Social Work Standards Research Articles

Some considerations on the debate on social work in China: who speaks for whom?

In this article I persist with my argument that indigenous, local, culturally relevant practice ought to trump the external imposition of social work definitions, standards and professional models. The challenge, however, is not to fall prey to false dichotomies. Importantly, social work in China is not static but emergent, and no‐one is sure of the exact shape it will take. And the essential question is to what extent will Western knowledge and standards be uncritically appropriated into China? Most contributors to the debate thus far have taken the international definition of social work as their starting point, but far more significant are the political dimensions involved in this process of indigenisation. This article proposes that empirical evidence from within China regarding culturally appropriate, effective local responses – and some clear benchmarks for international engagement – should form the basis for dialogue between China and the broader social work community.

A response to the debates between Hutchings and Taylor and Jia on the Global Standards in China

This article is in response to Hutchings and Taylor's, and Jia's, debate on the Global Standards for social work education and training and the development of social work in China. It is argued in the article that: (i) we should examine the Global Standards and their applicability to China from a dialectical and historical perspective, and not deny the relevance of the application of the Global Standards to China solely from the point of view of ‘Western social work standards’, nor to accept uncritically the applicability of the Global Standards to China; and (ii) with this perspective, neither Western scholars nor Chinese scholars are more suitable than the other for judging whether or not the Global Standards are applicable to China. The most important factor in making this judgement is the presence of an adequate and unprejudiced discussion and communication between and among Chinese and Western scholars.

Redefining social work standards in the context of globalization

English Globalization impacts on all countries, adversely affecting developing countries such as India. Global and national standards for social work education should develop appropriate perspectives addressing the negative feelings of communities. The conception of 'self' as defined by the west needs to be seen in the context of communal relations of the east. French La mondialisation affecte toutes les nations, mais a un impact défavorable dans des pays en développement tels que l'Inde. Les normes mondiales et nationales de formation en travail social devraient développer des perspectives permettant d'en réduire les effets négatifs ressentis par les communautés. La conception du 'soi' (définie par l'occident) nécessite d'être vue dans le contexte des relations communales de l'orient. Spanish La globalización impacta a todos los países, afectado negativamente a naciones en desarrollo como la India. Los estÁndares globales y nacionales para la educación del Trabajo Social deberían desarrollar perspectivas para denunciar los efectos negativos que afectan a las comunidades. La concepción del "ser" (definida por el Occidente) necesita ser vista en el contexto de las relaciones comunales con el Oriente.

Legal ethics and high child welfare worker turnover: An unexplored connection

This article, which grew out of a series of 11 focus groups with child welfare workers and supervisors, explores how legal ethics may increase the stress child welfare workers experience in carrying out their duties and may contribute to high rates of turnover. A number of workers experienced their interaction with lawyers and the legal system as extremely stressful. Others misunderstood the role of a lawyer. This article considers the various sources of legal and social work ethics and standards of practice at work in lawyer–social worker interaction in the child welfare context and provides a comparison of legal ethics with social work ethics on a number of dimensions. Ethical issues such as defining the client, confidentiality, client loyalty and zealous advocacy are considered. Additionally, issues which are not specifically ethical in nature but are closely related are considered. These include efforts to be objective in handling the work, the personal affront experienced by many child welfare workers when their judgment is called into question and methods of communication. The article concludes that there is a need for training to assist child welfare workers to understand legal ethics and how they contribute to high turnover rates.

Ethical Issues in Open Adoption: Implications for Practice

Total secrecy and confidentiality no longer typify adoption in the United States. Today, most adoptions involve an exchange of information or some form of contact between the birth family and adoptive family–-so-called open adoptions. This article provides a comprehensive overview of ethical issues associated with various forms of open adoption, including issues of privacy, confidentiality, self-determination, paternalism, conflicts of interest, deception, and truth-telling. We present guidelines for social work practice in open adoptions, based on current ethical theory and ethical standards in social work.

The evolution of social work education in England: A critical review of its connections and commonalities with nurse education

Social work education in England underwent significant change in its move to degree status in 2003. It is hoped that the result will be increased professional standing for social workers, an improvement in the current widespread problems with recruitment, and assurance that all newly qualified social workers meet the National Occupational Standards for Social Work (Available from: http://www.topssengland.net/files/cd/). This change has pre-occupied social work educators and debate within the profession has concentrated on the practicalities and expectations of reform. This paper suggests that those working in nurse education may observe a number of similarities with its own earlier reforms and with current debates on whether nursing should move to an all-graduate profession. It then highlights three aspects of the new requirements for social work training: service user involvement, the place of research-minded practice, and the primacy of practice--that may be of interest and relevance to nursing colleagues.

