What are some of the implications of internationalisation?
With the approach of World Social Work Day on 19th March my attention has turned to the nature of social work education as a global endeavor. As deputy editor of Social Work Education: The International Journal for the past four years, I have had the privilege to work with academics, educators and researchers all over the world who are grappling with how best to prepare the next generation of social workers. One aspect of this which continually stands out for me is the ways in which a country’s social, cultural, political and economic context alters the shape of the profession and throws up particular challenges for qualifying training. How do we develop a sense of social work education as an international discipline, underpinned by a definition of social work set out by the International Federation of Social Workers (IFSW), when there is a need to also ensure that it prepares students for practice with service users and carers within a particular context?
Every year the journal provides free access to one article in celebration of World Social Work Day. This year, with the IFSW theme of ‘Promoting Social and Economic Equalities’ in mind, we have selected a paper from Africa on The challenges of Social Work Field Training in Lesotho by Professor Pius Tangwe Tanga from the Department of Social Work /Social Development at the University of Fort Hare, South Africa [The free access link can be found at http://www.tandfonline.com/r/WorldSocialWorkDay2013]. I asked Professor Tanga to set out some of the struggles that African programmes face in grappling with these issues. In conversation, he shared some of his thoughts with me:
“Although social work in Africa was initially based on Western models introduced by colonialisation, it has subsequently sought to find a way of confronting the particular unjust socio-economic and political relations in African countries. This injustice has given rise to poverty, unemployment, discrimination, violence and other social problems. The precarious socio-economic and political situations of most African countries has meant that social work programmes are faced with a myriad of difficulties including inadequate teaching staff and infrastructure. The field work agencies where our students are placed generally have horrendous working conditions including limited office space, lack of equipment and inadequate finance. There are insufficient numbers of trained social workers to supervise student social workers so many do not receive the professional guidance and education they need in fieldwork placements. But, because of the ever escalating social problems on the continent, some governments have put pressure on training institutions to increase their intakes of social work students regardless of the aforementioned problems and this exacerbates the difficulties.
“Despite these challenges, African social work programmes are resolute in their commitment to preparing their students for practice in the ‘Global Village’. Programmes seek to adhere as far as possible to the IFSW minimum standards set out in the Global Standards for Social Work Education and Training. Students are regularly exposed to transnational and transcultural social work theory and practice within courses which enhance students’ knowledge of global issues, through exchange programmes and by fieldwork placements in other countries, perhaps within large non-governmental organisations in Europe or America. Such attempts to internationalise the curriculum facilitate the transferability and portability of social work qualifications gained in African countries and further the opportunities for our graduates to compete in the ever increasing interdependent world economy and global labour market. It has also been argued that exchange programmes increase the sense of ‘global responsibility’ that students from those other countries hold towards those who are poor and oppressed within developing countries.
“Many practical and ethical challenges are faced, however. Programmes’ aspirations are often compromised by the huge economic and social challenges faced by many African countries. Exchange initiatives need sponsorship, which is very limited in its availability. Social work practice and theory which has a basis in cultural or indigenous practices and social norms may also sometimes end up marginalized, with the result that service users and carers do not always receive a service which is locally responsive and culturally appropriate.
“Given this, the IFSW standards should be seen as ‘aspirational’ rather than necessarily achievable. The conceptualisation of internationalisation should be broadened to address how global issues influence local realities or conditions. By establishing models that blend Western models with indigenous social work models and practices, this will enhance a recognition and acceptance of plurality and diversity within social work education in developing countries.”
So, what implications do these ideas have for the theory and practice of social work education in Western and developed countries? Please share your views!
Hash Tag(#): ‘Humble Pie’
Our guest blogger this week is Denise Turner, a Social Work doctoral candidate in the School of Education and Social work at Sussex. Denise shares with us her journey in the world of social media and highlights some of the rewards reaped so far.
