Social Work Agencies Research Articles

Use of information systems in social work – challenges and an agenda for future research

ABSTRACTIn the age of digitalisation social work is transforming. With the increased use of information systems, social workers are meeting new professional challenges. In this paper, we report findings covering a nine-year longitudinal study on critical issues in the use of a Case Management System in a Swedish social work agency. The study includes a stakeholder-based evaluation, interviews and document analysis. Comparing the evaluation findings with the literature helped us identify six areas in need of intensified research: (i) Usability and interface design; (ii) Mismatch between social conceptualisation and system conceptualisation of the case; (iii) Skills and training for information systems use; (iv) Statistical production for accountability and quality assurance; (v) Terminology for interpersonal understanding; (vi) IT Governance. As can be seen from the areas above, this kind of research depends on professional knowledge from the social work field – but also from the field of information systems. Hence, we suggest deeper collaboration between the two areas of knowledge in order to scrutinize the complexity of social work information systems. Clearly, the intersection of social work and information systems is a neglected research area, and we attempt to contribute by providing guidance for intensified research and practical knowledge generation.

Gertrude Weil: Jewish Progressive in the New South by Leonard Rogoff

Reviewed by: Gertrude Weil: Jewish Progressive in the New South by Leonard Rogoff Anne Gessler Gertrude Weil: Jewish Progressive in the New South. By Leonard Rogoff. ( Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2017. Pp. xiv, 354. $35.00, ISBN 978–1-4696–3079-3.) In the first biography of Goldsboro, North Carolina, suffragist and social justice activist Gertrude Weil, historian Leonard Rogoff's argument is twofold. First, he counters Eli Evans's portrayal of North Carolina Jews as provincial by arguing that although Weil was entangled in the state's complex racial and gendered hierarchies, she was "cosmopolitan with roots" (p. x). Second, Rogoff offers Weil's career as usable history for readers seeking to "live a meaningful life" (p. xi). Weil was steeped in classical Reform Judaism and the civic-minded German ethos of Bildung—"moral education and self-improvement"—and she believed that Jews were meant to model moral conduct for other nations (p. 2). While Gertrude Weil: Jewish Progressive in the New South builds on literature on North Carolina, women's studies, and Jewish history, Rogoff closely follows Anne Firor Scott's classic survey The Southern Lady: From Pedestal to Politics, 1830–1930 (Chicago, 1970), which documents how the southern women's club movement helped affluent white southern women build networks crucial to organizing politically. Rogoff also complements Pamela Tyler's and Landon R. Y. Storrs's research on the southern woman suffrage movement and consumer activists' emerging maternalist political apparatus. Weil mirrors Storrs's twentieth-century Jewish consumers and advocates whose northern education and international affiliation made radical, interracial organizing possible. Weil's career, however, provides a long view of grassroots movements, and Rogoff extends organizational histories by charting how Weil mobilized social networks to mitigate segregation, poverty, and public health crises for seventy years. The first four chapters examine Weil's spiritual and educational development. Rogoff outlines the Weil family's German Jewish familial network that linked urban nodes like New York City and Baltimore to outposts such as Goldsboro and facilitated assimilation while maintaining traditions, language, and ties to Europe. Additionally, Weil's classical education in North Carolina and at Smith College sharpened the independent, civically engaged idealism that propelled her to join New Woman social work agencies that advocated "municipal housekeeping" to reform political systems (p. 73). Next, Rogoff explores the interplay of Weil's interwar activism, science, and Jewish identity. As a member of the National American Woman Suffrage Association and the North Carolina Association of Jewish Women, Weil attended social work conferences and rooted "democracy and social justice in the canon of Israel" (p. 105). Yet racist and classist paternalism complicated Weil's egalitarianism. For instance, in 1919 she declared that black women's enfranchisement "is a problem" to be solved by strict voting requirements and not by "injustice and discriminations against the white women" (p. 119). In 1927 Weil called for economic equity while suggesting that allowing the poor and the "feeble-minded" to procreate exacerbated "social problems" (p. 200). Rogoff concedes that Weil's abstract idealism translated into "utopian thinking that overlooked social and racial consequences" (p. 202). Rogoff shines in chapter 9, where he traces the southern, northern, and European channels that Weil used to rescue a dozen relatives from Nazi-occupied Europe. She doggedly interceded with American and foreign governments and [End Page 193] spent thousands of dollars to secure family members' visas and make travel arrangements. Rogoff narrates Weil's heartbreaking failures with building tension, as wartime bureaucratic delays prevented one of her relatives from fleeing to Cuba before its borders closed. Rogoff thus illustrates the deeply personal stakes that colored Weil's postwar commitment to Zionism, building domestic religious institutions, and racial integration as an antifascist measure. Marshaling an impressive array of letters, ephemera, speeches, essays, newspaper articles, and government reports from the Gertrude Weil Papers and other archives, Rogoff painstakingly documents Weil's wide-ranging philanthropic, political, and religious efforts. However, without consistent historical signposting and confusing chronology, undergraduates and readers unfamiliar with the subject may become mired in Rogoff's thicket of details and dense prose. Nonetheless, Gertrude Weil invites further research into the history of southern Jewish women's organizations, specifically...