Ethical and Legal Standards in Social Work: Consistency and Conflict

Social workers frequently encounter circumstances involving ethical and legal issues. In many instances, relevant ethical and legal standards complement each other; however, in some circumstances, ethical and legal standards conflict. This article provides a comprehensive overview of the relationship between U.S. ethical and legal standards in social work. The author presents a conceptually based typology of 4 types of relationships between legal and ethical standards. Case examples are included. The author concludes with a decision-making framework designed to enhance social workers' constructive management of difficult decisions involving ethical and legal standards.

Social work education, training and standards in Africa

This paper describes the historical development of social work education in South Africa, paying particular attention to the transformation of social work education and training post‐1994, and provides some detail about the efforts being made toward the development of a regional qualifications framework. It also describes the constitution of the Social Work Standards Generation Body (SGB), its functions, the processes followed by the SGB, and details the outcomes generated by the SGB. The potential costs and benefits of the development of minimum standards are discussed, with specific reference to the debates around the ‘whole qualifications’ and ‘unit standards’ approaches to generating standards. Although the registration of social work qualifications on the National Qualifications Framework (NQF) is a statutory requirement of the South African Qualifications Authority (SAQA), and was imposed, it holds promise and signifies an achievement by the social work profession. Since the inception of social work education and training in South Africa in the 1920s these are the first nationally formulated standards that have been accepted.

Social work education, training and standards in the Asia–Pacific region

This article discusses the joint project between the International Association of Schools of Social Work (IASSW) and the International Federation of Social Workers (IFSW) to establish guidelines for the training and standard setting that elucidates what social work represents on a global level. While it is impossible to address all the issues that might be significant in such a large scope, attention is given to the challenges establishing global standards might encounter in a region as diverse as the Asia–Pacific.

Research Methods as a Core Competency

Research methods are not required by many library and information science (LIS) programs in the United States and Canada; in fact, only half of the ranked programs require such courses of master's of library science (MLS) students. Yet, at the same institutions as the LIS programs, research methods are required in science programs, most social science programs, master's in business administration (MBA) programs, and graduate social work programs. Accreditation standards in business and social work reinforce an individual program's need to require research methods. In graduate education programs, accrediting bodies do not require research methods courses and LIS can be defined-on this issue-as similar to education programs and, possibly, humanities programs. Research competency by MLS graduates accrues sustained benefits to the field. If MLS graduates are to be contributors and consumers of research, then LIS will need to require research methods courses of all students. If the LIS programs are reluctant to include research methods as a core course, then the American Library Association (ALA) may need to make this a requirement for accreditation.

Social work and health care = clinical social work competence and profile in an area that is hard to survey

From the very beginning professional social work has been involved in health care. However, in our post modern society this area of competence has to be improved, and in order to compete with new health professions, a clear distinction has to be made. This is shown in important points of modern social work: Society perspective (health behaviour and public health circumstances), WHO perspective (health promotion) and psycho-social perspective (health care in social services). Health care under most difficult conditions asks for specialised competence that is to be developed in Germany as "Klinische Sozialarbeit" referring to international clinical social work standards.

Cultural Competency and Achieving Styles in Clinical Social Work

This paper attempts to build a cultural competency framework by reviewing the literature and laying a conceptual foundation for professional standards in clinical social work. It also explores the implications of cultural competency by relating some important factors to clinical decisions, alliance, and outcome in the mental health field. The pathways and directions of the relationships as well as the potential factors affecting cross-cultural clinical alliance are illuminated in a general model to guide hypothesis formulation in further research. Empirical data are presented on clinical social work practice with Asian American clients in light of a key factor in shaping cultural competency, i.e., clinicians' personal achieving styles. The findings suggest that such styles are culturally bound.

Sarnoff Responds to Faller

To the Editor: Dr. Faller misunderstands the point of my article: the effects of junk science on the field of social work. My purpose was never to convince readers about the existence of junk science, which has been done quite effectively by others, but to focus on how it harms perceptions of the field and our perceptions of clients. Furthermore, because the article analyzes social policy, it draws on a range of information sources, selected not because they meet social-work standards of significance, but because they reflect either the information sources used by the public or those frequently used in court, which constitute legal fact.

