Views Of Social Workers Research Articles

Social Workers In Home Care: The Israeli Case

In Israel, the government partially supports personal home care services (grooming, feeding, assistance with transfers) as a means to maintain frail individuals in their home environment for as long as possible. Social workers capture a prominent position in these arrangements as initiators and supervisors of personal home care services. This study evaluates the view of social workers concerning the home care industry in Israel. We conducted focus groups with 37 social workers and identified three main themes: a) challenges faced by social workers in home care agencies; b) advantages associated with working as a social workers in a home care agencies; and c) resources available to assist social workers in their work. The stigma associated with home care appears to be pervasive and to include stigmatizing attitudes and behaviors towards older adults, their home care workers, and the social workers responsible for this caregiving arrangement. This stigma could potentially be reduced by actively bringing aging and home care into academia and by greater regulation of the home care industry by the government.

Social Workers' Perspectives on Care Arrangements Between Vulnerable Elders and Foreign Home Care Workers: Lessons from Israeli/Filipino Caregiving Arrangements

ABSTRACT OBJECTIVES: This pilot study addresses a universal social phenomenon of foreign workers of lower socioeconomic status who provide care to more affluent, but frail older adults. In Israel, foreign workers from the Philippines provide the majority of paid 24-hour home care services to older adults. To date, the views of social workers, who are highly involved in this arrangement of care, have never been evaluated. Hence, this study evaluates the advantages and challenges associated with such an arrangement of care from the perspective of social workers. METHODS: We conducted four focus groups with 31 social workers who work closely with Filipino home care workers, older adults, and their family members. RESULTS: Using grounded theory methodology, we identified motivating factors that contribute to the popularity of this caregiving arrangement among both Filipinos and Israelis. We also identified four major areas of challenge; these include the intimate nature of this caregiving arrangement as well as cultural, legal, and financial disparities. Social workers also discussed strategies they use to assure the safety and satisfaction of the involved parties. DISCUSSION: Despite the high need for this caregiving arrangement, many difficulties and challenges exist; these are partially due to very prominent cultural differences between the host culture, Israel, and the culture of the Filipino home care worker, and they are also due to legal, social, and economic differences ingrained in such a care arrangement.

The Maryland Patient Plan of Care Form: Perceptions of Physicians and Social Workers

To assess nursing home physicians' and social workers' perceptions of the new Maryland Patient Plan of Care Form (PPOC). Mailed survey. Nursing homes in Maryland. Thirty-seven physicians and 60 social workers. Views of physicians and social workers were assessed through quantitative questions about the use of the PPOC form and qualitative questions about barriers in completing the form and recommendations to improve the form. The majority (79.2%) of physicians and social workers reported that completing the PPOC is somewhat of a major burden. An overwhelming majority (85.6%) reported that social workers are completing the form, while close to half of the physicians and a quarter of the social work respondents say that physicians are involved in completing the form. Moreover, significantly more social workers (63.3%) than physicians (36.7%) believe the form would be more useful as a physician's order (X(2) = 5.287; d f = 1; P = .021). Both physicians and social workers identify barriers to completing the form and offer recommendations to improve the form. Despite legislation requiring physicians to sign the PPOC, it is not a physician's order, thus shifting the burden of completing the PPOC to social workers. We conclude that most physicians and social workers view the PPOC as burdensome and do not feel that it is useful, but whether it is having an effect on patient care preferences merits further investigation.

Promoting rights or avoiding litigation? The introduction of the human rights act 1998 into adult social care in England

Rights to social care in England have traditionally been highly restricted. By placing positive obligations on social care agencies and practitioners to make provision for vulnerable adults, the incorporation of the European Convention on Human Rights into UK law through the Human Rights Act 1998 promised to extend their reach. Yet transforming a set of largely procedural rights into something more substantive requires the active intervention of social care practitioners. This article firstly examines the fit between human rights and the policy and operational contexts of social care before exploring the views of social workers included in a recent interview study. Whilst the findings point to a willingness on the part of some to advocate on behalf of vulnerable adults, they also highlight the extent to which individualistic beliefs about dependency and responsibility reinforce the dominant construction of citizenship rights under the current government as contingent upon the fulfilment of responsibilities. Treating the Human Rights Act as a weapon of litigation, the article concludes, simply reinforces defensive practice. Progressive change is best supported by fostering a human rights culture in social care which, in turn, depends upon challenging social workers’ assumptions about the nature of dependency, responsibility and rights.

Professional Beliefs about Parents of Children with Mental and Emotional Disabilities: A Cross-Discipline Comparison

The views of social workers, child psychiatrists, and psychologists about parents of children with mental, emotional, and behavioral disorders were compared in this study. The Providers’ Beliefs About Parents questionnaire was used to measure views about parents’ competence, parents’ pathology, parents’ credibility, parents’ role in the etiology of children's problems, information sharing with parents, giving explicit directives to parents about how to help their children, and related child mental health issues such as use of psychotropic medication with children and adolescents and perceived importance of research-based knowledge about child and adolescent psychopathology. Variables most associated with parent-friendly beliefs and attitudes were endorsement of a neuropsychological orientation and familiarity with parent support groups. Views of respondents did not differ by ethnicity, gender, or parental status. Child psychiatrists were most in agreement with parent-friendly attitudes and beliefs, clinical social workers were least in agreement, and psychologists were midway between the other two groups.

Support for Openness in Adoption Placements‐What can we learn from New Zealand?

SUMMARY: The placement for adoption of older children and those with special needs brings into focus the practice of open adoption whereby there is some form of continuing contact, including face to face contact, between birth and adoptive families. This in turn raises issues about the support needed to maintain such links. The paper discusses the progress made in New Zealand towards open adoption. The views of social workers, birth and adoptive families on face to face contact are reported and arguments for and against post‐adoption support for open adoption are examined.

Social Work Values and Pacifism: Opposition to War as a Professional Responsibility

In the fall and winter of 1990-1991, as large numbers of U.S. soldiers were deployed to the Persian Gulf and reports of hostilities filled the media, the reality of and its impact on the human condition became a salient concern to Americans. For many the Persian Gulf War challenged us to examine not only our views about this military action but also about the appropriateness of in general. The personal views of social workers about vary greatly according to philosophical and political outlooks. As professionals, however, social workers have a common set of guidelines that define our values and prescribe our behavior. In the United States the National Association of Social Workers (NASW) has delineated a set of values for the profession (Morales & Sheafor, 1992). The Code of Ethics is the statement of these values translated into prescriptions for professional behavior (NASW, 1990). This article illustrates the logical connection between social work values and to war: If social workers behave professionally according to our prescribed values and ethics, it will follow that we are working from an active pacifist perspective. The idea that pacifism is a natural concomitant to social work is not new. Social work pioneer Jane Addams was an active pacifist: opposed on the pragmatic grounds that it was a wasteful and ineffective method of solving social problems; that, indeed, it created more problems than it solved (Lasch, 1965, p. 218). She was certain that money badly needed for social services should not be spent on weapons of making (Levine, 1971). Social justice is a central issue for the social work profession. The issues of and peace are intimately related to concerns about social justice. In writing about social workers and the nuclear threat, Rice and Mary (1989) cited a 1988 study by Van Soest and Johnston of the views of social work faculty on domestic policies and militarism. The researchers suggested that social workers have not yet recognized a connection between personal and domestic forms of violence, social injustice, and the violence of the nuclear threat. Their work led them to the conviction that peace and social justice must progress hand in hand. Definition of Pacifism Although people may manifest a pacifist view in many ways, the following definition expresses the basic tenets of the perspective: Pacifism is opposition to all and armed hostility; belief that national or international disputes should be settled by peaceful means rather than by force or war (Webster's New Twentieth-Century Dictionary, 1983, p. 1283). Thus, a pacifist opposes and supports the peaceful resolution of conflict. To further clarify the meaning, it is useful to contrast pacifism with passivism and with warism. A common misunderstanding is that pacifism is the same as passivism, that a pacifist is passive. This implies silent suffering and a defeatist posture when confronted. Although some pacifists may be passive, most are clearly activists who are working constructively to find alternatives to the violence of as a means of resolving conflict (Cady, 1989). In defining pacifism, Cady (1989) contrasted it with warism, which he contended is the predominant perspective in most Western countries, including the United States: Warism is the view that is both morally justifiable in principle and often morally justified in fact. Militarism is the manifestation of a warist perspective in a national government that has a policy of maintaining strong armed forces and being ready and willing to use them; aggressive preparedness (Webster's, 1983, p. 1141). In the warist perspective is morally acceptable, and alternatives are considered only if they promise distinct advantage over military options. Pacifism is the view that by its nature is immoral and that everyone must work for peaceful resolution to conflict and discover or create and practice alternatives to war. …

Psychosocial Needs and Care in Nursing Homes: Comparison of Views of Social Workers and Home Administrators

Nursing home social workers (n = 152) and administrators (n = 231) were asked to rate the relative importance of resident and family psychosocial needs and the frequency of functions performed by or expected to be performed by social workers to meet these needs. Overall, administrators rated 19 of 28 psychosocial needs higher in importance than did social workers. The two groups both rated as very important the needs of support during the transition to the nursing home, help in dealing with loss, and help with relatedness and intimacy issues, though the groups rated high-frequency functions somewhat differently.

The assessment of black foster parents: The relevance of cultural skills - comparative views of social workers and applicants

Social workers ' delineation of the problem of the recruitment of black foster parents in terms of cultural differences resulted in their professionalism being challenged on several counts. Social workers, themselves, were divided over the relevance of cultural skills to the assessment process and over the need to employ black workers. Although they paid lip service to the idea of cultural pluralism, their commitment was superficial (Roys, 1988; Ely and Denney, 1978). Culture and ethnicity were treated as the predominant; if not the only, dimensions relevant to the client-worker encounter but, for applicants, culture was only one of a set of intricately related and interactive dimensions which structure the realtionship between practitioner and client. A cultural pluralist approach which failed to address questions of representation and power sharing not only undermined confidence in white social workers' cross-cultural competence but weakened black social workers opportun ities for long-term incorportion into mainstream work. Applicants own mistrust of a cultural diagnosis of their situation helped to shift the frame of reference to a more general reappraisal of family assessment skills where personality and common sense were set against professional train ing. It was in this area that social workers faced the more serious chal lenge to their authority as professionals.

Harry Lurie's Assessment and Prescription: An Early View Of Social Workers' Roles and Responsibilities Regarding Political Action

Harry Lurie's Assessment and Prescription: An Early View Of Social Workers' Roles and Responsibilities Regarding Political Action

Interprofessional Perceptions: student views of social workers and teachers

Interprofessional Perceptions: student views of social workers and teachers

How nurses and social workers view hospital social service departments.

How nurses and social workers view hospital social service departments.