Delivering social work services in collaboration with the legal representation for individual clients: An effective, ethical and economical approach to supporting families in child abuse and neglect legal proceedings

This article discusses the need to improve the quality of helping relationships between families and social workers in the child protection system and the growing body of evidence that teams of social workers and lawyers are effective at improving outcomes in child protection legal proceedings. The author presents an alternative structure of delivering social work services within the child protection systems once a court gets involved with a family, proposing that social workers should focus on individual clients in collaboration with their legal representation, rather than the traditional model of a governmental agency social worker serving the family as a unit as it also determines placement of the children. Pairing the social worker to an individual client in tandem with their legal representative would help resolve the widely observed relationship problems between service users and governmental agency social workers that include the power imbalance created by the agency's authority to determine placement of children, the conflicts of interest that agency workers face when required to manage differing family members' needs, and the lack of protection of the due process right of confidentiality for parties involved in legal proceedings. This alternative structure also impacts the need to use resources more efficiently and has been demonstrated to result in substantial returns on investment. This article concludes that when a family becomes involved in child abuse and neglect legal proceedings, the child welfare agency should shift the delivery of social work services to the individual parties, away from the governmental agency and in conjunction with their legal representation.

Reentry Program and Social Work Education: Training the Next Generation of Criminal Justice Social Workers

ABSTRACTPurpose: Social work plays a marginal role in opposing the trend of mass incarceration and high rates of recidivism, and social work education offers limited opportunities for students to specialize in working with people who are currently or were previously incarcerated. How to train students of social work to work against mass-incarceration is still challenging. Methods: The authors devised and implemented an in-school social service agency devoted to working with people pre and post release from a prison system. The agency is a field practicum setting where interested students study and practice reentry work. In this article, the authors describe and assess the educational merit of this in-school agency. Results: Findings from surveys of students and alumni suggest that the program attained its educational goals of connecting classroom education to practice experience and training students for careers in the criminal justice system. The authors also discuss pending challenges. Discussion: The experience of the Goldring Reentry Initiative suggests that by developing their own social work agencies, the authors may be able to heighten their students educational experience and expand their contribution to social work practice broadly.

Making it ‘APP’en: service user feedback: developing and implementing a service user APP: reflections from Northern Ireland, England and Scotland

Despite the advent of social media and increasing use of smart phone technology amongst global and UK populations, APP’s for social work remain in their infancy. Several have been developed which focus on the education of social workers and practitioners providing information on specific social work issues, and one we are aware of that explores ethics and values using a games-based approach. In this paper, we discuss the importance of service user perspective in social work practice and how this informed the development of the feedback App. We reflect on developing this instrument using digital technologies which social workers can use to gather anonymous feedback from service users about their experiences of social work interventions. This project, developed in response to demands placed on social work agencies to evidence the effectiveness of service interventions, provide robust data from service users for inspection regimes and sustain service user involvement in improving services. The evaluation model is designed to document the implementation process, exploring what works and what barriers, challenges and lessons were learned by the project team together with how some of the tensions in the process were addressed and resolved.

Project for Return and Opportunity in Veterans Education (PROVE): An Innovative Clinical Social Work Field Education Model

Veterans transitioning from the military to college life and the unique issues impacting them are an area of clinical social work that has yet to be fully explored in the literature. Project for Return and Opportunity in Veterans Education (PROVE) is an innovative social work field education model that trains first year graduate interns to serve student veterans on college campuses in a non-traditional, milieu setting. PROVE uses a strengths-based, resiliency focus to emphasize the unique characteristics of the student veteran. The model affords the intern a clinical skill set applicable to working with veterans in various social work agencies. This article will discuss the history, framework and implementation of the PROVE model, use of Veteran-Affirmative Counseling (VAC) and the unique milieu setting. The article will conclude with implications for clinical social work practice field education settings and recommendations for replicability of the PROVE model.

