Category Archives: Social work

How the spread of Christianity informed state responses to poverty

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Dr Karen Lyons, emeritus professor of international social work at London Metropolitan University, reflects on a Social Work History Network webinar (24 April 2024) examining the development of ‘global’ social work values. (748 words)

Social work is generally understood to be a ‘local’ activity, particular to the society and communities within which it is practised.

It is also increasingly identified as a global profession with common values. But is this supposedly global nature in fact a construct prescribed by Britain and the US in the development and the dominance of a particular form of Western thinking?

These questions were recently explored at an event organised by the Social Work History Network. Mark Henrikson, of Massey University, Auckland, New Zealand, took us back a great deal further than the commonly understood origins of social work. He showed how the Church has played a significant role in how societies have viewed people who were poor or ‘different’ in some way.

Henrikson traced the origins of ‘Western’ social work thinking and values, with its current emphasis on individual choice and responsibility, through biblical texts to Calvinism, which took hold in some parts of Europe from the 16th century and spread to North America. Continue reading →

Something lost that’s worth revisiting

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Brian Parrott reflects on the uncertain place of ‘community’ within the social work profession. (711 words)

In the 1968 Seebohm Report-influenced years for social work, the word ‘community’ was widely used, whether ‘community development’, ‘community work’, ‘patch working’, ‘community social work’ or other.

The common essence was something about the interrelationship of an individual or family’s circumstances with the place in which they live – its features, its wellbeing and the social forces and policies which impact on them.

During the first half of the 1980s, what came to be called ‘community social work’ in local authority social services departments or in projects supported by them, was described, promoted, supported and criticised. It has lived on ‘below the surface’ as other events in children’s services, adult social care, political favour, or public funding have dictated the nature and focus of social work.

For many of us, this has meant that something was ‘lost’ that might merit revisiting, particularly now in the contexts of greater focus on user-led services, collaborative working and ‘co-production’. Continue reading →

Addressing homelessness in social work education

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Carolin HessCarolin Hess is a PhD student in the NIHR Policy Research Unit in Health and Social Care Workforce who has been awarded Doctoral funding from the NIHR School for Social Care Research. She reports from a recent webinar, the latest in the Unit’s Homelessness series. (920 words)

The webinar, attended by over 200 people, presented emerging findings from an innovative study ‘Addressing Homelessness in Social Work Education’, conducted by Jess Harris and Karl Mason and funded by the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) School for Social Care Research (SSCR).

The study delved deeper into an aspect of a previous study on Safeguarding responses to homelessness and self-neglect, which examined why social workers, including those in safeguarding roles, may be inadequately prepared for working with people experiencing homelessness. The study is also connected to a previous webinar on a study on the ‘Homelessness Social Worker Role’ which explored the experiences and support needs of specialist homelessness social workers, as well as the systemic barriers they face. This earlier webinar revealed that many social workers reported limited exposure to homelessness-related topics during their qualifying courses and uncertainty about their role in this area. Continue reading →

Reflection on presenting at NIHR ARC North Event – Mind the Gap: London boroughs’ ideas for adult social care research

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Lucy JacobsLucy Jacobs is a Senior Social worker with London Borough of Bromley Adult Social Care currently undertaking a Pre-Doctoral Local Authority Fellowship in the NIHR Health & Social Care Workforce Research Unit, King’s College London. (1192 words)

I was delighted to have been selected as one of the Local Authority Presenters to speak at the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) Applied Research Collaboration (ARC) North Thames (NIHR ARC North Thames) event held on the 18 May 2023 entitled ‘Mind the Gap: London Boroughs’ ideas for adult social care research’. The event was split across a morning and afternoon session. It was hosted by the Care Policy Evaluation Centre. Co-organisers, alongside the NIHR ARC North Thames, were made up of the following: the NIHR ARC South London, the NIHR ARC North West London, the CRN North West London and the NIHR School for Social Care Research.

I felt honoured and nervous (in equal measures) to have been given the opportunity to present my topic in the morning session. Dr Sarah Jasim from the Care Policy Evaluation Centre opened the event on behalf of the organising team  and introduced the ‘World Café’ session format. The three local authority thought leaders (which included my humble self) would briefly introduce our local topics of interest and stay at our tables where attendees would subsequently rotate between the discussion tables every 30 minutes. I had never been a presenter in a ‘speed dating’ (or 30-minute speed date if you like) styled event prior to this, so it was quite exciting for me as an early researcher. Needless to say I thoroughly enjoyed it. Continue reading →

What’s New? LGBTQ+ in Social Work Practice Education, Placements, and the Assessed Supported Year in Employment

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Victoria Grimwood is a Pre-Doctoral Local Authority Fellow at the NIHR Policy Research Unit in Health and Social Care Workforce, King’s College London. (304 words)

Victoria Grimwood

Victoria Grimwood

In the recently published Social work in England: State of the nation 2023 report Social Work England, the regulatory body of social work in England, announced an intention to increase the focus on equality, diversity and inclusion, and a commitment to the development of improved standards in education and training for the profession. As many in social work have observed, the social work profession is more diverse than the general population in England in relation to ethnicity, gender identity and sexual orientation.

Continue reading →

Improving professional decision-making in situations of risk and uncertainty: a pilot intervention

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Dr Mary Baginsky

Mary Baginsky

Dr Mary Baginsky,Senior Research Fellow at the NIHR Policy Research Unit in Health and Social Care Workforce, reflects on our seminar led, online, by Professor Cheryl Regehr on 28 September 2021. (763 words)

Professor Cheryl Regehr is Provost and Vice-President for the University of Toronto and former Dean of the Factor-Inwentash Faculty of Social Work. She is also a Visiting Professor at our Unit this term. We were delighted that she agreed to lead a seminar that focused on her recent work. In this she explained how the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) of Canada has supported a number of her recent research projects that have examined stress, trauma and decision-making in social work (see examples below). The aim is to develop a new model for improving decision-making in situations of high-risk to reach a better understanding of the factors that drive decision-making in these situations. Professor Regehr and her team piloted a new approach for improving professional decision-making. The researchers examined biological, emotional, cognitive and contextual influences and this involved measuring social workers’ heart rates and recording their reflections on the decisions they had taken at specific times. The participants were able to link their emotional responses to the points at which they had been under physical stress. By raising their awareness to the relationship between their physiological responses and their automatic responses to the decisions they made the intention was to help them move towards more deliberate decision-making. Continue reading →

Promoting the importance of human relationships: hospital social work

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Jo Moriarty, Senior Research Fellow at the NIHR Health & Social Care Workforce Research Unit, King’s College London introduces the new hospital social work report, which she wrote with Dr Nicole Steils and Prof Jill Manthorpe. World Social Work Day is on 19 March 2019 #WSWD2019 is the official hashtag. (602 words)

Mapping Hospital Social WorkThe theme for next week’s World Social Work Day is ‘promoting the importance of human relationships.’  In preparation for this we are launching our report into hospital social work, which was funded by the National Institute for Health Research Policy Research Programme at the request of the Chief Social Worker for Adults, Lyn Romeo.  Lyn has also kindly written the report’s foreword.

The origins of hospital social work lie in the decision made by the Royal Free Hospital in 1895 to appoint Mary Stewart as the first ‘lady almoner’. Her role was to interview people to decide who would be eligible for the free medical treatment that the hospital provided.  Other hospitals soon followed this example and by 1948, the Institute of Almoners had over 1000 active members.[1]  Written in the style of the time, Flora Beck’s textbook for almoners noted that their two key tasks were:

… to determine whether social problems are likely to have a bearing on the patient’s illness. The second is to make the patient feel that here is a person with whom he could, if necessary, discuss his personal difficulties; someone to whom he need not mind admitting any trivial misunderstanding which had been bothering him, and to whom he could reveal serious and confidential problems without embarrassment.[2, cited in 3] Continue reading →

Child protection social work: call for study participants

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Nicola Anderson is a child protection social worker who is also conducting a study of what affects child protection social workers working directly with parents. If you would like to take part or learn more about the research please contact Nicola: nicola.anderson@study.beds.ac.uk (441 words)

Engaging parents in direct work is an important part of working in child protection. Sometimes it can be a very difficult task as social workers are entering people’s private family life and interventions can feel invasive. Parents are justifiably reluctant to allow this. Parents can express their feelings to the social worker involved and this can sometimes become aggressive. Social workers meet aggression so often that reducing aggression has now become part of social work (Taylor 2011). Schools of thought are that social workers contribute to parents’ negative feelings as a result of their communication or practice styles. There are movements towards changing the way social workers communicate and work with families with the emphasis on respect, listening and ensuring parents understanding of and involvement in plans and processes, for example motivational interviewing and signs of safety. Continue reading →

Why we need to pay more attention to student funding in social work education

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Jo Moriarty is Senior Research Fellow and Deputy Director at the Social Care Workforce Research Unit. The report on the social work bursary, published today, is available free to download. (604 words)

There has been a large rise in the volume of social work research undertaken in the UK over the past 20 years but one topic remains stubbornly under researched: student funding in social work education. This is all the more surprising when we remember the attention given to tuition fees in the last three general elections.

In June 2017, the Department of Health and Social Care Policy Research Programme commissioned the Social Care Workforce Research Unit to undertake a short review of the social work bursary.

We had already done a similar piece of work so we had not expected to uncover a large research evidence base. However, it still seems surprising that there is so little research on social work students finances given that many social work students are drawn to social work after being in care or experiencing discrimination or poverty. Continue reading →

The Prato moment: thinking about leadership in social work education

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Mary Baginsky, Senior Research Fellow at the Social Care Workforce Research Unit, introduces an invited post by Professor Charlotte Williams:

I was fortunate to have attended the second colloquium held at Monash University’s Prato centre. This is the second year that the group has come together to explore social work education. Prior to a more formal summary of proceeding, Professor Charlotte Williams, Professor and Deputy Dean of RMIT’s Social Work in the School of Global, Urban and Social Studies, reflects on the context and culture within which the discussions took place. In so doing she made me realise how much I miss the intensity of the discussions, the opportunity to learn from the experiences of others and the time to talk and disagree.—Mary Baginsky

Professor Charlotte Williams writes:

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Professor Charlotte Williams

There’s a special magic about Prato that is so conducive to commune. The ambition of the Prato Group, a collaboration of Social Work educators, reflects many of the attributes of this ancient and vital textile producing city in which it was inaugurated. The Prato textile enterprise with its yarns, designs, collective and innovative technologies has approached its futures over an 800-year history with enormous creativity, energy and pragmatism in an effort to remain relevant, stable and future-oriented. Through epochs of profound social, economic, political and technological change the ability to anticipate, capture and engage judiciously with disruptive forces and to lead through change has meant a threatened industry thrived largely through the efforts of small and distributed artisans working with common purpose. Continue reading →