This paper explores power relations in the classroom and subsequently seeks to re-work empowerment as a theory for practice. The discussion is located in a practice setting where an intervention for school children with behaviour and concentration difficulties, delivered by the author, was researched as part of his doctoral thesis. The works of Michel Foucault, seen in this paper as a post-structuralist, are tied together with those of the pragmatist John Dewey in an effort to re-work an understanding of empowerment that can withstand current social work practice tensions of power and control. This theoretical argument is illustrated by referring to qualitative data gathered from vignette interviews conducted with the students at two time points in the research. The concluding position in this paper is one of seeing empowerment in a more robust manner that can incorporate a post-structuralist understanding of power relations and yet allow space for the possibility and development of human agency.
Over generations, social workers have borrowed theories from sociology. However, sociologists have generally avoided borrowing theory from social work. By beginning with social work practice wisdom, we can unfold the complex elements organizing social work practice and by extension ethnographic research. Complexity and resulting uncertainty are antidotes for theoretical purity. Practice as grounded in life, that of client’s and social workers is inherently "dirty", i.e., messy, disorganized, confusing, unfolding, and uncertain. Understandings and practices are accomplished in a connection of self to a profession, agency/organization, mandate and purpose, and ethical orientation, in interaction with colleagues and clients. Social workers take sides as they are grounded in an ethic of care. The challenge of developing an ethical practice in the face of difference, disagreement, disjunction, and conflict lead social workers to bracket, and hence reflect on the putative coherence of a "life world." Face-to-face work with individuals rather than being a liability provides a source of knowledge and wisdom to inform social science generally.
By analysing changes through time in vulnerable welfare recipients’ perception of their unemployment trajectories, the article revisits the assumption that unemployed clients’ trajectories are linear pathways following a clear and predictable line of causes and effects. The analysis is based on a qualitative longitudinal study in which 25 vulnerable welfare recipients were interviewed and observed repeatedly over the course of a two-year period. The article depicts four main stages – clients step into and out of through time, dependent on their perception of individual agency, institutional role and orientation towards the future. The results show that stages in vulnerable clients’ unemployment trajectories overlap in complicated ways, in which different explanations, effects, unintended consequences and interlocking problems are closely intertwined. By studying social policy reforms through the lenses of the clients, the study challenges current research attempts to find a quick fix or ‘one-size-fits-all’ intervention to improve the employability of vulnerable clients.
Although the home is the most common place where social work goes on, research has largely ignored the home visit. Drawing on a participant observation study of child protection work, this article reveals the complex hidden practices of social work on home visits. It is argued that home visits do not simply involve an extension of the social work organisation, policies and procedures into the domestic domain but the home constitutes a distinct sphere of practice and experience in its own right. Home visiting is shown to be a deeply embodied practice in which all the senses and emotions come into play and movement is central. Through the use of creativity, craft and improvisation practitioners ‘make’ home visits by skilfully enacting a series of transitions from the office to the doorstep, and into the house, where complex interactions with service users and their domestic space and other objects occur. Looking around houses and working with children alone in their bedrooms were common. Drawing upon sensory and mobile methods and a material culture studies approach, the article shows how effective practice was sometimes blocked and also how the home was skilfully negotiated, moved around and creatively used by social workers to ensure parents were engaged with and children seen, held and kept safe.
Dropout from substance use disorder treatment is usually investigated and understood from a perspective of quantitative patient-related factors. Patients’ own perspectives (user perspective) are rarely reported. This study, therefore, aimed to explore patients’ own understanding of their dropout from residential substance use disorder treatment. The participants were 15 males and females, aged 19–29 years, who had dropped out of residential substance use disorder treatment at the Department of Addiction Treatment, Oslo University Hospital, Norway. Qualitative methodology with semistructured interviews was used to explore how the participants described their dropout and their reasons for doing so. Thematic analysis was used as the framework for analyzing the data derived from the interviews. Dropout had different meanings for different participants. It was understood as a break from treatment, as an end to treatment, or as a means of reduced treatment intensity. Against that background, four main themes for dropout were found: drug craving, negative emotions, personal contact, and activity. Patient and treatment factors seem to interact when participants explore reasons for their dropout. A complex pattern of variables is involved. As remedies, participants suggested that substance use disorder treatment should provide more focus on drug craving and training to understand and tolerate emotional discomfort. They also wanted closer contact with the staff during treatment, more activities, and rigorous posttreatment follow-up. These findings from the user perspective have important implications for substance use disorder treatment, clinical and social work practice, management, and research.
Understanding compassion fatigue is vital to supporting the health and well-being of oncology psychosocial service providers and oncology patients. This study aims to examine when compassion fatigue is experienced and how it is dealt with by medical social workers providing psychosocial care for oncology patients. A purposeful sample of 12 medical social workers was recruited; each participant was working at a hospital and providing psychosocial care for oncology patients in Korea. Through in-depth qualitative interviews, the following themes emerged regarding oncology social workers’ experiences with compassion fatigue: (1) when compassion fatigue hits me (when bonding with clients, when facing a client’s death, when facing organizational hurdles, when feeling inadequate) and (2) how I deal with compassion fatigue (communicating with others, setting professional boundaries, finding ways to help myself, creating grief rituals, building professional identity). Implications and psychosocial interventions that may help reduce oncology social workers’ compassion fatigue are discussed.
Arts-based research methods offer social scientists a rich collection of techniques for engaging participants often excluded from more traditional forms of research. The methods, which include techniques such as drawing, poetry, photography, painting, and dance, aid participants in accessing and communicating the deep, perhaps unconscious meaning of their experiences. While these outcomes are ideal for contextualizing experiences, greater guidance on the use of arts-based research methods is needed. Although the arts can be used alone in the elicitation of data, they can also be used in integrative ways—combined with methods such as narrative interviewing. Social scientists utilize arts-based methods in data gathering, analysis, and presentation. This article describes the implementation of arts-based focus groups with African American and White adolescents as they collectively drew metaphor maps exploring positive and negative community factors affecting their emotional health and stress. Using a series of guided steps, youth collaborated in drawing, collectively discussed, and individually ranked the factors they feel most affect their emotional well-being, to contextualize their maps. We present the data collection method and computer-assisted transcription process utilizing NVivo software. We share the youth’s perspectives of the group metaphor map making process and outcomes as evidence of its value. The method addresses key challenges to engaging diverse underrepresented groups in research, makes accessible information not discussed in typical focus groups, and uses aesthetic ways of knowing to raise awareness of youth’s lived experiences. Limitations and considerations for replicating the metaphor map method are also discussed.
Crisis resolution teams are a community-based service, targeting adults experiencing acute mental health crises. The rationale for the development of crisis resolution teams is both value and efficacy-based: crisis resolution teams should contribute to the humanizing of mental health services and to enhanced efficacy. This diversity in purpose appears to affect the practices of help that are offered by crisis resolution teams, which research has shown to vary greatly. A discursive approach recognizes that practices are shaped by external paradigms and structures, and clinicians’ construction of professional identities and practices through their talk and meaning making. Thus, this study used a discursive psychological approach to identify discourses through which crisis resolution team clinicians talk about and understand helpful help in mental health crises. Focus group interviews with clinicians from eight crisis resolution teams revealed two broad and contradictory discourses: helpful help as something "made" with crisis resolution team workers as creators of collaborative and innovative practices, and helpful help as something "given" with the crisis resolution team workers as representatives of a predefined specialist mental health service culture. The contradictions between these discourses reflect the diverse rationale for the development of crisis resolution teams and the possible tensions and pressures under which crisis resolution team work is conducted. In this overall context, the study further critically examined the tensions between the discourse of constructing new practices, and existing practices constituted by the specialist mental health services’ traditional discourse. Failing to constantly reflect upon and question these tensions in collaboration with service users, carers, and other services can impair creativity and the development of humanizing helpful help.
The critical realist position moves away from merely identifying correlations and attempts to seek out the causal mechanisms which underpin disadvantage. By drawing on an empirical study on placing disabled children for adoption, the article seeks to demonstrate the practical application of critical realist by combining its Retroductive framework with Grounded Theory methods. Bhaskar’s ‘Retroduction’ provides an analytical framework from which the researcher examines data within three distinct levels (observable; actual; real). The Observable and Actual levels are processes which identify significant incidences and connections between variables. The ‘Real’, attempts to extend conceptual analysis by hypothesising about the causal mechanisms which account for a situation. This article argues that the multidimensional framework offered through Retroduction is necessary if we are to fully grasp the disadvantage disabled children experience in adoption processes. This entails examining the extent to which socially constructed notions of childhood and disability implicitly affect the practice decisions of social workers. The findings presented through these levels of analysis reveal a nuanced and multilayered understanding of adoption outcomes.
Between 2000 and 2013, the U.S. foster care caseload decreased while the number of children in adoptive homes doubled. These shifts were a result of federal policies prioritizing the moving of children from state custody into legal permanence (e.g., adoption and guardianship) with the presumption they will live "happily ever after." This study used a mixed-methods multiphase, iterative process to illuminate the congruencies and incongruencies between the young adults' accounts of their foster care experiences and the legalistic, system-focused view of their experiences. This study highlights the limitations of administrative data as the primary source for evaluating systems, assessing child well-being, and for understanding child welfare outcomes. An important consideration for assessing the success of the child welfare system in finding safe, stable, permanent placements for children involved with the child welfare system is including the perceptions of the young adults with foster care histories. There are often three sides to a foster care story: the lived experiences of the participant, the official case record, and the space in between. This study begins to illuminate this space, through an understanding of the quality and enduring nature of these relationships as reported by young adults who lives were impacted by their foster care histories. Child welfare records indicate a legal permanency status, but the interviews address the enduring nature and quality of the relationships.
This commentary offers some of the author’s experiences of parenting a child with a severe learning disability and complex and challenging behaviours. Drawing on principles of auto-ethnography and critical reflection, the author considers issues of transition from children’s to adult social care services and the potential for support from a new piece of UK Legislation, the Care Act, 2014.
Evidence on the effectiveness of arts-based approaches in professional education has been gathering momentum in the last decade embracing disciplines such as medicine, the allied professions, social work and social care. Key texts have emerged promoting the use of the arts in professional education and there have been some attempts to capture empirical evidence on its value. This paper reports on a systematic review of the current body of knowledge on the impact of the arts in social work education. We introduce the rationale for undertaking a systematic review and the methodology and approach used. We then discuss the three significant themes from our synthesis of the evidence reviewed. These were positioning social work practice through linking micro and macro thinking, the cultivation of leadership beyond verbal reasoning and art as pedagogy. The findings are discussed in the context of what the arts can offer challenges in social work education.
As a first-year doctoral student, I experience challenges of confronting conflicts between my secular education, my Islamic beliefs, my past in Guyana, and my present and presence in Canada, while simultaneously contemplating my future. In this paper, I share my struggles with identity and epistemology through the contours of clarity, confusion, and twilight as I think about my doctoral research. I will present a brief synopsis of my professional and educational background, as well as my identity as a Muslim immigrant, and examine what emerged from this as a personal epistemology that will guide my qualitative research.
This article explores a social work doctoral student’s self-reflexive journey in search of a suitable epistemology for her qualitative social work doctoral research with lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans and queer (LGBTQ) youth in child welfare. It will highlight the deep influence that colonialism and imperialism can have on embodied knowledge and the importance of pushing against these paradigms to help bring forward the voices from the margins.
In this article, I tell the autoethnographic stories of epistemological tensions emerging from my entanglement with Indigenous and Western ways of knowing in my journey towards my doctoral research in social work. I link these tensions to broader socio-political and historical tensions that tie together the West and the Global South. I highlight the sharp contrasts and contradictions as well as the nuanced contestations in the production of knowledge. I follow a chronological order to organize my narratives into four parts. In the first part, I describe my experiences of walking in two worlds. In the second part, I explore how I knew what I knew, depicting my indigenous ways of knowing. In the third part, I examine Western ways of knowing, depicting the subjugation of my indigenous ways of knowing. In the final part, I address the hybrid ways of knowing that I embody by walking in many worlds.
There is scant theoretical and empirical research on experiences of trans1 and its significance for social work practice. In this paper, we premise that research on trans identity and practice needs to be located in particular temporal, cultural, spatial/geographical contexts and argue that a structural narrative analytical approach centring on plot, offers the opportunity to unravel the ‘how’ and ‘why’ stories are told. We posit that attending to narrative structure facilitates a deeper understanding of trans people’s situated, lived experiences than thematic narrative analysis alone, since people organise their narratives according to a culturally available repertoire including plots. The paper focuses on the life and narrative of Polly, a male-to-female trans woman, and her gender migration journey using the plot typology ‘the Quest’. We are cognisant of the limitations to structural narrative analysis and Western conventions of storytelling, and acknowledge that our approach is subjective; however, we argue that knowledge itself is contextual and perspective ridden, shaped by researchers and participants. Our position holds that narratives are not – and cannot – be separated from the context in which they are told, and importantly the resources used to tell them, and that analysing narrative structure can contextualise individual unique biographies and give voice to less heard communities.
This paper analyses the experiences of adolescents in foster care placement with specific reference to participatory decision making in an indigenous African cultural context in South Africa. The emphasis is on the voices of foster adolescents in an indigenous African cultural context and their experiences of inequality when communicating and expressing opinions. The theoretical framework adopted was Interactional Communication Theory in which individuals interact through the use of symbols to co-create and interpret meaning. This theory incorporates some elements of systems theory with the emphasis on the interrelatedness quality as integral to the communication processes. A qualitative exploratory research study was done with 29 adolescents in foster care. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 13 adolescent participants and as well as enriching the data with two focus groups consisting of eight adolescents in each group. Findings indicate a lack of openness of the foster care system in terms of the communication approach, international covenants and legislation that was used. The approach used was not based on interactional practices and perpetuated inequalities amongst adolescents. Also, the socio-cultural context of the foster family played a major inhibiting and determining role for adolescents regarding the level of free and open communication in their placement pertaining to decision making.
This article contributes to social work methodological discussions by examining narrative feminist research in action. Our discussion considers our conceptualization and use of narrative feminist research, which is appreciative of intersectionality. We draw illustrative examples from four projects: (1) In the Name of Love, Women’s Narratives of Love, and Abuse (1998–2008), (2) Helping Alliances with Drug Treatment Clients (2010–2016), (3) In Good Company, Women, Companion Animals, and Social Work (2013–2014), and (4) Distress in Childbirth: A Social Work Perspective (in process). We also consider challenges associated with using narrative feminist research data as evidence. For all of the challenges currently facing narrative feminist researchers, we maintain that the methodology offers social workers many benefits and expansive, praxis-oriented possibilities.
Understandings of as well as negotiations about change are constantly present in social work practice and in many instances these are decisive for how social work is formed. Employing discourse theories, this article analyses interpretative repertoires used by social workers in describing how they experience change and absence of change among clients having substance abuse problems, and how they position themselves accordingly. Examination of data drawn from interviews with counsellors working for the Norwegian Labour and Welfare Administration reveal three distinct subject positions in their discursive constructions of change and absence of change. These include (a) ‘the position of despair’, (b) ‘the position of limited professional responsibility’ and (c) ‘the position of resistance’ – each with its own distinctive set of interpretative repertoires. The article relates these to the complexities and varieties of constructions and understandings of change involved in working with substance abusing clients, where the counsellors’ experiences of success and of responsibility have central roles. In addition, the article shows that the institutional context is often significant for how change is constructed and understood by the counsellors.
In this paper, I retrace my interest in narrative forms of inquiry. I begin by revisiting a series of research projects that I conducted early in my career, describing some of my own dissatisfactions with the methods I used at the time. I move on to a detailed re-examination of my first piece of narrative research, completed during my PhD. In that project I used a narrative pointed psychosocial method in an attempt to develop new knowledge in the field of drugs, ‘race’ and ethnicity. In the final section, I consider what I have learned from this approach in terms of knowing and not-knowing and how I have used this experience to explore different approaches to narrative inquiry. I finish by drawing out some lessons I have learned from these different studies, which I hope might be of relevance to other social work researchers.
This article presents findings from an ethnographic study of child protection social workers in Britain, which explored social workers’ experiences of and practices in space and place. It draws on data from interviews with practitioners and observations that were carried out as social workers moved around the places (the town, estates, streets and areas around service users’ homes) where they worked. It focuses on the significance of a particular affective experience, the uncanny, which social workers evoked in many of their accounts of these places. The article introduces recent conceptualisations of space, affect and the uncanny before going on to consider data from the interviews. The following themes are explored: the relationships between the intimate spaces of service users’ homes and the neighbourhoods in which they were located; social workers’ accounts of feeling vulnerable in public and open spaces; social workers’ experiences of feeling unsettled by apparently mundane features of neighbourhood spaces. The article draws on critical engagements with the uncanny to consider its significance for child protection social work practice in Britain and its consequences in terms of social workers’ potential to work in emplaced and locally sensitive ways.
This study discusses the relations between life stories, political narratives and attitudes towards social problems taken by local leaders living in a poor, underprivileged suburb. Using the ‘biographical-narrative’ method, it addresses the questions—How do local conditions (in terms of: housing, social class, municipal policy, social networks, NGO settings, local conflicts, organizational narratives, etc.) affect local leaders’ narratives, biographies, attitudes and strategies and, vice versa—How do their narratives affect the urban order? In order to attain these answers, this paper presents two contradicting narratives, taken from two different local activists, both acting on behalf of the weak Arab population in an Israeli suburb at the turn of 21st century. The findings show that these divergent narratives and resultant attitudes were both deeply rooted in each narrator’s life story and close social milieu. Furthermore, such life stories, charged by certain biographical resources, generated and maintained particular strategies that, in turn, affected the reconstruction of their immediate urban socio-political order. Applying the ‘biographical-narrative’ method to the urban political realm has created a unique configuration of social analysis with some policy implications, especially in regard to community social work.
Examining the results of the "narrative turn" in social work in their seminal article for Qualitative Research in 2005, Riessman and Quinney found themselves disappointed with the size and quality of the research corpus they reviewed. However, they also identified three exemplars of promising work, including the research of Faye Martin (Martin, 1998). Riessman and Quinney highlighted Martin’s narrative-gathering strategy, devised on the basis of her practice experience and dubbed "direct scribing." The direct scribing method of narrative data collection disciplines the work of the researcher, who becomes the "scribe," and elaborates the roles of the interviewees as authors of the narratives that they create.
This article on capturing (and being captured by) the narratives of marginalized young people is situated in an increasingly significant movement in the social work literature that promotes giving voice to young people, so that they may have their views taken into account. We highlight the benefits of direct scribing as a means of narrative-gathering in social work and then address the challenge of interpreting these narratives, drawing on examples from our research. We suggest connections between direct scribing and the interpretive approach of dialogic narrative analysis as a method of interpretation that requires "letting stories breathe." (Frank, 2010). The aim of this contribution is to describe specific ways in which linking direct scribing and dialogical narrative analysis may contribute to the advancement of narrative research in social work, and, in particular, to the enhancement of efforts to amplify "youth voice" in social work policy and practice.
Using a series of 18 in-depth qualitative interviews from six participants, the present study employed Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) to explore emerging conceptualizations of motherhood among young mothers who gave birth as teenagers while living in foster care. Analysis revealed three themes: Ambivalent Beginnings, Coming into Our Own, and Finding Our Way, which, together, offer an understanding of youths’ interpretation of their experiences of motherhood over time. Findings extend and complicate a risk-only view of teenage pregnancy within foster care settings. They call for a compassionate view of mothering and attuned intervention in these challenging circumstances in order to support both mother and infant mental health and well-being. Study findings further suggest a need for ongoing, relationship-based parenting support coupled with thoughtful pregnancy planning, foster parent training in coming alongside teens rather than either withdrawing or taking over, and nurturing postpartum support.
A substantial body of theoretical work on meaning-making processes postulates that assisting clients in reconstructing their personal narratives in the aftermath of trauma helps survivors to integrate the traumatic experience into their identities and life stories. However, the relationship between trauma survivors’ (re-)construction of a coherent life narrative and their development of post-traumatic growth (PTG) has rarely been explored. In this study, I conducted life story interviews with 46 university students with trauma histories to examine: (1) How, and to what degree, trauma survivors (re-)construct a coherent life narrative; and (2) If and how this process is connected to the development of PTG. I found that survivors who were able to articulate a coherent story about their lives experienced more PTG, and I identified key characteristics of three stages of post-trauma change. I also found that trauma-related therapy, writing, informal conversations, and self-reflection played important roles in the narrative reconstruction process. I argue that some narratives are easier to reconstruct than others because not all narratives are equally valued in society. The presence or absence of narratives in the discursive environment, the reception these stories receive within society, and the access that individuals have to these narratives are influenced by the historical moment, social norms, politics, power, privilege, and individuals’ social locations. To promote empowerment and social justice, social workers should help trauma survivors to reconstruct their life stories, create spaces for the less-welcomed narratives, and engage in mezzo- and macro-level efforts to address social problems and inequalities.
This article is a reflective piece in which I account for how and why I have developed my current understanding of the relevance of epistemology to practice, to social work research and to the relationship between the two. Social work as a profession has itself faced something of an epistemological crisis of late, which has impacted on both practice and research in ways which have not necessarily been beneficial. I will draw my own practice and reseach to highlight the twists and turns in the development of my thinking about these issues and as a corollary, my views regarding the bridging role that pragmatic epistemology might play between research and practice.
A Geographic Information System (GIS) is a digital technology that integrates hardware and software to analyze, store, and map spatial data. GIS allows users to visualize (i.e., map) geographic aspects of data including locations or spatial concentrations of phenomena of interest. Though public health and other social work related fields have embraced the use of GIS technology in research, social work lags behind. Recent technological advancements in the field of GIS have transformed what was once prohibitively expensive, "experts only" desktop software into a viable method for researchers with little prior GIS knowledge. Further, humanist and participatory geographers have developed critical, non-quantitative GIS approaches that bring to light new opportunities relevant to social workers. These tools could have particular utility for qualitative social workers because they can help us better understand the environmental context in which our clients reside and give credence to their assessments of strengths, weaknesses, and opportunities for intervention. This article provides an introductory overview of the history of GIS in social work research and describes opportunities to use spatially informed approaches in qualitative social work research using a case study of a participatory photo mapping research study.
In this article, I reflect on my ever-evolving epistemological journey through which I came to embrace a "wholistic" qualitative methodology for my doctoral research in social work. I offer a chronological account of my lived experiences starting with my locus of origin and highlighting the challenging twists and turns that brought me to my research interest of exploring meaningful peer support relationships in mental health and addictions agencies.
In this article, I revisit my roots in pursuit of my epistemology. I write about how my mother’s story significantly shaped my interest in narrative inquiry. By inviting my mother to tell her story and through the process of shared meaning making, I learn that narrations are temporal and complex. Stories are built on our lived experiences and as our perceptions about those experiences change with time, so do our interpretations of the stories that we live with. Exposing my own limited understanding of a story that is so deeply connected to me, I conclude that the essence of narrative inquiry lies in multiple interpretations and in letting participants have a significant say over the shaping, structuring, and telling of their narratives.
This article explores the journey of a doctoral student conducting field research in Mexico on how violence affects the provision of health care services and health. Mexico has seen a dramatic increase in violence caused by the Drug Wars in the last decade that has spread to many states throughout the country. Using translations, metaphors, and examples from my field research that refer to violence, I explore the complexity of inhabiting different cultures and languages simultaneously as well as my role as a researcher, translator, and interpreter of what remains hidden or silent. In the process, I am pulled in different directions as I learn to adapt in a reflexive process. I explore whether what I have learned in my academic journey is enough to study the relationship between violence and health care service provision. The journey is a reflection on what I have learned about breaking some of the silences around the topic. I discuss the tension of writing this article on a sensitive topic and my responsibility as a researcher, translator, and interpreter of lived experiences. The text is an arrangement, which can be interpreted as a whole (or in parts).
In this article, I illustrate lived experiences within my roles as caregiver, clinical social worker, and researcher. Empirical attention has focused on the emotional toll of caregiving and management of emotions as clinical social workers, however, little attention has been given to the impact emotions have on the researcher and how emotional awareness can be useful in the creation of knowledge. Using a personal reflexive account, I "out" myself as an emotionally aware caregiver, clinical social worker, and researcher. Finally, I provide examples of how to incorporate emotion into the research process.
This article reports on a single-case study of a decision-making process in child welfare. Based on analysis of field notes, research interviews with caseworkers and case documents, the study explored caseworkers’ handling of ambiguity and uncertainty in a case of possible neglect on the tipping point between home-based and out-of-home care. The prospective study followed events and activities in the case of a family consisting of a mother, a father and newborn twins, reflecting real process in real time. Data were gathered in a local frontline child welfare office in a Norwegian town, and decision-making was studied as a process of sequential colligation rather than as a linear and cumulative effort. The findings suggest that the caseworkers’ individual commitment to and felt responsibility for the outcome led to a quest for documentation, making the process of decision-making more challenging. The search for decisive evidence may contribute to prolonged casework and postponed closure in cases on the tipping point.
In this article, I trace the origins of my epistemological stance as a biracial woman with multiple marginalized identities that caused me to span categorical boundaries in life. My perspective has become one in which I am positioned in an ambivalent, hybrid, liminal space. I respond to the epistemological positions taken by other doctoral students and consider our common struggles with situating ourselves among established theories that do not easily accommodate the complexity and ambiguity of our lived experiences. I describe my attempts to locate myself within existing epistemological approaches that are compatible with my own perspective and my research questions about racial disparities in young adult mental health. I conclude by adopting a healthy skepticism of existing theories of knowledge and by looking forward to asking and answering questions with my own research that will help social workers to work more effectively with diverse populations.
It has often been argued that identities have a strong connection to stories and storytelling and thus that life stories should be used to individualize care for people with dementia. A problem with this view is that storytellers are seen as individuals, freely reflecting on, composing, and telling life stories. This view becomes especially problematic when persons with dementia tell stories in institutional contexts where certain information is requested and necessary for decision-making. The aim of this study is to investigate how autobiographical stories are used and what functions they have in assessment meetings involving persons with dementia. Fifteen assessment meetings were audio-recorded and transcribed. Narratives were extracted and analyzed by coding who the narrator or narrators were, what the narrator(s) accomplished by telling this story, and what the consequences were for the ongoing meeting. It was found that all interlocutors told stories about the person with dementia. These stories were found to have three functions: (1) to justify why care services were needed; (2) to describe experiences about previous care; and (3) to provide a good working climate. Thus, not all autobiographical stories are the person's story. For care managers in their everyday work it is important to be aware of this and not only be satisfied with a story that suits the organization's needs. Furthermore, stories told in assessment meetings often positioned the person as dependent on others, which could undermine the identity and sense of self of the person with dementia.
In this article, I locate myself as a PhD student, of Indigenous and Settler heritages, enrolled in a first-year epistemology course. Using reflexivity as an approach in qualitative research, I take the reader on a journey of the intricate workings of my spiritual, emotional, mental, and physical experiences stemming from my grappling with the meaning of epistemology and how learning about this impacts the perspective I have in my life, social work, and for my dissertation research. Learning about knowledge and how it is conceived, impacted, and transformed through the interaction with others raises many questions about how I have come to know what I know. A question remains as to what I will know at the end of my research.
The author’s recent participation in a doctoral course on epistemology and the nature of social work knowledge produced an inner struggle regarding the validity of positivist and evidence-based approaches to social work practice and research. This article seeks to share some of this struggle as many social workers, students, and researchers have and continue to encounter debates regarding the use of evidence-based approaches in social work practice and research. The dichotomous nature these debates often take has often resulted in the exclusive embracing, defending and perpetuation of evidence-based approaches or the complete rejection and discarding of such approaches. The author suggests in this article that social workers, researchers, and academics consider an alternative approach to the debate.
This paper offers an account of my own epistemological journey over four decades of social work practice and research. It traces the journey from my early years as a practitioner working from an approach largely grounded in what we called practice wisdom, to my current situation as a professor of social work, undertaking research and guiding students on their own research and practice journeys.
The paper begins with a vignette from a research field trip in the early 2000s – mid point in my journey and then takes a more chronological turn exploring disability research and the theme of voice and activism in research. Finally, I offer some reflections on the journey itself, what has influenced and guided my own learning, the challenges and the insights.
In this paper, I critically reflect on my epistemological journey going from professional social work practice to finding a suitable qualitative research methodology for my doctoral research with Chinese high school international students in Canadian homes. I start with exploring the new face of homelessness that I observed among the Chinese students in my clinical practice. I then explore some of the reasons that bring them to Canada and engage in the critical examination of whiteness in the Canadian educational system. I conclude with proposing the metaphor of way-finding as a qualitative methodology for my doctoral research.
Society is becoming increasingly image based. As individuals regularly record moments both mundane and momentous, images potentially lose or gain power to communicate important information. Social work scholars have argued that social work should incorporate images into both interventions (
Reporting data from a case study of a collaborative systematic review, this paper discusses the impact service user involvement might have on research, and how research might benefit from this.
This was a qualitative case study. The researcher analysed process data on the collaboration in the form of meeting transcripts and minutes, reflective interviews and the researchers’ own field diary. The review was also compared with two systematic reviews on a similar topic, using the AMSTAR checklist.
The young people had influence at all stages of the review, but most importantly shifted its focus from healthcare to education, emphasising education as an important determinant of health.
Young people involved in this review influenced the researcher’s reviewing as well as the review, which shows that involving service users in research is important in order to reduce researcher bias in social care research.
We know more about the experiences of trauma, despair, and abuse of asylum seekers and refugees than we do of their resilience, strength, and active struggle to survive and succeed. This article explores stories narrated by asylum seekers from Darfur, Sudan, currently residing in Israel, to learn about their forms and sources of strength, resilience, and coping mechanisms. In-depth, semi-structured group interviews were conducted in Hebrew and in English with eight single men, aged between the ages 27 and 38, who had lived in Israel for between four and seven years. The interviews were recorded and transcribed, and the data analyzed by analytic induction and constant comparison strategies. Six factors were identified, from the interviewees’ perspective, as contributing to their resilience: cognitive coping strategies, behavioral coping strategies, the ability to work, the ability to study and educate oneself, the support of family and friends, and social and political activism. This study corroborates existing literature by identifying personal strategies and social support as important to resilience of refugees; however, and unlike other studies, we did not find religion as an important factor from our interviewees’ perspective. We have thus expanded the existing literature by identifying the ability to work and the ability to study as important factors contributing to the resilience of refugees.
From a social constructionist and narrative perspective on grief, which emphasizes the connection between situated storytelling, meaning-making and self-formation, this article explores the power of collective storytelling in an Internet-based community of the suicide-bereaved. This is a context where young mourners who have lost a parent to suicide, among others, turn for social support, which is another main focus of the article. Using Scott and Lyman’s taxonomy of ‘accounting practices’ to explain ‘unanticipated’ or ‘untoward behavior’, the approaches to meaning-making of suicide applied in this context for support exchange are analyzed, in the accounts of the parentally bereaved participants and in a co-produced bereavement story. The results showcase how the narrative framing for the interpretation and organization of the suicide experience provided by the website editors as a resistance to the ‘suicide stigma’, together with the power of the experience accumulated by many, can potentially work to destigmatize and empower the parentally bereaved participants’ grief. In addition, this public storytelling is acting to spread ‘lived knowledge’ and thereby to counteract suicide stigma in society. Ultimately, the results constitute a call for a return to a narrative orientation in social work practice. By adopting a teller-focused approach as part of assessment and treatment, social workers could inspire the often traumatized and stigmatized individuals they encounter to become narrators of their own life- and self-narratives, and to assist in the construction of a more tolerable meaning and identity from their experiences.
The study explores how women victims of post-separation stalking perceive the positions ascribed to them in the help-seeking process by social workers and other professionals. Applying positioning theory, the research identifies ‘critical’ positionings, namely, those hindering the women in seeking help. The ultimate aim of the inquiry is to inform professional practices by identifying how professionals position victims of stalking and the risks of misinterpretation this process entails. The data comprise narratives of 15 Finnish female victims of stalking, who were interviewed either individually or together with a professional (social worker, shelter worker or therapist) who had worked with them. A total of five such professionals participated in conducting the interviews. The analysis of the women’s perceptions posits four critical positionings: Professionals viewed them as (1) alienating parents, (2) unprotective mothers, (3) overcautious women and/or (4) implausible victims. These determinations are seen as rooted in considerations of morality, accountability, rationality and agency. The findings indicate that the complex nature of stalking, women’s reactions to it and the ambivalent appearance of their strategies for dealing with stalking may pose obstacles to professionals in positioning them as help-seekers. This in turn may hinder women in their efforts to receive adequate help or even victimise them further. The study highlights that client–professional interaction in the context of post-separation stalking needs to be more victim-sensitive. It suggests that when analysing women’s situations and providing help, professionals should be more mindful of women’s own understandings and valorise their sensitive experiences.
The large body of literature concerning couples’ decision making highlights the complexities faced by couples, and the potential challenges for social work practitioners. With population ageing, more people are living longer, many in long-term relationships, thus facing a range of critical later life decisions together. Yet, little is known about the challenges of interviewing couples together. This paper seeks to address this gap by reporting on a reflection on the process of conducting a constructionist narrative study of older farming couples’ retirement decision making. Drawing on Ruch’s (2000) model of reflective learning, this article considers research into couples’ decision making in a reflective cycle, including reflection on the supervisory relationship enabling transition from practitioner to researcher. This paper highlights the value of a reflective and reflexive supervision model when examining contexts dominated by a powerful discourse, such as the generational family farming narrative. The collection of data across two time phases permits exploration of change concerning rapport building and trust, relationships, decision making and participants’ construction of the interviewer. Findings from this study have implications for practitioners and researchers seeking to understand the process of interviewing older couples.
Ann Hartman is a major figure in the history of Social Work in the United States and, due to translations of her writings, a major contributor to direct practice elsewhere in the world. Dr Hartman was interviewed by Catherine Riessman as part of Qualitative Social Work's career interviews project. Looking at the interview, we decided—in the spirit of co-construction—to preserve in certain sections the conversational nature of the exchange but also to offer historical context and other commentary in order to give readers––who might be less familiar with Dr Hartman's life and times––additional information. Dr Hartman's commitment to social work practice has had a global impact. Her scholarship offered new tools to social work practitioners, in particular the eco-map. In addition, she provided strong moral authority and leadership for social workers in the academy by emphasizing epistemological diversity and taking a stand on politically controversial topics with forceful conviction.
The 2008 Wenchuan earthquake provided an opportunity to develop a Chinese psychosocial social work model in post-disaster contexts using constant feedback from service users including school children, their parents and teachers for more than seven years. Through critical reflection based on the practice wisdom acquired during that time, discussion with workers and service user feedback, this paper delineates a model which emphasises a step-by-step approach for social workers and mental health practitioners to promote local participation; culturally relevant ways of being, knowing and coping; self-help; mutual help; inter/transdisciplinary approaches among stakeholders; and ethical behaviour. This model may resonate with post-disaster situations within China and overseas.
Child abuse is a complex social problem that cannot be understood from a single disciplinary perspective. Successful intervention requires involvement of various professional groups. While such cooperation has many potential advantages, in practice, it presents challenges to effective intervention. The present study examines the lived experience of professionals in Israel engaging in cross-disciplinary intervention in child abuse. Qualitative data were collected by means of 40 in-depth interviews with professionals, including law enforcement agents, educators, mental health, and medical personnel. Two interrelated dynamics emerged: (a) responsiveness, based on immediacy, and (b) attempts to account for the intervention performed from the specific professional viewpoint of the intervening person and his/her professional belonging. A conceptual model is suggested that reframes child abuse work as an ever-emerging creative process, involving professionals’ attempts to balance the two dynamics in their daily work. Their cross-disciplinary activities are improvisational and situational, involving trial and error. Implications for practice are suggested.
This paper focuses on cases about children who were the subject of child protection plans and designated by children's social care services as ‘borderline’ for compulsory intervention by way of care proceedings. It moves beyond abstract language, into the everyday vocabularies of practice, with the aim of better understanding decision-making in such cases. The majority of these cases had been categorised as neglect (34/47 children). While social workers and managers clearly invoked a threshold or line for compulsory action, their discussions demonstrated a range of factors about why it was not always easy to identify when this line had been crossed.
Artefacts, objects and paraphernalia and their relationship to social work practice and identity have attracted little attention in social work despite their ubiquity in all aspects of our lives. This article introduces some theoretical perspectives on the qualities of artefacts and the nature of relationships between the material and social worlds; and considers the ways in which artefacts have been understood in social work research to date. It concludes by suggesting that noticing when and how social workers engage with artefacts may contribute to the development of our understanding of social work’s relationship with the non-human world and offer new insights into aspects of social work identity and practice.
This article reports a case study that aimed to explore and conceptualize the use of social media in youth outreach engagement in Hong Kong. It used "social media affordance" as a heuristic lens to inform the analysis. This concept refers to the latent utility of social media, which is dependent on both the intrinsic features of social media and the perceptions of the users. In this study, this includes the reviewability, visibility, authoring capabilities, and associative capabilities of social media. We conducted a thematic analysis on data collected including: official service statistics, meeting notes, focus group discussions, and the practitioners’ presentation notes. Major and minor themes were organized with reference to the outreach techniques noted by the practitioners. Significant affordance(s) supporting each technique were identified. The findings revealed specific outreach techniques used by the practitioners including: (i) online searches, (ii) initial encounters before direct verbal dialogue, (iii) ice-breaking via multi-modal communication, and (iv) snowballing. Compared to youth outreach in physical settings, online outreach demonstrates greater visibility of interactions and improved immediacy, but also implies losing privacy, and changes in professional identity. Moreover, the findings showed that each technique was arguably related more to particular affordances than some others, denoting a tacit knowledge informing practitioners to make their choices. These observations inspired further discussion about the significance of a reliable conceptual framework that can guide social workers to identify, compare, and further adapt technologies to enhance their current practice.
In this article, the author reports on a study exploring the impact of an urban setting on the lived experience of dementia for older couples where one member of each couple was diagnosed with the illness over age 64, the other was the primary care partner, and both were residing together in the greater New York metropolitan area at the time of the research. Certain features of city living, such as accessible medical care, public transportation, and social services, are known to provide substantial instrumental and affective support during challenging times However, how dementia care partnerships transform other aspects of urban environments to their own individual and unpredictable advantage is less documented. By describing how older dementia-affected couples make use of informal features of place to meet complex needs, such as affirming couplehood and sustaining autonomy, the study uncovers links between place and quality of life with dementia. There are implications for dementia care and research. These include deepening understanding of the role of place in dementia, establishing knowledge of place as a component of cultural competence, and implementing policies that support place-based care. Moreover, findings propose pathways to greater inclusivity in knowledge building by promoting creative approaches to data collecting supported by naturalistic inquiry. By adopting a strength perspective and a person-inenvironment approach to service provision, social work practice, and research stand to make a difference in the lives of persons affected by dementia and those who care for them.
This paper draws on Paul Ricoeur’s theory of interpretation to highlight aspects of the existential realities that emerge woven within the narratives of people living with Multiple Sclerosis (MS). It aims to give social workers and other professionals involved in inter-disciplinary care insight into the meaning-making process and the existential realities interwoven in accounts of lived experience, thereby validating this aspect of experience. To support this approach it also aims to make explicit the method used and interpretation applied to elicit these features. Ten adults with MS from across the North of England were recruited to tell their story related to the onset of, and adjustment to MS. Two of the narratives are presented, and through these, the method used for interpretation derived from the theory of Paul Ricoeur is demonstrated. What emerge, threaded within the events told in a triptych of past, present and future life envisaged, are glimpses of existential realities that evoke universal recognition such as abandonment, loss, acceptance; solidarity, aloneness, suffering and finally calm. The paper concludes that, given chronic conditions like MS often predispose existential deliberation, it is important that these dimensions of lived experience are acknowledged in professional encounters that seek to manage the condition and support people living well with it.
The tattered social safety net in the United States allows many people with needs to slip through its holes. In this paper, I give case examples from my own life and my social work practice, which led me to question how social work practice and research is conducted. As a social worker, I wondered how other practitioners knew about poor people and now as a doctoral student, I question the assumptions we as researchers make about poverty and the poor. This discussion also sheds light on my nascent journey toward uncovering my ontology and epistemology of social work knowledge.
Walk-in single session counselling is becoming a more widely used model for delivering mental health services across Ontario. This paper reports findings from the qualitative phase of a mixed method study, exploring the experiences of those attending walk-in counselling model compared to the traditional service delivery model employing a wait list. We used a comparative case study design for the qualitative phase. Findings reveal that participant outcomes of the walk-in counselling model are influenced by accessibility, how a participant makes sense of the service and the degree to which a participant is motivated and able to engage in counselling. Walk-in counselling supports the mental health system by reducing wait lists associated with traditional service delivery models and meeting the needs many people identify for immediate consultation. Other participants still perceive themselves as requiring ongoing counselling over time and involving in-depth exploration. This research supports health systems providing access to both models.
This article examines shifting thoughts and feelings throughout the interview process. More specifically, it draws on subjective, affective responses that occurred in relation to interviews with men about their fathering experiences. All of the fathers had records of criminal behaviour and severe adjustment problems in their adolescence. The discussion revolves around the reflexive process that took place from a researcher’s viewpoint, investigating shifting feelings throughout the analytical progression in (i) looking forward to the interviews, (ii) meeting and interacting with the interviewees, and (iii) reflecting upon the interviews. To examine these affective responses, the article relies on psychosocial theories that view the use of feelings as essential to interview analysis. The article draws on reflections on different interview meetings with a sample of 15 men. The discussion suggests that feelings are valuable ‘research tools’ in exploring methodological possibilities which can potentially make the research process transparent, thereby validating the findings.
Using selected, contemporaneous illustrations from the reflective journal of a doctoral student undertaking data analysis for the first time, this article examines the relationship between journaling as a learning process when undertaking computer-assisted qualitative data analysis and establishing quality and validity in interpretative phenomenological analysis. The writing of the journal is shown both to enact some potential validity criteria (e.g. in producing an audit trail) whilst also recording and reflectively prompting the process of learning, interpretation and bracketing, thus evidencing transparency. By using a journal inside the software package and alongside the stages of the interpretative phenomenological analysis, analysis within the software package, it is argued that quality and validity become dynamic, not static constructs. These constructs are intimately linked to the researcher-learning-process and permit a critical stance to be taken.
Supervision is a core activity in social work in the UK and elsewhere, widely associated with a range of positive outcomes for service users and professionals, while Public Inquiries and Serious Case Reviews have identified poor supervision as a factor in some child deaths. While there is agreement on the nature and value of ‘good’ supervision there are debates on the possibilities of delivering it in today’s pressured, poorly resourced working environments and a lack of data on what actually happens in supervision. This article presents some findings from interviews with social workers and their managers drawn from a wider study on how social workers make decisions in child protection work. They suggest that supervision is an important site for evaluating practitioner accounts and thereby constructing knowledge and making decisions about cases against a background of uncertainty and complexity. However, the ways in which these processes were negotiated shed light on supervision as a complex social process with a range of unofficial, tacit functions, embedded in the webs of social actions and exchanges that created and sustained the identities of the practitioners and their teams. What also emerged were the complex skills experienced supervisors developed in challenging and refining practitioner accounts, skills which novice supervisors struggled to acquire.
This article explores the link between ethical issues and inequalities in social work, ethnographic research processes. It suggests that, although the issue of inequality in social work research has been well documented, it has not been analyzed sufficiently as an ethically important factor in the building and maintaining of research relationships and consequently in the production of knowledge. Furthermore, it discusses how equality and social justice can be promoted in social work research, at both a practical and ideological level, and it aims to investigate how socioeconomic and gender inequalities between the researcher and research participants can lead to epistemological inequalities and can affect knowledge production from an ethical perspective. The analysis in this piece is based on six months of ethnographic fieldwork with two female communities in rural Nepal from 2012 to 2013 and employs a systematic, qualitative analysis of this specific research process. It identifies five ethical notions and their connections to the knowledge production process: "recognizing hidden and silenced knowledge," "reflecting on the limits of understanding and knowing," "understanding social hierarchies among research participants," "understanding gender inequality and patriarchal restrictions," and "producing good" in the research process. It illustrates that research relationships are characterized by different modalities of power and hierarchy and advocates for reflexivity in the research process, self-reflexivity of the researcher, and the recognition of ethical responsibility. While this study relates to a specific context, parallels can be drawn and related to general social work research.
This in-depth follow-up study presents some foster youths’ lived experiences from when they were teens in a new foster family through the process of leaving care. Their transition to adulthood was delayed because of disturbances in their school situation; however, as adults they took advantage of the possibility to study. The narratives reveal the crucial importance of social workers, and what is needed to make their relations with youth trustful. Even though there were placement breakdowns along the way, in retrospect they all see the benefits of their foster family: as a steady base when needed or just as a construction of a ‘good family’ that they keep in mind. Most striking is the young people’s agency in overcoming challenges and obstacles, which led to increased maturity and self-confidence, though it depended on having some kind of security in their social situation. Facebook plays a vital role in keeping relationships alive, which is especially important for those without a secure base in their family or peer group. It appears that their striving for independence is intertwined with a need for interdependence on the way to adulthood, with varying emphasis over time. Mixed qualitative methods were used: interviews, network maps and The Experience Sampling Method.
Case managers play a significant role in the child welfare system. Although previous studies have highlighted the multiple demands and requirements for case managers, few studies have utilized the perspective of case managers to highlight practices and areas of need within the child welfare system. The purpose of this qualitative study was to expand the understanding of issues related to child welfare by exploring the perspectives of current and former child welfare case managers. Thirty-one case managers provided their perspectives on their experiences within the child welfare system, perspectives and views of the system, relationships with other parts and persons within the system, and how they developed their knowledge of the intricate child welfare system. Themes related to the roles and responsibilities of case managers, support and collaboration, and learning and growing within the system emerged. Practice, research, and policy implications are discussed.
Choosing to volunteer one’s time in service to another is one of life’s selfless endeavors. Social work practice often intersects with volunteers. Many social workers volunteer their time. Yet, when volunteerism is studied from a quantitative framework, findings may overlook what is so special in this prosocial act, the voices of the volunteers. This article reports on the qualitative findings in a pilot mixed methods research study exploring a group of volunteers who chose to assist incapacitated older and disabled adults in their community by acting as their legal guardians. Volunteer legal guardianship may serve as the only guardian option in many localities, and may be greatly needed as our population ages. Qualitative data from 15 first and second individual interviews (n = 12) were analyzed using a thematic analysis process. Findings indicated a strong humanitarian and civic interest in helping their neighbors in their community. Moreover, volunteers performed a wide variety of tasks in their capacity as guardians along a continuum related to their professional background and skills, an important finding relative to informing recruitment and retention strategies. Volunteer guardians trained in human service–related professions tended to require little information or support throughout the process. Those without human service training tended to request more information and support. However, many became increasingly independent in the task as their experience and competence grew. Additional implications include an understanding of this previously unexplored volunteer task, which may encourage use of and support training of volunteer guardians in aging and allied services.
Child development research has engaged the concept of parental ethnotheories as a theoretical framework for understanding and analyzing how culture shapes child development. It assumes that a child's environment is organized in part by a cultural system that forms a three component developmental niche including (1) the physical and social settings, (2) the customs and practices of child rearing, and (3) the psychology of caregivers. Despite its use in child development research, the ethnotheory framework has been less prevalent in social work research. This paper presents a study whose findings describe parental ethnotheories related to Black mothers' beliefs about the moral development of their daughters. This research is relevant to increasing concerns regarding the development of conduct problems amongst Black girls. Rather than viewing Black mothers as a deficit, knowledge of a child's developmental niche enables social work practitioners and scholars to engage an emic understanding of Black parenting. It also furthers our knowledge about the process and mechanisms that characterize their mothers' parenting, thereby facilitating client-centered practice.
This paper draws on two experiences of undertaking comparative research in England, Sweden and Italy, and offers a discussion of the kinds of dilemmas raised in relation to language and meaning surfaced by these. Its primary focus is to examine the reflexive construction of meaning, both in relation generally to the workings of an international research team and, more specifically, how such construction of meaning impacts on the process of qualitative interviewing across linguistic and cultural boundaries. The article argues that a culture of reflexive research practice is helpful for approaching national differences, to facilitate understanding in internationally mixed research teams and to support and empower participants in research, in second languages and differing cultures. Overall, the paper attempts to advance some tentative ideas that other international researchers may be able to consider and deploy in relation to their own research ambitions.
In this article an autoethnographic approach is used to explore the author’s work with families living in poverty who are involved in the child protection and family court systems. The psychological and social impacts of poverty and structural inequalities on families are highlighted through case studies, as is the influence of wider policy and political contexts on social work practice with children and families. The capability approach developed by Amartya Sen is outlined and its relevance to social work practice discussed. The article concludes that the capability approach, particularly when complemented by the work of Nancy Fraser, offers possibilities for the development of critical social work practice with families living in poverty within a human rights and social justice framework.
Death is often a taboo topic and, consequently, there is a reluctance to address matters such as the cultural importance of after-life reputations and ancestor remembrance in the social work field. Reflecting on filial piety studies with Korean participants, this article aims to call attention to such death-related issues and their implications for end-of-life, palliative social work practice and research. The term ‘memorial social work’ is used to help practitioners broaden the scope and quality of social work associated with people who have died and their surviving families. The discussion in this paper includes issues related to filial piety and attitudes towards ageing parents, ancestor honour and remembrance and family continuity. The areas to which memorial social work are particularly pertinent are suggested for further development.
Adopted children’s arrival at adolescence is an object of interest and concern among researchers, professionals, and politicians. In this article, I offer an analysis of parental talk among 24 families about their concerns related to their transnationally adopted teens. The majority of the adoptive parents reported having concerns about their children, which they attributed to their children’s entry into adolescence and their children’s inherent personality traits. In this article, I focus on the first of these attributions, which places the "blame" on adolescence. I do this from a perspective integrating a theoretical view from social anthropology that analyzes social discourses and a more applied view from social work that explores how these discourses influence family practices. The results of this analysis can guide family and professional practices and public policies on adoption.
This article presents findings from an evaluation conducted in 2012, of the advice and advocacy service provided by the charity Family Rights Group for families involved with children’s services. It specifically focuses on the experiences of grandparents and explores accounts from grandparents who were either in the process of seeking care of their grandchildren or were already caring for grandchildren but without formal support or recognition. The findings suggest that there is a need to pay greater attention to the fears of such grandparents about children’s services in a context where there appears to be a policy preference for adoption. Also evident is a paradox at the heart of contemporary social work practices towards grandparents. While some felt dismissed and marginalized very quickly by social workers and imaginative approaches to care possibilities did not appear to be pursued, others were carrying enormous burdens of care often for very long periods of time without either financial support or legal recognition.
To strengthen the care options for children and respect the ethic of care that is clearly to be observed operating in grandparenting practices, it is suggested that a more thorough interrogation of the multiple and often highly contradictory meanings attached to family is required on the part of social workers.
Sibling abuse remains under the radar despite its devastating consequences. Without the provision of child welfare statutes to identify sibling abuse and its lack of distinction from other forms of sibling conflict, child welfare workers, mandated reporters, and practitioners face challenges to make complete assessments of family violence. The narratives of 19 self-identified survivors of traumatic childhood and adolescent sibling abuse accentuate the need to identify and validate these experiences as a necessary aspect of protection and healing. Exploratory research of sibling abuse based in a grounded theory framework and phenomenological analysis uncovered critical incidents of physical and emotional sibling abuse underscoring its harrowing impact. The accounts give clarity to defining sibling abuse which includes unpredictable and relentless acts of intimidation resulting in a state of helplessness and isolation. The findings have protective and practice implications for child welfare and clinical social work.
The purpose of this article is to describe emotion work within a crisis resolution home treatment team in Norway. As defined by Hochschild, "emotion work" refers to managing one’s emotions according to what is culturally acceptable within a particular situation. A crisis resolution home treatment team is of particular interest when studying emotion work, because it represents a working environment where mental health crises and suicidal threat are common and where managing emotions is necessary for the team to function well. We aimed to expand current knowledge of the particular ways in which emotion work may be done by observing and describing the daily work of such a team. Our analyses showed that team members’ emotion work had five main features: (1) emotional expression was common and there seemed to be an informal rule that "vulnerable" emotions could be expressed; (2) emotional expression was most commonly observed in post-event discussions of challenging events or service users; (3) emotional expression facilitated digesting or processing of the event with the help of a fellow team member; (4) emotional expression was met with validation and support; and (5) this support seemed to increase mentalization and understanding of the situation and could be offered only by other team members. An implication of these findings is that informal exchanges of emotion are a necessary part of the work and cannot occur outside of the work context.
Theorizing social work qualitative methodologies have always been closely related to the context of the studied subjects. This paper offers the framework of context-informed, counter-hegemonic qualitative research for theorizing research in conflict zones. Based on a case study of a group of Jewish and Palestinian social work researchers who examined together the effect of the loss of home on families during an ongoing political conflict, this paper explores the impact of participating in a research team on the researcher’s perceptions and study of otherness and otherization in the context of asymmetries of power. Analysis of the group dynamics discovered: (1) a growing ability to see and acknowledge the other, accompanied by a growing willingness to be attentive; (2) a growing ability to empathically listen to and hear the experiences of suffering of the other; (3) overcoming silencing by allowing voices of dissent, pain and resilience; and (4) creating a liminal space of "safe haven" for the researchers. The paper explores the development of context-informed group reflexivity leading to emancipatory consciousness and academic activism.
Waiting is an under-explored area of social stratification and domination. Lower-income Americans frequently endure long waits, including waits to secure social welfare benefits, and these waits may serve the purpose of instilling in clients the need for compliance. Using qualitative interview data, this paper explores how low and moderate-income women in a US state understand their waits for public benefits; how those understanding shape their responses to the wait; and what those responses tell us about waiting as a form of social control as it is negotiated between the parties. Despite describing the process of obtaining benefits as one of "waiting it out," women ascribe different meanings to their waits and take action based upon their assessments of the cause of the delay, the complexity of the situation, and past experiences with public bureaucracies. These approaches allow women to assert some control over a situation in which so much is out of one’s control.
This paper attempts to explore the relationship between different forms of knowledge and the kinds of activity that arise from them within child protection social work practice. The argument that social work is more than either ‘science’ or ‘art’ but distinctly ‘practice’ is put through a historical description of the development of Aristotle’s views of the forms of knowledge and Hannah Arendt’s later conceptualisations as detailed in The Human Condition (1958). The paper supports Arendt’s privileging of Praxis over Theoria within social work and further draws upon Arendt’s distinctions between Labour, Work and Action to delineate between different forms of social work activity. The author highlights dangers in social work relying too heavily on technical knowledge and the use of theory as a tool in seeking to understand and engage with the people it serves and stresses the importance of a phenomenological approach to research and practice as a valid, embodied form of knowledge. The argument further explores the constructions of service users that potentially arise from different forms of social work activity and cautions against over-prescriptive use of ‘outcomes’ based practice that may reduce the people who use services to products or consumables. The author concludes that social work action inevitably involves trying to understand humans in a complex and dynamic way that requires engagement and to seek new meanings for individual humans.
Critical approaches in psychology and social work criticizing the current mainstream psychotherapy discourse have been gaining more ground in recent decades. Yet, little empirical research has, to date, explored therapy in regular practice to identify the discursive resources employed during the clinical encounter and the way such discourses create and maintain power differences and the boundaries of the therapeutic interaction. This paper is rooted within a post-structural perspective based on Foucauldian analysis which sees power as dispersed throughout the social field and emphasizes the multiple ways in which power differences are created and maintained through accepted forms of discourse and knowledge. Data were drawn from a large study of mental health intakes in clinics in Israel working with culturally diverse populations. We conducted critical discourse analysis on a single dyad including transcription of a recorded intake session and post-intake interviews with the client and the therapist. Based on existing critique of psychotherapeutic discourse for its individualistic and apolitical view, we explored how the hegemonic psychotherapy discourse is negotiated in real practice, the ideology it carries, and the power differences it perpetuates. We shed light on the way this discourse conceals social injustice and contributes to the disempowerment of the client and ultimately to a poorer quality of services.
This paper outlines the use of visual methodologies in international social work research over the past 10 years. It presents a narrative overview of the types and range of visual methodologies that have been used, explores the benefits of employing visual methodologies in social work research and outlines some considerations for researchers thinking of working with the visual. The review is not intended to be an exhaustive overview of the field but rather highlights important issues and concerns when using visual methodologies. A deeper, reflexive engagement with the complexities (practical as well as methodological and epistemic) of undertaking visual research is required and engaging in the issues we raise will enable social work research to make valuable contributions to the wider field of visual researching.
Multi-culturalism is a common reality, and is expected to become even more significant in the future. One of its challenges is the need for professionals, especially social workers, to accommodate their practice to clients of various cultures. Their role demands cultural sensitivity, acceptance, a non-judgmental containing attitude and professional skills. This article will show how phenomenology can shed new light on the concept of cultural sensitivity and its implications on future interventions. We demonstrate this approach by looking at social workers’ various encounters with social problems in the ultra-Orthodox Jewish community in Israel. Several phenomenological categories will be discussed: The life-world; intentionality; the self with others; language; stock of knowledge at hand. Through the phenomenological lens, we will expose the inherent duality in the work of social workers in a multi-cultural society: awareness to cultural codes and professional ethics.
Social support is a key, yet elusive resource for HIV patients living in poverty in Lima, Peru. Despite a greater need for health services and encouragement from others, economic restraints, stigma, and trouble negotiating a fractured health system act as hurdles to accessing support. In this study, 33 people with HIV and 15 of their treatment supporters were interviewed upon initiation of antiretroviral therapy in order to understand changes in social support during this critical time, and how these changes affected their well-being. Everyone’s social network underwent dramatic transformation, while some were rejected upon disclosure by people they knew, many successfully trimmed their social circles to a few trusted parties. Treatment supporters were most frequently the first to whom they disclosed their HIV status, and most backed the person with HIV, although sometimes out of obligation. HIV peers became a vital new source of strength. Ultimately, people with HIV who successfully reorganized their social network drew personal strength and self-worth from new and old relationships in their lives.
Growing up with foster siblings, the children of foster parents have experienced fostering from a different perspective which has continued to impact them throughout their lives. In this qualitative study, the experiences of 12 daughters of foster parents (aged 20–33 years) are explored, along with how they cope with their fostering experiences. Open-ended interviews, demographic questionnaires, object sharing, photographing the object, photo-feedback, and memo-writing were included within the data collection process. Data analysis included initial coding, focused coding, and memo-writing. Dedoose, a data management system, was used to assist in analysing the multiple data sources. Findings reveal that the daughters of foster parents are exposed to multiple foster sibling relationships due to the temporary nature of foster care. To protect their emotional well-being, these participants become apprehensive about developing relationships with new foster siblings, as well as with friends and romantic partners. Participating daughters sought emotional support from their mothers who established a strong, stable, and supportive relationship with them. Recommendations for foster parents and social workers are suggested.
This study explored the challenges and coping strategies among Liberian refugees in Ghana. Using a qualitative research design, 40 participants were purposively recruited at a refugee settlement in Ghana. Four focus group discussions and sixteen in-depth interviews were conducted. The focus group discussions and in-depth interviews were audio-taped, transcribed, coded, and analyzed thematically based on the objectives of the study. The findings indicated that the refugees experienced challenges related to disruption in social networks, disputes over resources, high rate of unemployment, and increased level of criminal activities. The study also revealed that the refugees included in this study resorted to religion, spirituality, and income earning activities as their coping strategies. The findings offer insights for social workers, policy actors, and future research.
There is a notable ethical, epistemological and practical need to recognize formerly abused women’s central role in developing domestic violence services and related knowledge. For achieving social work professional accountability, methodological innovations that facilitate participation of different stakeholders in domestic violence services are required. Instead of polarizing domestic violence service providers and users, this article aims at providing deeper thoughts on methodological innovation that can facilitate coparticipation and partnership in domestic violence social work practice research. I propose a rigorous merging of Cooperative Inquiry and Grounded Theory Methodology to produce a Cooperative Grounded Inquiry which can cast light onto the promotion of participation and knowledge making in domestic violence social work services. This methodology was applied in working with formerly abused women in Hong Kong and has generated useful working principles for further application of the methodology.
Participatory action research is a method intended to shift the power of the "researcher" and "researched." This paper presents the results of a duoethnographic exploration and analysis of experiences working on a participatory action research team. The authors participated in a research team, made up primarily of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer -identified young adults, which studied intra-community bigotry. Duoethnography is a qualitative method that reflects on a shared experience or cultural event from two different viewpoints in order to juxtapose perspectives without attempting to resolve differences or converge into conclusions. Through duoethnography, the authors identified three praxes that offer guidance for qualitative social work researchers. The praxes include negotiating power, engaging in iterative learning and knowledge production, and sharing the burden of vulnerability. These praxes create an opportunity for qualitative researchers to consider the value of participatory action research as a reflective research process that aligns with social work principles of self-awareness and social justice, and to identify participatory and reflexive strategies that can be incorporated into a variety of qualitative methods.
The study examines forms of parenting constructed in Israeli termination of parental rights (TPR) cases, and the processes involved in their construction, based on a qualitative thematic analysis of 130 TPR cases. The study hypothesized that, due to lack of clearly-defined evaluation criteria, judges and professionals engage in social constructions of reality processes related to the child–parent relationship. The analysis indicated that, through constructions of non-normative parenting, biological parents are depicted, in court, not only as dysfunctional and parentally unfit but also as "guilty." Four categories of such parenting were identified: impaired, "failed," dangerous and harmful. The perception of guilt resulted from the courts' attribution of parental behavior to pathological psychological factors, while ignoring contextual factors such as poverty and stress. The study discusses how negative views of parenting impact on legal decisions aimed at serving the child's best interests and consequent implications for social work and legal practices.
This article explores the impact of the researcher’s reflexivity on the data collection and analysis process in the context of a videographic study of home-based family caregivers of older adults. Going beyond a discussion of the role of the researcher’s subjectivity, the article builds on current literature by exploring how the researcher’s embodied self-reflexivity can be used to enrich video based research. The article addresses the researcher’s personal social location and shifting roles throughout the study and how these impacted on her work with the camera, her moment to moment ethical decisions and her perceptions of the participants’ realities. The author illustrates, through the use of journal and transcript excerpts, how the dynamic relationship between the researcher, the participants and the camera creates overlapping and complementary layers of information that together form a cohesive portrait of the action. Throughout, the article discusses the contribution of reflexivity to both the creation and resolution of ethical tensions in the research space.
Recovery from mental illness is a personal experience, unique to each individual. The purpose of this study was to explore the changing focus of one woman’s continuing recovery from mental illness, exploring the domains of hope, self-identity, a meaningful life, and responsibility. A case study was conducted using semi-structured interviews with a woman during three separate admissions to a residential mental health unit, and analyzed using a theory-driven approach. Aspects of the service that were instrumental in the woman’s recovery journey were analyzed, using a content analysis of the transcripts. The analysis demonstrated changes over time in the hopes the woman expressed; redefining self-identity was an ongoing objective; seeking a meaningful life involved overcoming addictions as a priority over pursuing hobbies and work; and there were indications she was taking more responsibility for her own recovery. Features of the residential service that were instrumental in her recovery progress were the therapeutic groups, tailored clinical support, support towards self-management, instrumental support, and social interaction. Repeat admissions to the residential unit assisted this woman to progress in her recovery. Her story demonstrates how personal responsibility can be increasingly achieved with the support of a recovery-oriented service.
Although the impact of multiple adverse events in childhood is well known, it is equally accepted that the variation in individual trajectories and outcomes is significant. Resilience focuses on positive adaption in the face of adversity, offering a counterbalance to deficit-based research and risk averse, procedurally driven practice. Positive relationships and secure attachments are widely considered to be the cornerstone of resilience, yet, within social work practice, there is a tendency to consider attachment only in relation to children and adults. Three biographical narratives are used to explore resilience and attachment through a narrative identity framework, exploring parents' experiences of multiple adversities over their lifespan, their close relationships, and their experiences of child welfare interventions. It argues for the importance of narrative in social work assessment, particularly in relation to families with complex needs, illustrating how this enables a richer, more nuanced understanding of mothers and fathers as individuals in their own right, and provides insight into how alternative narratives might be better supported and developed.
This paper outlines research conducted between three adults with Asperger’s syndrome and a neuro typical researcher (neuro typical is someone who does not have Asperger’s syndrome). The paper examines the nature of emancipatory research in terms of empowerment, reciprocity and gain. Research that is not conducted solely by ‘service users’ is usually referred to as participatory rather than emancipatory. This paper argues that the principles of emancipatory research can apply to research that involves a non-disabled researcher working alongside service users. The importance of the social model of disability is highlighted as being the basis for the approach taken in this research. The viewpoint of the neuro typical researcher is considered as well as that of the adults with Asperger’s syndrome.
Refugee populations are widely regarded as difficult to access for research purposes, often because of specific ethical sensitivities and practical challenges. Hence, research methods must be judiciously chosen and fine-tuned to ensure they are sufficiently sensitive and culturally appropriate. Bicultural Research Assistants, who typically share language and cultural similarities with respondents, may be gainfully employed to help address these challenges. By assuming a cultural ‘brokerage’ role, they are well positioned to advise the research team, helping to ensure culturally appropriate conduct throughout the study. Despite extensive use of participatory methods in qualitative studies, the experiences of Bicultural Research Assistants in research activities in tertiary hospital environments, particularly maternity care settings, are rarely reported. This paper addresses a deficit in the literature on this topic. It describes the roles and insights of five female Bicultural Research Assistants trained in basic research methods, and employed on an evaluation of a specialist antenatal clinic for women from refugee backgrounds. Their inclusion as members of the evaluation team was essential to successfully engaging (male) gatekeepers, recruiting eligible women, administering surveys, and conducting, transcribing, and translating interviews. Following the evaluation, the Bicultural Research Assistants contributed a one-off Focus group which explored their motivations for participating in the evaluation, and their experiences of occupying multiple roles as co-researchers, interpreters and respondents. Reported benefits included the acquisition of new skills, improved interprofessional relationships and greater acknowledgement of their roles and responsibilities by hospital staff and community stakeholders. Gender-related barriers were also described. Customary socio-cultural norms, which positioned women as relatively powerless and subservient, were frequently contravened by the Bicultural Research Assistants in their research roles.
This paper analyses how men who were delinquent as adolescents experience themselves as fathers. The men who took part in a longitudinal study, all in their 40s, had severe adjustment problems as teenagers, and thus have a past that causes uncertainty about their parenting abilities in the present. The paper analyses the men’s affective investments in their ways of being fathers. Four analytical categories that address the men’s fathering experiences were identified as significant in the interviews. First unsettling relations and distance from their own children, which for many of the men appeared as a recurring pattern that resembled the relationships they had with their own parents. Second, several men emphasised capacities such as personal traits or strength that made them able to make a break with the past. Third, the importance of support from others was also recognised, particularly being able to share parenthood with the children’s mother and for some, receiving help from child welfare services. Fourth, a key finding is that all the men, independent of whether they live with their children or not, experience a fragile point of balance, that is, incidents such as a relapse into drug abuse or a break in their relationship with the other parent strongly affect their relationships with their children. The difficulties these men experienced as youth intersect with their experiences of their own capacities as fathers in the present.
Compassion fatigue is a term used to describe behaviour and emotions experienced by those who help people who have experienced trauma. It is viewed as a potential consequence of stress related to such exposure and is understood to be influenced by the practitioner’s empathic response. The aims of this study were to obtain greater understanding of social workers experience of working with distressed clients; examine what develops personal, professional and organisational resilience; and explore ways in which workers can be better protected from compassion fatigue. The research design was qualitative using semi-structured interviews involving six social workers presently working with distressed clients or clients known to have experienced distress. Four major themes were identified using thematic analysis: (i) the complexities of social work, (ii) supportive and unsupportive contexts, (iii) promoting personal well-being/self-protection and (iv) resilience as a changing systemic and complex process. The findings provide important insights into the participants’ experiences of working with distressed clients and, more specifically, their experience of compassion fatigue and stories of resilience. The research provides clear direction for future research at organisational, educational and interpersonal levels.
How to talk with children is of great concern in many fields of professional practice, though conversations have various statuses within different contexts. The discussion of children’s rights to participation emphasized by The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC;
This study, part of a larger ethnography, explores the interaction of national inheritance laws and local culture in the everyday lives of Ghanaian (Akan) women who have been widowed. Property ownership is fundamental to women’s economic survival, empowerment, and liberation from abusive relationships. Yet millions of women around the world, especially those in developing nations lose their rights to own, inherit, and manage property following the deaths of their husbands. This research took place in two cities and two villages each in the Ashanti and Brong-Ahafo regions. Methods included participant observation conducted over a four-month period in and around the homes of women who had been widowed and focused observations of women’s interactions with family members in the home. In-depth interviews conducted in Twi with 20 widows, five from each site, focused on women’s experiences of widowhood. Thirteen women described property rights violations occurring when they were vulnerable due to bereavement and/or widowhood rites, and resulting in long-term economic challenges for them and their children. Their experiences suggest that local, customary laws have constrained the implementation of national, progressive laws to eliminate gender discrimination in inheritance. Women also described their sources of resilience including social support from family and friends, spirituality, and their own advocacy for other women. We discuss implications for international social work, especially developing an understanding of local challenges and resources foundational to the design and implementation of effective, culturally sensitive policy, and intervention.
In this study, youth residents of the Mathare community of Nairobi, Kenya documented individual and community strengths using photovoice, a method that is grounded in the principles of community-based participatory research. Research was conducted in collaboration with the Mwelu Foundation, a youth-based participatory photography organization in Mathare. Template analysis was used to code the data, and industriousness, positive identity, community resources, and resilience emerged as the identified individual and community strengths. The project highlighted the value of photovoice for promoting empowerment and highlighting the perspectives of largely invisible populations. Implications of photovoice for social work research and practice are discussed.
Sibling abuse is extremely common, yet child welfare does not provide statutes for its identification and workers are not trained to identify its occurrence. This retrospective study explored adults survivors’ experiences of childhood and adolescent sibling abuse and the family environment that engendered hostile sibling relationships. The varying parental responses from punitive to neglect to collusion with the perpetrator resulted in feelings of helplessness and worthlessness in the victim. Personal narratives of survivors highlight the sibling abusive experience and underscore its devastating repercussions. Recommendations are presented for child welfare to establish sibling abuse as a phenomenon in need of recognition and include siblings in risk assessment.
This article outlines the research approach used in the international 1000 Voices Project. The 1000 Voices project is an interdisciplinary research and public awareness project that uses a customised online multimodal storytelling platform to explore the lives of people with disability internationally. Through the project, researchers and partners have encouraged diverse participants to select the modes of storytelling (e.g. images, text, videos and combinations thereof) that suit them best and to self-define what both ‘disability’ and ‘life story’ mean to them. The online reflective component of the approach encourages participants to organically and reflectively develop story events and revisions over time in ways that suit them and their emerging lives. This article provides a detailed summary of the project's theoretical and methodological development alongside suggestions for future development in social work and qualitative research.
This article traces its origin to 25 years of qualitative study of men’s violence towards women in close relationships. Major methodological concerns have involved finding ways to facilitate and support the research participants – women, men and children – in formulating themselves in as genuine and multifaceted a narrative as possible. Over the years, the approach ‘the teller-focused interview’ has emerged, with its theoretical and methodological base in feminist research, narrative theory and methodology, and a dialectical way of thinking about the relationship between interviewer and interviewee. It views them as partners with different tasks and responsibilities in the research process. This dialectic is referred to as a ‘relational practice’. It is argued that the methodological concerns brought up are not limited to the area of violence towards women but are also applicable in studies of various types of human experience that are complex, sensitive, and difficult to bring up. Indications for the use of the approach will be addressed, and basic aspects of the relational practice of tellerfocused interviewing will be presented. Some remarks on the relationship between qualitative research and psychotherapy will also be included.
The theme of mistrust in resettlement contexts is largely overlooked in refugee discourses. Through a qualitative inquiry of post-migration experiences of four women raising children alone in Brisbane, Australia, this paper outlines how the presence of mistrust could at times create difficult resettlement circumstances for these women, who then needed to negotiate additional obstacles in everyday life. The definition of social mistrust used here is a form of deliberate and ongoing suspicion about lone refugee women’s choices and lifestyles from other community members. Importantly, the women achieved a sense of well-being despite experiencing mistrust, both in inter-group and intra-group contexts, indicating that they conceptualised access to and benefits from social networks with different emphases on trust. Sociocultural narratives of mistrust, particularly gender-specific perspectives can enrich refugee discourses and challenge established notions of trust inherent to understandings of social networks in resettlement. The findings discussed in this paper contribute to debunking the ‘myth’ of homogeneity in relation to refugee groups and demonstrate the diversity of experiences among sub-groups of refugee women. The theme of mistrust, particularly among women, is an oft-neglected aspect and requires further attention.