I have always considered myself to be part of the ‘lost generation’ technologically – those of us who left school and indeed University, long before computer use and IT became widespread. This has left me with a lingering mistrust of technology and an irrational fear that by pressing the wrong key I will somehow cause irretrievable global damage.
It was with some consternation then, that I greeted a recent suggestion from Andy Cheng, a fellow doctoral candidate, to try and establish a weekly ‘live- chat’ on Twitter. I had met with Andy as part of my remit to support part-time and distance PhD students in Social Work. For those who are working, have other responsibilities or are geographically distant it is much harder to establish links with colleagues and to attend the regular opportunities to build networks. Andy’s idea was to use Twitter as a way of ameliorating this, by allowing students to ‘meet’ regularly in a space where they could discuss topics relevant to their research. He told me there was a weekly Twitter resource similar to this called #phdchat which had proved highly successful, but suggested that ours be specific to education and social work.
Even as an age-old Luddite, this idea did seem sensible – I just wasn’t convinced I was the person to carry it out. Andy may as well have suggested I try open-heart surgery or join the Space programme – I had no idea how to use Twitter and my teenager’s constant fascination with it had led to several arguments. However, I duly set up an account and gingerly interfaced with a few others. We held our first ‘chat’ which helped me at least to understand how the process works. After a couple of weekly sessions, Brian Hudson, our newly appointed Head of School, generously agreed to be a ‘Guest Tweeter.’ Brian was already receptive to the benefits of Twitter and had used it to form contacts within the School prior to his appointment.
Gradually news of our regular #eswphd chats has begun to grow and although participation from our own students is still limited, there is a small but regular group of these. The resource is also being used by students, academics and practitioners elsewhere, with some very positive feedback.
One of the most inspiring outcomes has been in the way other Twitter users have offered to help. For example Steve Moss (@gawbul) archives all our posts from the ‘live chat’ for those who missed it, whilst Paul Brownbill (@paully232000) has just set up a voting system for deciding each week’s topic. Amanda Taylor (@AMLTaylor66) and Joanne Westwood (@JLWestwood) Senior Social Work lecturers from Uclan have also agreed to ‘Guest’ on their highly innovative ‘Book Club,’ which recently appeared in Community Care. Harry Ferguson, Professor of Social Work at Nottingham and a keen Twitter user has also offered to ‘Guest.’
These offers of help, for no financial gain have convinced me of the value of Twitter in building community and thereby demonstrating the values which underpin both social work and education. Choking on a large piece of humble pie, I am now a complete convert to Twitter and aside from its efficacy at building community, I have learned about research; teaching and networking opportunities which would not have been available to me otherwise.
As academics engaged in research, within a competitive environment, we want our work to reach a wide audience and our University Departments to be recognised – Twitter offers a highly time and cost-effective means of achieving this.
Additional information:
Anyone interested in helping us develop the School of Education and Social Work social media strategy we are setting up a small Working Party, please contact Denise at D.M.Turner[at]sussex[dot]ac[dot]uk.
#eswphd chats take place every Wednesday evening 8 –9 p.m and the archive can be found currently at https://www.freeside.co.uk/~gawbul/eswphd/eswphd_tweets_090113.html (cc @gawbul) #eswphd. We are aiming to set up an accessible ‘Wiki page for the chats before too long.
To vote on each weeks topic visit: #socialwork #phd #highered http://twtpoll.com/ie6uka @DeniseT01
The Community Care piece on Uclan’s Book Club can be found at http://www.communitycare.co.uk/blogs/social-work-blog/2013/01/how-were-using-j-k-rowlings-no.html
Foster care and user engagement in research
Nikki Luke, our guest blogger for this week, is the Research Officer at the Rees Centre for Research in Fostering and Education at the University of Oxford. Nikki is an alumna of the University of Sussex, having recently completed her doctoral work in the Department of Psychology. The work of the Rees Centre, which has been set up in order to identify what works to improve the outcomes and life chances of children and young people in foster care, is of direct relevance to social work and we’re delighted to host Nikki’s post reflecting on her first few months with the Centre. Read more about the Rees Centre at http://reescentre.education.ox.ac.uk
I recently completed my PhD in Psychology at the University of Sussex. For me, as for many Doctoral students, participants were the people I interviewed and tested, while I was the researcher who came up with the questions, ran the studies and interpreted the results. And then I saw a job advertisement.
What appealed to me from the beginning about the Rees Centre was its aim of engaging with the people who are the focus of its work. The Centre is headed by Professor Judy Sebba, who came to Oxford from the School of Education and Social Work at Sussex, where she has written about the need for user engagement in research. While I had made some effort towards this in the early stages of my PhD – by involving foster carers in a focus group session to see whether the research question I had formulated bore some resemblance to their day-to-day experiences – it wasn’t something I had carried throughout my work.
At the Rees Centre we’re doing it differently, by establishing systematic methods of consultation with foster carers, young people and practitioners at every stage of the research. What this means in practice is that firstly, we have experts we can turn to who can tell us whether we’re asking the right research questions. Working with those involved in foster care means we can identify the issues that they feel are most in need of answers.
Secondly, we are engaging service users at the point of data collection. Judy and I are currently recruiting a batch of foster carers who will work with the Centre as carer-interviewers. Not only can carers as participants often be more open with those who have shared similar experiences, as interviewers their own understanding of the situation means they can come up with questions that we as researchers would never have thought to ask. In future when we look at issues for young people we aim to have a similar arrangement with young care-leavers.
Finally, we are engaging carers, young people and practitioners in the interpretation of the results. ‘This is what we’ve found: how does that fit with your experience, and how can these findings be translated into something of practical use to you?’ – these are the questions we are asking. This is true not only for the original work we conduct, but also for our literature reviews. We know that social workers and foster carers have very busy lives – they don’t have the time to sit for days on end at a computer screen, trying to decipher whether something they’ve read is in line with the general consensus from the evidence and doing battle along the way with information access systems which would put Fort Knox to shame. So alongside our own research, we are keen to distill the key messages from existing work in a format that is accessible and useful for those they were intended to help.
The Rees Centre is still in the early stages of its journey into foster care research – but I’m confident we have some pretty good travelling companions to help us find the best routes.
Addressing Anti Social Behaviour in Emergency and Supported Housing in Brighton and Hove
Rachel Fitzpatrick is an MA Social Work student in the Department of Social Work at Sussex University. Prior to joining us on the programme Rachel worked as Caseworker for the Community Safety Case Work Team (CSCT) at Brighton and Hove City Council (BHCC). Recently Rachel was nominated, and won, the Council’s Big Difference Award. Below she writes about the work that led to the award and what she’s learnt from both the project and the award.
Within my role as Caseworker for the CSCT I led on a project that worked with providers of Emergency and Supported Housing in the city to improve the management of Anti Social Behaviour (ASB) and reduce the harm it causes to local residents and the wider community.
The project began following a referral from a supported housing project where some of the tenants were causing ASB that had impacted on the local community. I worked closely with the project staff, delivered group sessions to the residents, worked with individuals identified as causing ASB and attended multi agency community meetings with affected local residents.
The success of this work, in reducing reports of ASB, led to a consideration of how it could function in other housing environments. The resources were collated and developed into training templates to be offered to staff and residents in a range of emergency and supported housing teams. Each time the package was delivered there were new challenges and intricacies that enabled the project to be developed further.
An important part of this project’s success was in building positive relationships with partner agencies such as, Sussex Police, Sussex Central YMCA, and the Emergency Placement Team (BHCC). The challenge here was to balance the needs and priorities of different agencies with that of community members and individual perpetrators whilst keeping in mind the overall aim of reducing ASB.
The project has been recognised by the Housing Commissioning services at BHCC as improving communication between local residents, the housing providers and BHCC and following the project a reduction of complaints about ASB from local residents have been noted. The CSCT has gone on to contribute to local policy on the prevention of eviction and the project has continued following my departure from the team.
Following this project I was nominated by my colleagues for the Council’s Big Difference Award. This award aims to recognise teams and individuals that have made a difference to the local community through innovative projects. Following a meeting with the Chief Exec of Brighton and Hove City Council this month, it was announced my team had won the award.
When I met the Chief Exec she asked ‘What motivates you?’ I found that my answer was surprisingly similar to that of other employees around the table who were from a range of disciplines and had varying levels of experience.
Common to the responses was autonomy: people valued good leadership and guidance but this had to be balanced with professional creativity and a feeling of agency in negotiating day-to-day decision making.
As a future Social Worker I feel there are some lessons to be learnt from this project and the subsequent award, which I would summarise as follows:
1. Effective partnership working can lead to better outcomes for services, individual service users and the wider community.
2. A holistic and creative approach is crucial to tackling and reducing the harm caused by ASB.
3. Practitioners can contribute and influence local policy and practice through their own work.
4. Recognition can further motivate staff and make them feel valued.
5. Feeling ownership and agency over practice is valued by staff from a variety of disciplines.
Children’s privacy: a gatekeeper to children’s rights in Greece
Greek newspaper To Vima reported late last night of some less than sanguine developments for children’s rights and the welfare of children and their families in Greece.
It has come to light that Golden Dawn MP Ilias Panagiotaros has requested from the Greek Ministry of Interior (the equivalent of the British Home Office) for the exact data of “foreign infants and young children, by country of origin, who are in nursery schools” in Greece.
To Vima’s headline reads “Taking a leaf out of Herod’s book” and the request follows earlier demands made by the party for the relevant information of immigrants’ use of health services in the country. Both requests appear to follow alarming pre-election statements that “if Golden Dawn are elected to parliament, we will storm hospitals as well as nurseries, and we will throw illegal immigrants and their children on the streets”, and a rise in incidents of violence against immigrants in the country in the last six months.
Under Greek law nurseries ensure the right of access to all children irrespective of nationality, religion or gender and linguistic, racial or social group. This right of access ensures that children’s rights under the UNCRC, of which Greece is a signatory, are preserved.
The latest developments, if enforced by the Ministry of Interior and acquiesced by pan-Hellenic municipalities, would open the doors for the violation of a raft of rights under the UNCRC. As well as a direct violation of children’s rights to privacy, a violation of their rights to non-discrimination, to education, to benefits from social security and to protection from violence would surely follow.
At the same time, if children’s data was connected to that of their families, parents’ and siblings’ rights would also be jeopardize. Should the absurd plan of collecting data on immigrant infants and children be actioned these families, many of which have made Greece their home, would face difficult decisions about whether or not to stay in the country under the threat of explicit discrimination, violence and abuse from the far right. This would make the Greek State solely responsible, in one fowl swoop, for reneging on its duties of care and protection, which are already patchy at the best of times, for its most vulnerable charges.
According to To Vima article, it is reported that some nurseries are already receiving ‘urgent’ requests from the ministry to hand over infant and child data. There are glimmers of hope however, as it is also reported in the same article that pedagogues, in Crete for example, are resisting the ministry’s request arguing unequivocally that they “will not hand over data of infants to neo-Nazis who openly threaten them”.
It was exactly two weeks ago that the Greek Citizen’s Ombudsman (O Synigoros tou Polite) held a one-day event, following its April report to the UNCRC on the state of children’s rights in Greece. The event focused on defending children’s rights in Greece in times of crisis and amongst other things it was noted that immigrant children, children of refugees, Roma children and children of other ethnic minorities were especially vulnerable to further marginalization in the current economic crisis.
Recommendations set out to the UNCRC for the improvement of children’s rights in Greece included a plethora of action points for the general improvement of child welfare and child protection in the country, as well as recognizing the importance of children’s right to privacy. The latter point was made in relation to educating the media of children’s rights to a private life. Perhaps, given yesterday’s reports, the Ombudsman will need to start by educating its own government first.
–
Dr Sevasti-Melissa Nolas is an academic working at the University of Sussex’s Department of Social Work. Her research focuses on children’s participation rights and youth development, with an emphasis on their implications for social action, social innovation and social justice. She is also a Greek living in London with her husband, and amongst other things, worrying about the developments back home.
We only gone and done it!
Its graduation week for us here at Sussex, and we will soon be bidding farewell to this year’s BA Social Work finalists. We wish our finalists all the very best for the future – don’t forget us and let us know how you are getting on from time to time.
In the meantime, we wanted to share with you (with permission) a poem by class reps, Fran Sacco and Christen Williams, on the social work education journey. The poem was delivered by Fran and Christen with much gusto at a wonderful event that was organised by our finalist to celebrate their achievements.
Well done everyone!
We only gone and done it!
By Fran Sacco and Christen Williams
Welcome social workers, we’re qualified at last,
Haven’t the last few years gone so bloody fast?
Just sit back, relax, we’ll take you back in time
When we were young, keen, and our faces had a few less lines,
Remember the fear on your first day?
Your name 100 times you had to say,
Struggling to make new friends, can be a little lame,
But alas, Russell was on hand, with his board games
Some fresh faced from collage, practice or access,
We all made in on the course, a small but significant success,
Ready to start learning, what a doss – two days a week,
David and his giant jumpers, and Jem with his cheek,
ILPD, TMS, HGD, you WHAT?
We studied it, and learnt it, and became social work swots,
Assignments, presentations, portfolios, that’s FINE,
We could just console ourselves with chocolate and wine,
Now onto second year, with hindsight we could see
All through first year study days were a luxury,
9-5 on placement, and not to forget PIP,
Half way through the year, things got a little shit
Slowly but surely we all found our feet,
Beginning to feel like social workers, was a pleasant treat
However those dreaded 21 NOS’s we had to remember,
Made us apprehensive about the coming November
When third year came we had no time to pause,
Straight into placement, but for a good cause,
Feeling more confident – we’ve done this before,
But not that bloody Concept Note – what a chore!
Juggling all our work, became a circus act,
Family, friends and partners could have given us the sack,
There was a light at the end of the tunnel – placement was no more
Then that dissertation came knocking at our door.
Finally our mammoth work load was completed
Despite the tears and sleepless nights, we were not defeated
But we would like to take a moment to acknowledge and say
Good luck to those who are not with us, and have gone a different way
Lets take some time to reflect on all that we have done
Writing those 49,000 words was no easy run
But here we are today, it’s been a challenging few years,
And we couldn’t have done it without the support of our peers
Join us now, and raise your glasses and cheer, WE ONLY GONE AND DONE IT!
A year in social work education
By Sevasti-Melissa Nolas
This seems like a particularly timely moment, before heading off for my yearly dose of Mediterranean sun, to reflect on my year in social work education and what I’ve learnt as a social work educator. I am new to Social Work Education (though my research is in areas of direct relevance to social work), joining the Department of Social Work and Social Care at Sussex in September 2011. It is from this ephemeral ‘newbie’ position, before it morphs into something else, that these reflections come.
What has amazed me, and humbled me, the most this last year is the openness and generosity of spirit that I’ve encountered. During the last year I have had the privilege of working with some wonderful students on our BA, MA and Post-Qualitfying programmes at Sussex who have impressed me with their openness and appetite for learning, their wit and humour, and their reflexivity – all qualities that, as well as making it a pleasure to be their lecturer, group facilitator, seminar leader or tutor as the case may be, I’m sure will stand them in good stead in their (future) practice. All the while I have been supported and guided through by experienced, knowledgeable, but above all generous colleagues: generous with their time, their insights, and their good humour as they answered my many, many questions (some quite lame ones I’m sure!).
I have found a renewed appreciation for the role of tolerance, for difference, for uncertainty, for complexity, that is required for social work practice. I heard the frustration of my post-qualifying students with the analytical models academic research often develops which do not do justice to the messiness of their practice. I agree. And even where we are focusing on the messiness of practice there is still a long way to go in terms of producing an embodied understanding of that practice. I’m a big fan of social practice theorist Sylvia Gherardi’s ‘replacement question’, which I’ve written about elsewhere. It goes something like this (adapted here for the social work context): if someone were to replace a social worker in their role, what would they need to know and do in order to carry out that role without attracting attention to themselves? (A bit like that great Channel 4 show a few years ago, Faking It). It seems to me that tolerance for differences and for uncertainty, and a deep appreciation (not just lip service) for complexity would be key to ‘passing’ as a social worker: holding a million little piece of information in mind, not to mention theoretical, research, policy and legal knowledge, balancing different interests, all the time not knowing if and when new information will come to light, and ultimately needing to make a timely decision sometimes about or for, and at other times with people, that won’t necessarily be popular and that will have a real impact on a person’s (or people’s) life trajectories. And doing this across a number of cases. Imagine it. Just for a second. It makes my head spin.
And then, at the end of the day, despite all this, decisions need to be made, something has to happen. So at the same time as remaining open, being generous of spirit, tolerant of difference, of uncertainty, of complexity, social work has to remain critical, pragmatic and research-minded. I’ve been thrilled to read a number of excellent assignments across undergraduate, postgraduate and post-qualifying levels of study demonstrating such critical thinking and pragmatism. I was most excited when one of my MA students emailed from placement asking me to point her in the direction of research on maternal depression and child mental health, that would help her to be more evidence-informed in her practice. The best part was her response to my email: “It’s reassuring to know I’m not making stuff up, using research in practice isn’t quite as daunting as I thought it would be!”
And yet despite, being a ‘newbie’ to social work education, the most interesting experience for me this year was simultaneously feeling at home. In thinking about the last year one of my favourite essays in social psychology, The Stranger comes to mind. In the essay, its author Alfred Schuetz, describes the experience of being a stranger, “an adult individual of our times and civilization who tries to be permanently accepted or at least tolerated by the group which (s)he approaches”. The essay is an early example of ethnographic thinking – an attempt to make sense of the cultural patterns of a social group, to make visible the “thinking as usual”. Schuetz concludes that “strangeness and familiarity…are general categories of our interpretation of the world” which propel us into processes of inquiry in order to make sense of the world around us. We have succeeded in that process when that “which at first seemed to be strange and unfamiliar” becomes “an unquestionable way of life, a shelter, and a protection”. While there is more learning on my part to be done, that I’m sure of and I look forward to, the resonance that the above social work topics hold for me let’s me know that I am, perhaps, no longer a stranger.
“We want more than just to be alive and kicking”: developing innovative care to promote normalisation of individual older persons
By Henglien Lisa Chen
Social work with older people in some countries is an area which has received less acknowledgement and investment – the recent global economic crisis has further diminished adequate care services and decreased the provision of well-qualified social work professionals for older people. In contrast, in other countries, there has been increased investment in ageing care innovation and professional training. As a social worker and academic, I would argue that older people, just like everyone in society, deserve not only just to be alive and kicking but to be able to live meaningful and dignified lives. This requires (student) social workers to gain multi-disciplinary knowledge about ageing and to pay attention to working with older people. Therefore, International Social Work Week provides a most appropriate opportunity to share a few observations on ageing care from a number of countries with you. By doing so, the hope is to stimulate more awareness on the importance of ageing care and greater action in innovating appropriate care support.
