Social Work Task Force Research Articles

The impact of COVID-19 on palliative care social work: An online survey by a European Association of Palliative Care Task Force

Background: The SARS-Cov-2 (COVID-19) pandemic affected the delivery of health and social care services globally. However, little is known about how palliative care social work services were impacted. Aim: The aim of this study was to capture and analyse data from palliative care social workers who provided professional support in a range of settings across 21 countries during the COVID-19 pandemic. Design: A cross-sectional survey-based design was used for this empirical study and this paper primarily focuses on the quantitative responses. Setting/participants: Participants, palliative care social workers, were drawn internationally via members of the EAPC Social Work Task Force and the World Hospice Palliative Care Social Work network. Results: We received 362 survey responses from 21 countries. Most (79%) respondents worked with adults in in-patient units or hospitals. The number of referrals during COVID-19 increased more in non-European countries, compared to European countries. The full range of social work services could no longer be delivered, existing services changed and 65.3% of participants reported higher levels of pressure during the pandemic, which was linked to higher levels of staff absence and additional duties. For many respondents (40.8%), this included facilitating online communication between patients and their families. Conclusions: Our findings indicate that restrictions to limit the spread of COVID-19 resulted in adaptations to service delivery, increased pressure on staff and moral distress, like other health and social care professions. All members of the palliative team need support and supervision to ensure effective interdisciplinary working and team cohesion.

Shared Expectations? Reforming the Social Work Qualifying Curriculum in England

This is the first of two articles presenting findings from a scoping review undertaken in 2011 to inform proposals for a review of the social work qualifying curriculum in England made by the Social Work Reform Board. The review used a mixture of published and unpublished resources to compare the issues raised by the reports of the Social Work Task Force with what was known from published research investigating the ways that the current Requirements for Social Work Training (Department of Health, London, 2002) operate. It found that the evidence base on which the key issues relating to the concerns about initial social work qualifying programmes rest was very variable. The absence of a substantial research evidence base in this area hinders the development of effective policymaking on social work education, but the current changes to social work education and to social work regulation offer a timely opportunity to expand what we know about different assessment systems and how best to regulate social work courses.

Learning about Practice from Practice: A Peer-based Methodology

A recommendation from the Social Work Task Force was that all employers of social workers should conduct a regular “health check” of the social work profession to learn from practice as part of a continuous cycle of improvement. This article documents how the London Borough of Tower Hamlets has gone about this. I describe the methodological and practical pathway we followed so that others can see what we did and why we did it. Like other busy social work offices, we had to set out a plan of methodological action in order that we achieved the learning from practice to inform our health check, and it is the planning work that is engaged with in this article. We have found that by involving and engaging our staff in the health check work, we have gained more than we had set out to find. An organisational commitment to act on what social workers have told us about practice is offering the senior management team new ideas about the best ways of delivering professional and reflective support mechanisms for staff. Learning from practice is now one of the core functions for the new Principal Social Worker.

Discretion or Prescription? Exploring Confidence in Qualifying Social Work Education

In England and the USA, social work education is undergoing major change with the aim of improving the transparency, accountability and quality of social work practice. To achieve change in England, the Social Work Task Force and subsequent Social Work Reform Board, established to review the profession, addressed curricula inputs to the qualifying social work degree. This author used thematic template analysis to review two sets of evidence: government policy documents designed to support the reform process; and findings from synthesised Knowledge Reviews commissioned by the Social Care Institute for Excellence into how government curricula requirements were applied following introduction of the new social work degree in England. Synthesis of these policy and practice knowledges allows insights from the Knowledge Reviews to hold up a critical lens to policy reform. The argument is made that curricula prescription does not result in consistency, and increased prescription risks unintended consequences, in particular the erosion of professional judgement and undermining of professional confidence. Ways forward are proposed which include: social work taking the lead in social work education; programme partnerships containing the competing views of stakeholders; and stakeholders refocusing from a preoccupation with inputs to prioritising outcomes of social work education.

‘I once knew a team where all the workers called the manager ‘mother’ Some reflections on supervision within an integrated leadership and management programme

In 2010, an integrated Leadership, Management and Safeguarding training programme for adult and children’s services managers was created by a group of local authorities and a local university. Following Lord Laming (Department of Health, 2003 and Laming, 2009), the emerging reports of Munro (2010) and the Social Work Task Force (Department for Children, Schools and Families, 2009) called for increased emphasis on supervision as a key mechanism for safeguarding children, and by implication, adults. Therefore on this course two different means for candidates to address issues of supervision and explore their practice were included: a discussion board, and a critical friend exercise using video. A feature of the programme was the learning and understanding which developed from adults and children’s sectors learning together. The work on supervision provided a shared space in which all could participate. Feedback indicates that the two methods were both valued in different ways for the opportunity they provided for exploring supervision and enhancing reflective practice. This article is a reflection by one of the course tutors on the methods used and the value of both adult and children’s services managers participating together.

Controversy in the Curriculum: What Do We Know About the Content of the Social Work Qualifying Curriculum in England?

This article reports the results of a scoping review into the content of the social work qualifying curriculum in England exploring whether recommendations made by the Social Work Task Force and the Social Work Reform Board for an ‘overhaul of the content and the delivery of the qualifying curriculum’ were grounded in published research. The review found that rigorous research-based published evidence about the qualifying social work curriculum was lacking. In particular, most material dated from the early years of the social work degree and did not appear to have been replicated more recently to see if the original findings held true. Other subjects, such as how students are taught about older people's human development, had been considered by researchers but were not addressed by the Task Force and the Reform Board. The implications of this are that, while the content of the social work qualifying curriculum needs to adapt to reflect changing professional contexts, there is a need for greater consensus and clarity about what should be taught and how. The development of an evidence-based curriculum in terms of course content and delivery remains a priority for social work education in England.

‘I once knew a team where all the workers called the manager ‘mother’ Some reflections on supervision within an integrated leadership and management programme

In 2010, an integrated Leadership, Management and Safeguarding training programme for adult and children’s services managers was created by a group of local authorities and a local university. Following Lord Laming (Department of Health, 2003 and Laming, 2009), the emerging reports of Munro (2010) and the Social Work Task Force (Department for Children, Schools and Families, 2009) called for increased emphasis on supervision as a key mechanism for safeguarding children, and by implication, adults. Therefore on this course two different means for candidates to address issues of supervision and explore their practice were included: a discussion board, and a critical friend exercise using video. A feature of the programme was the learning and understanding which developed from adults and children’s sectors learning together. The work on supervision provided a shared space in which all could participate. Feedback indicates that the two methods were both valued in different ways for the opportunity they provided for exploring supervision and enhancing reflective practice. This article is a reflection by one of the course tutors on the methods used and the value of both adult and children’s services managers participating together.

The Secret Curriculum

In medical education, where law and ethics are often taught simultaneously, a hidden or silent curriculum emerges strongly from research-based and descriptive reviews of practice experienced by students and qualified practitioners. In social work education, where law and ethics are more commonly taught separately, specific reference to such a curriculum does not emerge from the literature. However, evidence from reviews of social work practice points to instances of ethical and legal erosion in the context of a profession which asserts its location as a moral activity and its commitment to human rights and social justice. The purpose of this article is not to systematically compare what students may be learning in and about medicine and social work. Rather, prompted by concerns expressed in medical education research, it reviews the social work evidence and why it achieves a lower profile than parallel experiences in medicine. It explores the problems encountered in practice by students and qualified social workers when drawing on their legal and ethical knowledge. It reviews the impacts of legal and values education on social work programmes. It concludes by questioning whether the initiatives to improve social work, in England specifically, by the Social Work Task Force and Social Work Reform Board are appropriately configured to address the tensions that divide recommended from actual practice.

‘Why is This Not Social Work?’ The Contribution of ‘Non-Traditional’ Placements in Preparing Social Work Students for Practice

This article reports on the findings of two evaluations of a major charity's learning from providing ‘non-traditional’ social work placements with young people at risk of social exclusion. The article challenges the terminology of ‘non-traditional’ and ‘non-social work’ placements and examines the potential of these placements in the current social work curriculum and in the light of the recommendations of the Social Work Task Force and directions from the Social Work Reform Board. In particular, the article highlights the ability of such placements to help prepare students for their ‘statutory placement’ in relation to formal assessment, legal literacy, and risk awareness and safeguarding. Overall, it is argued that the time is ripe to champion the creative use of such placements for HEIs, delivery partners, social work students and, most importantly, for service users.

Where Have All the Feelings Gone? Developing Reflective and Relationship-Based Management in Child-Care Social Work

The past five years have witnessed a growing recognition of the importance of management and leadership in the social work profession. The Social Work Task Force Report has underlined the need for ‘dedicated programmes of training and support for frontline social work managers’ and the Social Work Reform Board is tasked with taking this recommendation forward. Central to these developments is the question of how such ‘dedicated programmes’ are defined and developed. Developing a reflective management model that holds in a creative tension both the reflective and relationship-based dimensions of management and the positive aspects of managerialism offers an effective way of responding to these challenges. The paper considers the contribution of psycho-dynamic theoretical perspectives to this model of management. The capacity of these perspectives to equip managers to more effectively respond to issues of risk, uncertainty and anxiety is illustrated with examples drawn from case discussions undertaken with social work managers in the context of a post-qualification social work programme. The paper concludes by outlining how complex reflective management practice is facilitated by reflective organisational contexts which embrace diverse knowledge sources, promote relationship-based skills and found themselves on reflective values

Building a Safe and Confident Future: One Year On—Reflections from the World of Higher Education in England

The publication of the detailed proposals of the Social Work Reform Board in England represents an important milestone in the development of social work education. They address many of the recommendations spelled out in the earlier report of the Social Work Task Force. However, in the changed financial context for public services across the UK, the proposals do not contain sufficient detail of how they are to be implemented in an era of austerity. Indeed, some of them—particularly relating to practice learning—would have proved impossible to implement even if the financial climate had not worsened. This paper addresses a number of the key contextual issues that will significantly affect the education of UK social workers in the future, arguing that a failure to resolve the financial problems will inevitably change the dynamics that affect the delivery of social work education.

Black Minority Ethnic Students Navigating their Way from Access Courses to Social Work Programmes: Key Considerations for the Selection of Students

This paper explores the experiences of predominantly black minority ethnic students navigating their way from further education access courses to BA Social Work programmes. It discusses tensions associated with balancing academic and professional entry requirements for social work education with principles of social justice enshrined in policy initiatives to widen participation to higher education and to the professions for those from less privileged social backgrounds. Drawing upon findings from the author‟s doctoral study, she argues that entry to social work education is not without problem for some black minority ethnic students. Building upon recommendations from a recent Social Work Task Force report, she calls for abolition of the UCAS tariff system to facilitate admission criteria giving equal weighting to academic skills, life course experiences and related softer skills denoting personal suitability for social work.

The ‘most twisted and unaccountable force in the state’? Newspaper accounts of social work in the Republic of Ireland in troubled times

• Summary: This article investigates how newspapers in the Republic of Ireland are delivering ‘social work news’ during a period of professional flux and evolving economic crisis. • Findings: Many citizens in the Republic are currently experiencing serious economic hardship partly related to the global recession. It is important to understand the shape which the crisis is taking and to try to ascertain how this is impacting on social work. The article refers to an unpublished study of newspaper coverage of social work between January 2006 and January 2008. In this context, in the second part of discussion, particular attention will be devoted to the interventions of The Irish Times columnist, John Waters. Also, to accounts of ‘high profile cases’, particularly those appearing to highlight the urgent need to establish a national emergency or ‘out-of-hours’ social work service. Here, the work of the social affairs correspondent, Carl O’Brien, will be discussed. • Applications: Social workers and social work academics need to strive to understand, and politically situate, newspaper accounts of social work and related forms of activity. Moreover, social workers should seek to intervene and shape newspaper accounts of their work. The article suggests that a recent report produced in England may aid social workers deliberations and actions in this respect ( Social Work Task Force, 2009 ).

Personal Reflections of Social Work Education in the Context of the Social Work Task Force

Following the death of ‘Baby P’, the UK Government set up a Social Work Task Force that reported in 2009. This made 15 recommendations, including five relating to the initial training of social workers at Higher Education Institutions (HEIs). This article considers the gap that exists between those HEIs and Local Authority employers from the perspective of someone who has spent 25 years working as a Local Authority social worker and manager, but who has recently moved to head up a social work department in an English university. Consideration is given to the provision of placements and that it is difficult to ‘fail’ social work students, particularly their practice learning components. Reference to experiential learning is discussed as being helpful to provide a theoretical connection to practice. The call is made for much closer partnership working between HEIs and Local Authority employers to start to bridge the gap.

‘Treat Me Don't Beat Me’ … . Exploring Supervisory Games and Their Effect on Poor Performance Management

This paper explores the concept of games that can be played out in social work supervision and the resulting effects on both social worker performance, and ultimately on client service provision. It draws on the well-known game playing concepts of Berne and Kadushin, and will then proceed to locate these issues in today's social work context. In particular, it will argue that in light of the recent Social Work Taskforce Report, Building a Safe, Confident Future, recommendations calling for clear requirements governing supervision to ensure high-quality practice, it is critical that attention to supervision is focused not just on questions of frequency and content, but also on the complex interpersonal dynamics. This paper proposes that social work managers are potentially susceptible to certain supervisory games due to their anxieties about the use of power in practice. The purpose is to assist social work managers to better understand particular games and how they can unwittingly participate. It explores the inadequate provision of support and supervision for managers themselves, and highlight the oft forgotten outcome of these dynamics — the resulting poor quality service provision to vulnerable social work clients.

Social Work in England at a Watershed--As Always: From the Seebohm Report to the Social Work Task Force

Social Work in England at a Watershed--As Always: From the Seebohm Report to the Social Work Task Force