Atmospheres of mistrust and suspicion: Theorising on conflict and affective practice in a child protection social work agency

Organisational conflict is normally recognised as a disruptive activity which interrupts relational dynamics and productivity. However, this paper will argue that in addition, if conflict is not resolved carefully, it can trigger negative affect which will in turn unsettle and destabilise a whole workforce. Based on the findings from an organisational ethnography, the author examines how conflict emerged in a child protection social work agency by theorizing on the concept of affective practice. In doing so, the author makes the argument that although affect emerges in interaction it can be exacerbated by the unintentional pursuit of problematic strategies. Examining affective practice in such a way enables studies to bring into play the atmospheric factors which impacted on those who were present at that moment so that readers can understand how people were moved, attracted to or pained by certain social interactions. This is important when trying to comprehend how coercive power approaches in social work prevent care objectives from being met. The paper will conclude by suggesting that when practitioners are preoccupied with trying to survive in the workplace they will find it difficult to meet the needs of the children and families they are working with.

A Situational Analysis Of Issues And Challenges Faced By Social Work Students During Their Field Placements In Karachi, Pakistan

Field work is viewed as the important pillar of Social Work profession. The aim of this study is to examine the issues and challenges faced by the Social Work Students during their Field Placement in different agency settings. This study articulates the teaching philosophy, conceptual framework, and fieldwork practices followed by Student of Social Work Department at Karachi University. Qualitative research design was employed in this study and purposive sampling strategy was used for data collection. The results of the study drawn that the main constraints stem from a lack of social work agency supervisors, lack of training for agency supervisors, the lack of a fieldwork curriculum and nonexistent or insufficient funding of fieldwork related activities.

Beyond spaces of counselling

The article articulates experiments with spatial constructions in two Danish social work agencies, basing on (a) a sketchy genealogical reconstruction of conceptualisations and uses of space in social work and counselling, (b) a search for theoretical resources to articulate new spaces, and (c) data from a long-standing collaboration with the social workers working with youth and drugs. Beside a critical analysis of how disciplinary and pastoral spaces make it difficult to engage in helpful conversations with young drug users, we show how spaces of attunement, spaces of production, and public spaces are forms of spatialisations which might be taken as prototypical in attempts to develop social work and counselling.

Information sharing between the child welfare and behavioral health systems: Perspectives from four stakeholder groups

ABSTRACTThis qualitative study articulates the challenges, best practices, and facilitators to information sharing when addressing the behavioral health needs of children in out-of-home care. 13 interviews and nine focus groups were conducted to illuminate the perspectives of foster parents, mental health clinicians, provider agency social workers, and city-employed child welfare professionals. In total, 65 individuals participated in this qualitative study and data were analyzed using a modified grounded theory approach. Results indicate that challenges and best practices in cross-system information sharing articulated across the four stakeholder groups are attributed to variation in information accessibility, clarity in roles and protocols, ability in obtaining signatures for consent/release forms, and attitudinal differences towards collaboration. Implications to improve policy and practice are discussed.

(re) Structuring the agency: Agency working arrangements and social care in the era of austerity and beyond

In Ireland, the austerity era of recent years brought (un)employment to the fore in a manner not seen since the 1980s. Within the arena of health and social care, this was epitomised by the ‘embargo’. Confined within an embargo process, recruitment agencies became a first choice response to maintaining service delivery in a deepening recessionary period. Located against this backdrop, this study explored agency-working arrangements in social care through the use of semi-structured interviews with service provider managers (n=3) and agency social care workers (n=6). Analysed using a variation of conventional content analysis; these interviews reveal a central tension between the flexibility afforded by agency working arrangements and the instability that such arrangements can foster. Although flexibility and variety in agency based employment arrangements can be beneficial for service providers, and in certain stages of career development for social care practitioners, underlying tensions arise within such working arrangements, which have a particular resonance for the social care profession. Most notably, the relationship based nature of social care practice can be disturbed by a restructuring of traditional employment pathways, especially in relation to continuity of care and practitioner support and development. Nonetheless, the findings also reveal that the extent of disruption is being dampened by adaptions to the agency process by service provider managers and social care workers through a ‘pooling’ approach to agency staffing. As such, the findings of this study both reflect common themes form literature surrounding agency working, while also observing subtle nuances. The implications of agency working for social care practice are considered, as are potential longer-term impacts given the context of impending registration of social care workers.

“There's a Difference—I Own This”: Negotiating Social and Financial Services under Threat of Mortgage Foreclosure.

Although national housing markets have recovered from the Great Recession, communities hardest hit by the foreclosure crisis remain immersed in mortgage trouble. Nineteen percent of homeowners are underwater on their mortgages and communities of color are overrepresented among zip codes still experiencing default in rising numbers. The social services needs of homeowners at risk of foreclosure show few signs of abating. High levels of market risk, asymmetrical power relationships, and the assumption that rational action can protect homeowners mark the climate in which households and social workers operate while attempting to halt foreclosure. The research described in this article draws on in-depth interviews conducted with homeowners at risk of default to examine the strategies they used to alleviate their mortgage strain. These strategies included seeking aid from financial and social services institutions while living under threat of default. As homeowners experienced mortgage strain they engaged in recommended rational market actions such as negotiating with lenders, increasing work hours, practicing strict household budgeting, and seeking aid from social work agencies to offset mortgage costs. The gathered data suggest that some social workers responded with poorly contextualized treatment plans and language characterized by disrespect, shame, and blame; others responded with mental health assistance, referrals to legal aid, and a helping relationship characterized by a sense of mattering that seemed to buffer against the psychosocial stressors associated with foreclosure.

In Search of a Professional Supervisory Practice: External Social Work Supervision in China

This article examines the importance of supportive and educative functions in the practice of social work supervision and identifies the common features of external social work supervision. Using a qualitative study design, the author explores social workers’ need for professional supervision and support, and the functions and roles commonly played by external supervisors. A mixed model of internal and external supervision is used in some countries; however, such a method is not commonly used or discussed in the literature in Asian regions. The findings of this study suggest that the practice of external supervision should be considered by social work agencies in China. Arranging appropriate external supervisors and establishing a supportive supervisory environment at an agency level are recommended to facilitate the professional growth of social work practitioners.

Community Service Provision for the Elderly under the Context of Contracting Out in Guangzhou of China

In urban China, a new model of care for the elderly has emerged which involves the government purchasing community services from professional social work agencies. This paper documents this new development and considers the impacts of community-based service provision for the elderly.

Children Exposed to Domestic Violence: Using Adverse Childhood Experience Scores to Inform Service Response

The identification of those children with high probability of experiencing poor health and social outcomes over the life course is a policy and service priority. In this paper, findings from a student population survey (n = 765) to determine the prevalence of Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) is reported. It was found that, for those students reporting ACE scores of 1 or more, experience of domestic violence was the best predictor for higher ACE scores, with 86.0 per cent reporting a score of 4+: a pattern holding true for those students reporting female directed domestic violence and those reporting male-directed violence. Students reporting ACE scores of 4+ were twenty-three times more likely to have had contact with social workers than those with scores of 0. These findings indicate the need for service providers to further assess cases referred for reasons of domestic violence, screening for co-occurring of ACE to help inform service prioritisation. It is further argued that the development of research into factors predictive of poor long-term outcomes further advances the incremental task of creating an evidence base to both inform and transform prioritisation of services to those children and families referred to social work agencies. Language: en

A Model for Implementing an Evidence-Based Practice in Student Fieldwork Placements: Barriers and Facilitators to the Use of “SBIRT”

ABSTRACTThis article reports on focus group data analysis that was used to understand initial, largely positive outcomes from a university-based initiative to disseminate and implement an evidence-based practice (EBP)—Screening, Brief Intervention, and Referral to Treatment for Substance Use (SBIRT)—into student fieldwork placements, which are usual care social work settings. Focus groups were conducted with three groups of stakeholders involved in the ongoing project: social work department faculty (n = 10), bachelor- and master-level social work students (n = 8), and social work fieldwork instructors (n = 6). Dimensional analysis of the focus group data yielded results indicating that dissemination and implementation of SBIRT was influenced by agency- and school-level factors and perceived fit between the EBP and individual professional identity, intrapersonal characteristics, and timing. The resulting model, developed through the focus group analysis, is offered and shows how these factors interacted and affected training, supervision, and use of the EBP. The model provides social work educational programs and agencies a working tool for diagnosing and proactively addressing barriers and breakdowns in the EBP implementation process. Future research that tests the model as a diagnostic tool and generates knowledge about its influence in developing competent evidence-based practitioners is indicated. Future focus groups in relation to this initiative are needed to better understand these barriers and facilitators in the EBP implementation process and their critical roles in the process of translating SBIRT into standard social work practice.