My interest in cross-national research into ageing care came from my experiences as a local authority social worker in England. During that time, I often wondered about ways of supporting older people based on a needs-led approach. The examples I visited in Denmark , the Netherlands and Taiwan show that care providers (e.g. care homes, day centres, etc.) are able to provide buffet-type meals, so older people can decide on what they like to eat at the dining table. Similarly, the care in one of the Danish care centres involved an indoor leisure room provided with various things that an individual can chose from with support from staff and volunteers. Both examples demonstrate a needs-led approach involving maximising choices and flexibility of support in meeting the need for normality of the individuals.
Social inclusion and service accessibility is important in ageing care to prevent isolation and depression. In the Netherlands, the project reports A City of All Ages and Generation in Action have provided guidelines for inter-generational participation. Relevant local services (e.g. schools, social clubs, day centres, care homes, etc.) and authorities (e.g. education, welfare, social care, housing, etc.) look to increasing participation between children, young people and older people through intergenerational working projects in community development. Similar projects can also been found in some parts of Germany.
Various methods of care support for older people across the countries mentioned above can be understood by welfare typologies which explain the welfare state involvement in care and the impact on the roles and models of the social worker. It also shapes the different focus on social work education across countries. For example, while social work education in England focuses on problem-based learning to develop the student social worker’s capability in working with individuals, programme-based learning (for more information, search for books with the keyword ‘programme evaluation’) is one of the focuses of social work education in Taiwan to develop the student social worker’s capability in identifying the needs of older people and innovating care support services with relevant carers, professionals and agencies.
Apart from the direct support through services for people and an accessible environment as mentioned earlier, there has been increasing technological innovation in ageing care to promote the well-being of older people, e.g. devices to help prevent falls and protect older people (and people with impairment and disability). These can be as simple as exercise bands to as technically advanced as a robot nurse. The exercise bands assist older people with slow-movement exercises (e.g. raising the arms/legs) to strengthen their gait and balance to help prevent falls. The robot nurse invented by a Japanese institute could potentially help older people to move from chair to bed, room to room or toileting when they are alone. So they will be unlikely to need to wear incontinence pads or be admitted to a care home due to mobility restriction. It also prevents the staff risks related to moving and handling an older person.
There is little doubt that ‘home is where the heart is!’ To promote ‘ageing in place’, we need social workers who understand their local needs and to invent support services in meeting those needs. From the examples shown above, I learn that to maintain the dignity of older people we need high-quality care and caring professionals that can offer the maximum of choices, accessibility and privacy in meeting the need for normalisation and social inclusion of local individuals.
Social work faces a new level of challenges and opportunities on ‘how’ we can possibly promote the dignity and worth of older people in the 21st century when there is increasing expectation of the quality of care in later life:
- How to provide a wide-range of holistic, personal and technical support to individuals in a sustainable and accessible environment?
- How to take advantage of global learning in advancing indigence care?
- How to provide an increasingly broad range of multi-disciplinary knowledge to student social workers within a 2-4 year higher education programme?
Let’s share our thoughts!
Using digital technology in practice teaching- what a difference a decade makes
By Hilary Lawson
I have been working with practitioners involved in the teaching of social work practice for over 10 years, and World Social Work Day has given me an opportunity to reflect on how the increased availability of digitalised audio and visual technology has positively impacted on teaching and learning techniques.
Good social work practice rests and falls on the practitioner’s ability to build trusting purposeful relationships with others. The same applies to the teaching of social work students. The practice teaching relationship, where small gestures and phrases convey understanding and collaboration, can be the site of enormous learning and change. How can we help practice teachers get this right?
When a new course for practice teachers was introduced in the early 1990s we experimented with the idea of asking the practice teachers to tape themselves working with their student. The tape was brought to the seminar and discussed in a small supportive group of other trainee practice teachers. This intense focus on the way the practice teacher conducted the session – their manner, their responses, how they helped the student reflect on theory and practice- was consistently rated as producing huge learning for all involved. However, it always felt that such was the difficulty in finding and using the technology, it was a fine line between the technology both facilitating but also hindering learning.