Book Review: Ethical Standards in Social Work: A Critical Review of the NASW Code of Ethics

Book Review: Ethical Standards in Social Work: A Critical Review of the NASW Code of Ethics

Appendix B: Proposed Social Work Standards of Care for Suicidal Patients, Version 2

Appendix B: Proposed Social Work Standards of Care for Suicidal Patients, Version 2 Health & Social Work, Volume 21, Issue 4, November 1996, Page 285, https://doi.org/10.1093/hsw/21.4.285 Published: 01 November 1996

Appendix A: Proposed Social Work Standards of Care for Suicidal Patients, Version 1

Appendix A: Proposed Social Work Standards of Care for Suicidal Patients, Version 1

Social work with suicidal clients: challenges of implementing practice guidelines and standards of care.

Practice guidelines and standards of care are detailed models of intervention processes that describe goals, objectives, processes procedures, and interactions. Disciplines other than social work have developed practice guidelines, and it is appropriate for social work to also define standards or guidelines. This article describes an attempt by hospital social work staff to enact social work standards of care for suicidal clients. The difficulties and challenge of developing standards and guidelines are discussed and reasons for the lack of success of the attempt are highlighted.

Training Field Instructors British Style

A system recently introduced in Britain for training and accrediting social work field instructors addresses concerns about the quantity of competent field instructors and the quality of field education in social work programs. This article discusses the British training/accrediting system for field instructors, its impact on field education in the UK, and its implications for North American schools of social work, field education, and accreditation standards.

The Obligation of Intellectuals

The controversy surrounding Confirmational Response Bias Among Social Work Journals (CRB; Epstein 1990) stems from its critical toneespecially in earlier drafts, its unflattering findings, and its use of deception to study journal publication processes. If the tone of CRB had rung a less challenging note; if its qualitative analysis had been summed up as a whispered reminder that social work referees might profit from greater attention to their comments; if its quantitative analysis had been simply reported as disconfirmatory; then perhaps little would have been made of the paper. Even assuming that a charge would have been brought, the National Committee on Inquiry of the National Association of Social Workers might have accepted the research with more collegial regard. As it was, the National Committee sought to banish me from social work. If the reviews in CRB are typical of social work's standards, then the editors and referees in the field have something to be defensive about. The better reviews came from journals that originated outside of social work organizations per se. Many referees missed the glaring methodological weaknesses of the pseudomanuscript. Many reviews were too brief. Many were incoherent, inaccurate, trivial, and highly individualistic. The response to CRB should have been tempered by the quality of the social work literature itself. In the six-year period from 1978 to 1983, only 12 studies from among an estimated 6,500 or more papers that appeared in the studied journals passed a very minimal methodological screen: randomly selected controls (Rubin 1985). Yet most of these were flawed. Indeed only one stands up as an example of high-quality research (Stein and Test 1980).

Social Work Education: Tackling The Theory—Practice Dilemma

SUMMARY The integration of theory and practice has long been a topic for debate and concern amongst social work educators. A longitudinal participant observation study of one cohort of social work students confirmed that the ideal of theory-practice integration was also high on their own list of self-established priorities. Students' efforts towards attaining this goal were also hampered by the perspectives which they themselves brought to bear on their training. Attempting to resolve the conflict between their own perspectives and their perceived demands of professional education students appealed to and reconstructed afresh various models of theory application endorsed both by social work educators and practitioners. These models, however, are essentially contradictory and pose serious problems for the development and maintenance of social work standards. This paper is based on the findings of a longitudinal study which charted the subjective experience of 20 postgraduate social work students on a two-year CQSW course. The research methods used were participant observation and semi-structured interviews, conducted at four points during training. Participant observation involved formal meetings, classes and informal gatherings and the interviews focused on students' profes sional development and attitude changes. The social work course chosen for study was under the control of CCETSW and reiterated the concern of this body to integrate theory and practice in social work eduction. In accordance with CCETSW's stipula tion that 40% or more of students' time be spent in placement agencies students were required to undertake one three-month concurrent fieldwork placement and one six-month bloc placement. Students were also required to demonstrate their competence in theory application by means of a written assessment paper, known as a 'situational study'. Students were instructed to: