Responsibility For Social Services Research Articles

The night watch and the morning after – experiences of working for an emergency duty team

This paper outlines and discusses the provision of Social Services responses to urgent needs arising out of day time office hours. The structure and workings of the Emergency Duty Team covering the County of Buckinghamshire are considered along with the crucial needs for team members to prioritise under pressure and to be supportively aware of one another. A thirty hour period over a busy weekend is described and analysed to highlight the kind of issues which typically face workers in Emergency Duty Teams. The paper concludes with a consideration of the motivations of those attracted to working in an Emergency Duty Team and an acknowledgement of the prevailing uncertainty which is intrinsic to the work.

The organised abuse of children in rural England: The response of Social Services, Part One

There are a number of controversies raging in the world of child protection. Three in particular have attracted attention in recent months. There is the issue of the ‘repressed’ or ‘false’ memories of adults recalling sexual abuse in childhood. This topic has received extensive coverage in professional journals (see, for example, Neale, 1994 for a summary) and in the broader media (Wyndham, 1994).Once again, the very label given to the problem defines the debate, as indeed has been the case since modern interest in child abuse was prompted by Kempe's (1962) work. It is interesting to note that ‘false memory syndrome’ is now the term used by some to counter claims of abuse in childhood. As Neale points out (1994:17) the term has ‘no medical validity, but the use of the word ‘syndrome’ perhaps suggests such a feature.

The organised abuse of children in rural England: The response of Social Services, Part Two

This is the second part of an interview with a manager in a British Social Services Department; the first part appeared in Children Australia, vol. 19, no. 3.

Social services response to psychiatric emergencies

This paper reports the results of a nationwide survey of social services responses to psychiatric emergencies. The survey is a companion to that by Johnson & Thornicroft (1991) (J&T) who reviewed the emergency service options available in psychiatry, including the emergency clinic, general hospital services, the emergency ward, acute day hospital and crisis intervention and residential services, as well as considering the role of sectorised services, and community mental health centres (CMHCs). For the purposes of our respective surveys of health and social services in England and Wales, we have defined a psychiatric emergency as “occurring when someone (patient, friend, relative or professional) requests urgent intervention on behalf of someone in the community who is suffering from a mental disorder”.

Changing mental health services in Madrid: international issues.

With the backing of a socialist government that came to power in 1982, mental health services in Spain are shifting away from institutional and custodial care toward community-based services. Provincial governments now control most mental health programs as a result of a law passed in 1983. In Madrid, mental health service priorities include preventing psychiatric hospitalization, developing a range of residential facilities, reducing the population of chronic patients in hospitals, and improving the quality of hospital care. A network of 20 health promotion centers is being developed to serve newly identified patients, while long-stay hospital patients who can be discharged will become the responsibility of social services. From an international perspective, the most interesting aspect of the Spanish transformation is how the country will deal with the problems other nations have encountered in implementing systems reforms.

Challenges to the Reintegration of the Mentally Ill in Quebec, Canada

With a population of about 6.5 million people, Quebec is Canada's second largest province, after Ontario. Approximately 80% of the province is of French origin and 10% , of English origin; the remainder belong to several cultural groups, Italians, Greeks, and Vietnamese predominating. About 60% of the population live in cities of more than 20,000 people. Montreal has a metropolitan population in excess of 2.3 million people. In the Canadian system, responsibility for health and social services rests mostly with each of the ten provinces; however, the federal government subsidizes each province to the tune of approximately 45 % of the expenses linked with medical care and hospitalization, including psychiatric hospitalization. Health and social services come under the aegis of a governmental agency called the Ministry of Health and Social Services [1], which has a budget of more than $4 billion (Canadian) a year. Attempts to decentralize authority and management are carried out at the level of Quebec 's 13 regional councils of health and social services, which are responsible for the planning, coordination, and integration of all services within their respective territories. These territories can range from 13,000 inhabitants in rural areas to more than

Employers' Responsibility for Social Services: Public Perceptions

Employers' Responsibility for Social Services: Public Perceptions