Back then, making a video tape of a practice teacher supervising a student required an enormous amount of setting up. Family centres were one of the few places where a video recorder could be found, and these were large cumbersome things on tri-pods. The practice teacher and student had to visit the centre to record themselves. When we then watched the resultant video in the seminar there would be acres of footage of both the student and practice teacher looking at the camera with anxious expressions and the practice teacher shouting to some off-camera assistant “is it on? Is it recording?”. When they had satisfied themselves that it was indeed “on” it could take many minutes before the pair relaxed into anything that resembled their “normal supervision”.
Watching the video in the small group of peers could also be stressful for the practice teacher. Their obsession with how often they saw themselves twiddle their hair, their astoundment at “do I really sound like that?” would interfere so much with what they could learn about their supervisory practice, that I often gave them the tape at the end for them to look at again at home once they had become more sensitised to what they looked like on camera.
So, when, last week, I was teaching another generation of practice teachers I reflected on the difference a decade makes. When I set them the task of bringing in a recording of themselves, there was little fuss. Today we are used to using technology to capture moving images of ourselves and most people were able to lay their hands very easily on a smartphone, portable camcorder or pocket sized digital recorder. They transferred their recording onto a dvd or usb stick and we viewed their work huddled around lap-tops or, for those who could bear seeing themselves movie-star size, on the seminar room projector screen.
Sometimes the student had opted to remain audible but invisible and in these cases we watched just the practice teacher and her responses – still a very valuable learning experience for those who are worried about compromising their student’s or supervisee’s confidentiality. I hope the use of visual and audio technology will play an increasingly important role in both teaching social work students and indeed in the continuing professional development of supervisory staff throughout the organisation.
The challenges facing social work managers
By Sharon Lambley
Whatever country a manager works in, and however social work is organised in that country, the policy changes sweeping through welfare systems across Europe are proving immensely challenging for managers to implement. International Social work Day provides a welcome opportunity to reflect upon these challenges.
The social work managers I teach are looking for answers to some very complex management problems. They want to know how, for example, they can balance resource allocations, legal, policy and risk considerations, service user expectations and social work values, within complex (and often hostile) systems that are over-stretched and driven by imposed performance targets. They know that the decision they make with others will have life changing consequences for citizens. Whilst the negative impact of neo-liberal policies and managerialist practices are well documented, what is less understood is what might be working and why, which makes teaching in this area challenging.
Some recent research by Dustin (2007), Evans (2010) and Munro (2011) in England has provided insight into what is shaping social work and its management practices (in very different ways) which helps to de-construct the lived experiences of practitioners and managers. Consumerist approaches that engage citizens through complaints processes (even in child protection work – see Slettebo, 2011 research in Norway) contrast with co-production strategies that provide opportunities for shared power, and in some situations, citizen led services (Needham, 2009). These provide a useful context for understanding the different business models that are emerging to support social work. In addition, these perspectives help to make sense of why social work roles are being transformed or indeed replaced by new workers, who have been described in Denmark as ‘professionals without a profession’ by Van Beerkel et all, (2011). However, the management solutions that are being adopted from general management theories and approaches are problematic, and this knowledge needs to be challenged as it’s often inappropriately adapted for social work (Lawler and Bilson, 2010). Some academics are trying to bring together the world of management and social work. Simmonds, (2010) work on relating in supervision, Wilsons work on leading practice improvement in front line child protection, and Ruch’s (2011) work on feelings in relationship based management are very interesting papers that try to bridge the gap between management and social work practice. My own research is revealing how supervision practices are changing to accommodate new business models and citizen expectations, and my co-researcher colleagues and I are seeking evidence of what might be working well, and why. There is much more to do.
This blog has enabled me to share my thoughts with you and I am now interested in knowing what you might be working on (or thinking about). Lets share our thoughts on international social work day!
