. The internal demands emanate from standards, guidelines, and ethical principles, promulgated by the profes sion and internalized by the individual practitioner. External accountability demands come from clients, purchasers and third-party payors, and legal and regulatory bodies. Because each of these entities has a different concern, conse quently the accountability requirements each one imposes also is different. Although many recent requirements for accountability are external, they are con sistent with the traditional commitment of social work to be responsible for its professional activities and the outcomes. This commitment is reflected in the codes of ethics, standards for profes sional behavior, practice texts, and posi tion papers that describe clinical social work activities.1 The commitment of the profession to accountability has come from philosoph ical and ethical considerations primarily, which have been part of the growth of social work and individuation process, and which help form the consciences of social workers as they become socialized to the values of the profession. The authors have found that for more ex perienced practitioners, the pressure to be accountable comes primarily from the internal checks and balances. Two external factors—(1) the increase in consumer advocacy within the client population and (2) the growing commer cialization of practice—have contributed significantly to the recent and dramatic increase in emphasis on accountability in clinical practice. These factors have helped to create a new climate in which practitioners are asked to articulate and Shelomo Osman Sharon A. Shueman

Contemporary Direct Practice Roles

Contemporary Direct Practice Roles

Social Work Processes. (3rd edition). By Beulah Roberts Compton and Burt Galaway. Homewood, Ill.: Dorsey Press, 1984. 609 pp. $20.50 paper

Social Work Processes. (3rd edition). By Beulah Roberts Compton and Burt Galaway. Homewood, Ill.: Dorsey Press, 1984. 609 pp. $20.50 paper

The therapeutic process in clinical social work.

The therapeutic process in clinical social work.

Welfare, Society and the Social Worker

SUMMARY This article attempts to locate some common stereotyped transactions between social workers and their clients as elements in the production of distinctive welfare identities. By comparing this process to that of a rite of passage, the client is found to be like a ritual subject frozen in the moment of transition between social categories and thereby denied a place in society. An opposition is accordingly presumed to exist between Welfare and Society. The matrix of stereotyped expectations which derives from this opposition is shown often to intrude on the relationship between social worker and client, constituting a pressure to resolve the tensions produced by anomaly through the imposition of a welfare identity on the client. In this respect, the special vulnerability of marginal groups is noted and a brief discussion then follows of the characteristic qualities of ascribed welfare identity. Through Welfare, Society is found to displace imaginatively its sense of entropy beyond the moral community. But the essential link between Welfare and Society remains and increasing social disorder brings the paradoxical feature of this strategy to the fore. The preservation of the social order requires increasing concentrations of entropy to be symbolically located in Welfare and as a result Welfare comes to take on the aspect of a threatening and subversive entity. In conclusion, it is suggested that behind the apparent 'crisis' in social work lies a crisis in the management of social entropy. As a practising social worker, I am uncomfortably aware of having a role other than that of professional altruist. With many of my colleagues, I share a sense of participation in some grim ritual of social decomposition evoked and enacted in tandem with the recognized interactions of the social work process. Being unassimilable to 'professional' awareness—that state of mind which permits the organization of work in advance and its explication after the event in ways deemed appropriate to a 'therapeutic' task—this unnerving sense of things falling apart has no language with which to manifest itself directly. Rather, it constitutes an aura of disenchantment or, more precisely, an ironic counterpoint to the events of any social worker's day. It comes closest to the surface in that black

Social Work Methods and Processes, by Joseph Anderson. Wadsworth Publishing Company, Belmont, Calif., 1981. $14.95. 300 Pp.

(1982). Social Work Methods and Processes, by Joseph Anderson. Wadsworth Publishing Company, Belmont, Calif., 1981. $14.95. 300 Pp. Journal of Education for Social Work: Vol. 18, No. 1, pp. 119-120.