Implementation of a Psychoeducational Program for Cancer Survivors and Family Caregivers at a Cancer Support Community Affiliate

Psychoeducational interventions, tested for efficacy in randomized clinical trials, are seldom implemented in clinical practice where cancer survivors and their family caregivers can benefit from them. This study examined the effectiveness of the FOCUS Program on cancer survivors' and their family caregivers' outcomes when implemented at a Cancer Support Community (CSC) affiliate by agency social workers. Study aims were to (1) test effects of the program on survivor and caregiver outcomes as a unit and (2) determine program feasibility in terms of enrollment, retention, intervention fidelity, and satisfaction. A preintervention and postintervention pilot effectiveness study was conducted with 34 cancer survivor-caregiver dyads (ie, pairs). The FOCUS Program, originally delivered by nurses in dyads' homes, was modified to a small-group format and delivered by CSC social workers. The primary outcome was quality of life (QOL). Intermediary outcomes were benefits of illness/caregiving, communication, support, and self-efficacy. Analyses included repeated-measures analysis of variance. Dyads had significant improvements in total QOL; physical, emotional, and functional QOL; benefits of illness; and self-efficacy. Effect sizes were similar to prior randomized clinical trial findings. Although dyads were difficult to recruit (enrollment, 60%), both retention (92%) and intervention fidelity (94%) were high. It was possible to implement the FOCUS Program at a CSC affiliate by agency staff, obtain positive intervention effects, and maintain intervention fidelity. Researchers and clinicians need to collaborate to implement more evidence-based interventions in practice settings for cancer survivors and their family caregivers.

Challenging workplace bullying: the role of social work leadership integrity

ABSTRACTThis research paper explores ethical and moral outrage provoked by the phenomenon of workplace bullying in social work agencies. Its aim is to identify formal and organic actions, motivated by leadership integrity, designed to implement organisational social justice. The paper presents two case studies which illustrate contrasting approaches to the phenomenon. The first depicts management collusion with intimidatory behaviour in which the burden of evidence was placed on the victim even while still interacting with the perpetrator. In the second, a self-efficacious team leader proactively confronted bullying by asking questions. Failure of leadership to address bullying is evaluated in the context of the International Federation of Social Work's recognition of management in 2004 as 1 of 13 core purposes of the profession [Sewpaul, Vishanthie, and David Jones. 2005. “Global Standards for the Education and Training of the Social Work Profession.” International Journal of Social Welfare 14 (3): 218–230]. The 12 remaining purposes express social work's commitment to social justice as the profession's defining value [Ife, Jim. 2010. “Human Rights and Social Justice.” In Ethics and Value Perspectives in Social Work, edited by M. Gray and S. A. Webb, Chap. 13, 148–159. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan]. This paper argues that the prime function of social work leadership is to implement organisational social justice, and concludes that socially just leadership is eminently practicable.

Producing Migrant Domestic Work: Exploring the Everyday Political Economy of Malaysia's ‘Maid Shortage’

The article considers how the employment of domestic workers by middle-class Malaysian households has been thrown into flux by the imposition of bans on the sending of workers by states such as Indonesia and Cambodia, as well as the decline in numbers of women seeking employment as domestic workers in Malaysia and rising employment costs. This article does not seek to focus on the high-level policy negotiations and disputes that have come to characterize systems of temporary return migration for domestic work in Asia, but to focus in on the everyday political economies (of social reproduction, work, and everyday agency) that constitute the conditions of possibility within which bilateral disputes and labour agreements between Southeast Asian states take shape. We examine three dimensions of migration for domestic work in Southeast Asia in ways that bring together literatures on everyday life and social reproduction. These interconnected yet distinct dimensions are (a) the relationship between strategies to boost remittances and flows of workers from some of the most impoverished parts of Southeast Asia; (b) the centrality of low-cost migrant domestic workers to Malaysian middle-class ‘success stories’, and (c) the day-to-day production of ‘good’ worker subjects—a process that is actively and constantly resisted by workers themselves. The article provides important insights into the mechanisms through arenas of everyday life—and the household in particular—are transformed; becoming sites for the ever widening and deepening of the market economy.

Practices, Policies and Prospects of Social Management in China: a Study based on “Shidu” Elderly People

Against the backdrop of reforms in social management, there are more and more families that have lost their only child or whose only child got disabled due to external factors, bringing the group—“Shidu” [1]elderly to the focus of the society. When the late years of shidu parents arrive, a series of problems would follow. An investigation shows that shidu parents have diverse needs ranging from financial assistance, physical care, to mental consolation about psychological trauma. To satisfy their holistic needs, social work agencies have developed a “1+3” service mode. Based on an investigation of demands of shidu elderly and the available social management services, this study recommends to the relevant social management units and other social service organizations to establish a comprehensive social management service system for the effective service delivery to these “shidu” elderly known people. The study suggests a comprehensive study from the governmental interventions perspective in this field.[1] Shidu elderly people refers to aged parents 60 or above, who have lost their only child.