Social Work Ability Research Articles

Social Work Grand Challenges: Leaders' Perceptions of the Potential for Partnering with Business.

Social work's ability to address complex societal problems such as those identified in the American Academy of Social Work and Social Welfare's Grand Challenges for Social Work is reliant on being innovative in how we prepare social workers and how we collaborate with others, including business. This research seeks to understand how leaders of major social work organizations perceive potential partnership with the business sector-including both possible threats and opportunities. Interviews were conducted with those serving on the Council on Social Work Education's Leadership Roundtable. The research explores how emerging partnership models can be helpful and ways in which the profession can prepare practitioners for better partnering with the business sector. Qualitative findings identify four key strategies to address the grand challenges and enhance partnerships: (1) more interdisciplinary work is needed, (2) social work students need to be adequately equipped for collaborative work, (3) a cohesive message is needed from the field, and (4) the potential benefits for partnering with business outweigh the risks.

Identity, selfhood and dementia: messages for social work

Dementia has been identified as a policy priority area for the European Union (EU). Given projected figures on the global increase in dementia over the next few decades, working with people with dementia is likely to become an even more prominent area of activity for social workers in older people's services. Recent research has begun to engage with the subjective experiences of people with dementia and there is considerable focus within nursing literature on their active efforts to maintain identity and selfhood. However, these issues have received little attention within the domain of social work. This paper reviews recent research on the subjective experiences of people with dementia and discusses the implications for social work in relation to: early intervention; communication and assessment, and support arrangements. Based on experience in England, it is argued that the current policy and practice context constrains social work's ability to respond to these issues and that a supportive organisational context, as well as high levels of skill, time and commitment, are required if concepts of personhood and citizenship are to have meaning in practice.

Advocacy versus Social Work: What the Setting-Up of an Advocacy Rights Hub Reveals about Social Work's Ability to Promote Social Inclusion

This paper uses a service evaluation of a city-wide Advocacy Rights Hub, based in a northern-English city, as a vehicle to explore the shift in welfare provision away from regulated state welfare to the deregulated voluntary sector in circumstances of diminishing welfare resources in the UK. It focuses on two significant trends relating to welfare that are exposed through the evaluation. The first is how social policies are increasingly directed away from addressing the needs of the socially excluded in low-income communities. The second and related issue is how these policy trends have led to the ascendency of advocacy and shrinking of statutory social work. It will reveal the inability of statutory social workers to act as advocates and reach out to the socially excluded, and how the contested territory of advocacy lays bare the increasing erosion of social work's professional values and principles.

Today's Studies, Tomorrow's Meta-Analyses: Implications for Evidence Informed Decision–Making in Social Work

ABSTRACTMeta-analyses play an important role in understanding aspects of human functioning and program effectiveness. Meta-analyses also inform practice and policy decision making in areas of interest to social work. This study examined the degree to which recent quantitative reports in top social work journals are eligible for inclusion in future meta-analytic studies based on method rigor. The results suggest a mixed picture. Articles in top social work journals typically present sufficient information on participant characteristics, p values, and Mean values, yet they often fail to present sufficient information on variance indicators or the precise numbers of participants, which limits the ability to calculate effect sizes. Furthermore, less than 10% of the reports utilized randomized experimental designs or tested for group equivalence. To enhance social work's ability to make evidence-based decisions by producing more meta-analyses, researchers should provide more detail in study reports and use stronger research designs.

Use of Meta-Analysis in Social Work and Allied Disciplines

Meta-analysis is rapidly becoming the gold-standard for conducting integrative literature reviews. To better understand the role of meta-analysis scholarship in social work, we analyzed publication patterns of meta-analysis across five disciplines: family studies, nursing, psychology, psychiatry, and social work. The frequency and proportion of published meta-analytic studies, critiques of particular meta-analytic studies, and articles discussing meta-analysis methodology were calculated by coding articles from the 10 highest impact journals within each discipline across a 24-year period. All disciplines are increasingly publishing meta-analysis scholarship, though social work lags behind in publishing and commenting on published meta-analyses. Implications are discussed for promoting and strengthening social work's ability to effectively produce and benefit from meta-analytic research.

The role of perceived stress on prenatal care utilization: implications for social work practice.

Data from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development/Missouri Maternal and Infant Health Survey on about 2,828 mothers were used to examine the relationship between perceived stress and prenatal care utilization. Major life events that contribute to stress also were examined in relation to adequacy of prenatal care. Women who received inadequate prenatal care were more likely to have reported that they almost always felt stress during pregnancy. Odds ratios were statistically significant for women who were not black and Medicaid recipients but not for black women and women who were not covered by Medicaid. Social work intervention for stress reduction on behalf of pregnant women has the potential to contribute to improved prenatal care utilization, but further analysis of the kinds of stress women experience will enhance social work's ability to target specific interventions.

Afrocentricity as an Alternative World View for Equality

An official goal of the social work profession is that of equality for all. However, social work's ability to achieve this goal is hampered by the Eurocentric world view, wherein reality is structured to emphasize fragmentation, conflict, and domination, which foster inequality. A better philosophical ''fit'' for social work is the Afrocentric world view. Its view of reality that underscores interdependency, collectivity, and spirituality places it in an excellent position to promote equality. Social workers are encouraged to apply the Afrocentric paradigm to transform social work from a profession primarily concerned with direct practice to a social movement of equality and justice.

Autonomy, Accountability, and Professionalism

Social work lacks a major, if not the major, criterion or attribute of professionalism, autonomy in practice. Further, this lack of autonomy has been fostered by frequently lifelong close supervision of social work practitioners, a model which is taught in degree programs (bachelor's and master's levels), and fostered and encouraged in subsequent practice in the field. Lack of autonomy and self-control in practice has led to a de-emphasis on accountability and performance outcome evaluation and assessment which, in turn, has led to a diminution of social work's ability to generate its own knowledge base and, hence, to have knowledge, specific and unique expertise which only it can exercise, and professional power.