Advances in technology, such as the growth of smart phones, tablet computing, and improved access to the internet have resulted in many new tools and applications designed to increase efficiency and improve workflow. Some of these tools will assist scholars using qualitative methods with their research processes. We describe emerging technologies for use in data collection, analysis, and dissemination that each offer enhancements to existing research processes. Suggestions for keeping pace with the ever-evolving technological landscape are also offered.
One unexpected finding from the postdoctoral fellowship I conducted on the needs and experiences of ethnic minority families in the New South Wales (NSW) child protection system in Australia, was that reports of inadequate supervision seemed high compared to their Anglo-Australian counterparts. The aim of this article was to explore this finding further. This article argues that cultural differences between individualist and collectivist cultures (which families from ethnic minority backgrounds tend to be) contribute to the differential rates of prevalence in reports of neglect. Specifically, the greater role of extended family and community in sharing parenting responsibilities (and thus the inferred reduced care from primary caregivers) and the responsibility levels of children at younger ages (and thus the inferred lack of capacity to self-care) may be contributing to reports of neglect in families from collectivist backgrounds. However, this article also argues that collectivist values that influence what is seen to be adequate parental supervision are not, in the main, harmful (especially if it is the only report for a family) because they do not normalize or perpetuate risk of harm to children. The sample size in this study is small and so caution should be exercised. Nevertheless, this article highlights that caseworkers should be careful not to mislabel the behaviours of parents from collectivist backgrounds as neglectful, because to do so is to use one standard of parenting by which to judge all families and the problems with an absolutist approach to child protection are well known indeed.
The tension between social workers’ commitment to values and the effectiveness of their interventions has been often observed and has affected the relationship between research and practice. The evidence-based practice model submits practice to strict positivist scrutiny. It suspends or neglects the value laden in the process of experimental intervention, and argues for seeking justified universal rules or causal-effect relations between variables as the guideline to social work intervention. This invokes strong rebuttals from critical reflective practice. Critical reflective practice within the epistemology of interpretivism highlights multi perspectives from different standpoints and tries to substitute universal rules with contextual consensus as the solution to social problems facing social work. This article borrows practice theory from Giddens and Bourdieu and extended case method from Burawoy to elaborate the debate between evidence-based practice and reflective practice. We reconstruct the reflective practice model, and suggest that social work research and practice should be not only mutually dialogued for the transformation of interaction situations, but also extended to macro structural and institutional factors.
Objective: Self-stigma is a common phenomenon among adolescents suffering from psychiatric disorders; however, this important research area has received little attention. Furthermore, there is a lack of clarity in the current literature on what makes individuals more or less likely to experience self-stigma. The objectives of our article are to identify the external conditions that help promote empowerment and present a model that explicates the process of those adolescents who do not self-stigmatize.
Methods: In this qualitative study, we examine the cases of three adolescents between the ages of 12–17 who were taking psychiatric medication. We gathered adolescents’ experiences and perceptions of psychiatric treatment using the TeenSEMI, coded responses, utilized Atlas.ti software to connect and hyperlink the codes, and constructed individual narratives that ultimately elicited an empowerment process among the adolescents.
Results: We identified themes that helped adolescents to buffer against self-stigma; and categorized the components of the empowerment process as: diminish, normalize and attribute.
Conclusion and implications for practice: We compare our empowerment model with an adolescent self-stigma model and identify key differences that may mitigate the effects of self-stigma. Although there are limitations to the generalizability of the study, authors recommend interventions applicable to youths with mental illness, as well as family and peers. This study indicates positive outcomes among adolescents who adhere to and are engaged in treatment.
The professional habitus and values of social work, are challenged when social workers encounter client aggression. The current study was set up to understand the ways by which workers confront and cope with client aggression. In-depth interviews were conducted with 40 social workers in general municipal services. The participants included district managers, agency managers, supervisors, social workers and administrators. We identified a process consisting of four stages: (1) Rationalization, minimization, and denial of client aggression, including self-blame; (2) Emotional reactions, including hurt, anger, helplessness and shame; (3) Reevaluation of one’s beliefs, attitudes and values; (4) Behavioral transformation. The process of going through the four stages is not always linear, and workers may go back and forth between stages. The results are discussed in terms of the gaps between social workers’ values and the reality they are facing. Such gaps serve as an engine of change, explicated by theoretical concepts of social judgment theory.
The relationship between capital jury instructions and imposition of the death penalty in the United States is analyzed through 36 semi-structured interviews collected as part of the archives of the national Capital Jury Project (CJP) at the School of Criminal Justice at the State University of New York in Albany. Former capital jurors expressed confusion, frustration, or ambivalence in areas of instruction clarity and procedural integrity. Specifically, jurors reported significant degrees of confusion as to the clarity of the instructions and the verbiage used to define their role and the exact parameters guiding both their sentencing decision and findings of fact. Moreover, a discrepancy was found in the degree to which statutory aggravation influenced decision making as opposed to mitigating testimony, calling into question both the constitutionality of the death penalty and its compliance with legal precedent. The article concludes with a discussion of the relevance these findings have for forensic social workers working in capital cases including implications for policy and practice.
The purpose of this article is to convey an invitation to engage in a search for a sociology of social problems for social work. The article explores the theoretical potential for and obstacles to a sociology of social problems for social work within a European context. This is done through a critical discussion of sociologies of social problems developed in the USA, as well as the sociologies of Pierre Bourdieu and Michel Foucault. Through this discussion both potentials and obstacles are identified. The latter is related to problems in understanding the complex relation between the context of society and the identifications of and solutions to social problems, and how collective action might influence this relation. It is argued that exploring this theoretical problem is important for a sociology of social problems adequate for social work embedded in different societal contexts. Therefore it is suggested that we engage in a development of sociologies of social problems more adequate for social work, and that this can be done through qualitative research exploring practical knowledge about social problems. In this respect, the article proposes an approach to qualitative research focusing on the complexity of the relationships between the context of society and the identification of and solution to social problems including the conditions for collective action. This approach involves a conceptual scheme – problem identification and problem solution – as well as a set of analytical questions which both utilize potentials and seek to transcend obstacles within current theory development. By engaging in qualitative research of this kind it might be possible to discover a new practical sociological language about social problems that can inform theory development.
How does one engage in research with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities? My experience as a researcher in the Seasons for Healing project gave me an opportunity to consider this question. Using an interpretive ethnographic approach, it became evident that I needed to recognize participants as whole people, not as mere instruments on which to conduct research, and that this engagement needed to occur in a relational way. Although I was an ‘outsider’, I was able to engage in dadirri, the process of listening with one’s ear but also with the heart. At the cultural interface, it was important to recognize the validity of different types of knowledge and that research should be conducted ethically and respectfully so that the interests of Indigenous communities were considered. Indeed, it was reinforced to me that there were different ways of knowing and each type of knowledge needed to be accorded validity. Respectful listening and reflective communication enabled me to experience life and culture from a different perspective and to gain insight via a different paradigm.
This article reviews literature to provide context for a reflective narrative on a collaborative research project undertaken by disabled people, practitioners and academics. This approach required reconsidering many aspects of methodology and practice as the research relationships are altered. The article reflects on how the collaborative and participatory approach was developed and sustained and how it impacted on the research process and its outcomes. The article explores how the group of people worked together on a complex large-scale research project to bring the voices of service users and other key players together in a discussion about social care. The article is written by one of the academic partners and draws on consortium documents and reflections from other consortium members provided for the article.
While much has been written about the central role of reflexivity in qualitative research, there has been no empirical study of how researchers actually ‘do’ reflexivity. As interest in qualitative research continues to grow, data is needed to operationalize and map what is assumed to be a hallmark of the qualitative paradigm. A study was thus conducted to explore the role and use of reflexivity in qualitative research. In-depth interviews were conducted with 34 qualitative social work researchers to gather information about the use of specific reflexive activities at various points in the research process. Participants were from eight countries, with the majority (65%) from the US, and included researchers utilizing diverse methods and with varying degrees of experience. Interviewees described a wide array of activities, formal and informal, conducted alone or with others, that they utilized to support reflexivity; most also stated that they made use of reflexive actions as the need arose, depending on the nature of the project, rather than in a systematic way. Although the study generated a catalog of reflexive activities, ultimately the mechanism of reflexivity may not lie in the specific activity but in the attitude with which it is carried out.
The starting point of this article is my research experience in Japan. As a non-Japanese, white woman, I spent four months in Japan researching about old age. Those four months were a period of an extensive research activity filled with various events and situations. The main aim of this article is to attend to emotions in fieldwork by illuminating the role of emotions in research and knowledge construction. More specifically, this article is a record of my own experiences of various accumulated emotions and knowledge that have shaped my understanding of what I saw, heard and felt during my fieldwork on old age in Japan. The particular focus is on shame and how shame became the mediator and activator of my knowledge about old age in Japan. The examples presented here demonstrate that openness and ability to feel contribute greatly to the type of research in which we engage, and the type of research we are capable of performing.
Intercountry adoption policy emphasizes openness in relation to adoptees’ background. However, because intercountry adoption is a complex web of relations including individuals, institutions and countries, it is impossible to foresee what background, origin and roots will mean to the adopted individual. The present article examines what meanings adoptees themselves ascribe to background, origin and roots. A total of 22 internationally adopted men and women participated in focus group conversations. The participants were invited to discuss their diverse experiences and opinions on these matters and their stories were analyzed from a narrative perspective. The analysis focuses on how time and space were made significant in narratives about background, origin and roots. Two contrasting stories – the here-and-now narrative and the there-and-then narrative – are discerned, but further analysis of the narrative space and time dimensions shows a much more complex pattern beyond these extremes. Adoptee narratives characterized by an open time dimension deal with what could have happened, alternative lives, and the analysis shows how these alternative lives are storied and valued. Furthermore, when adoptees tell their stories about background and roots, ‘there’, that is the birth country, is ascribed different meanings. The analysis shows that the categorization of space as wide or narrow, in the sense of collective or personal, respectively, is useful in understanding the different approaches to background and roots. Based on the present results, we suggest that social workers may wish to organize their counseling along the time and space dimensions of adoptees’ narratives.
Research indicates that the need for safe housing and the economic resources to maintain safe housing are two of the most pressing concerns among abused women who are planning to or have recently left abusers. Intimate partner violence (IPV) is frequently an immediate cause or precursor to homelessness and housing instability. The aim of the study is to explore abused women’s experiences accessing affordable, safe, and stable housing. To achieve the aim, adult female IPV survivors answered questions about: 1) steps that were taken to secure housing; 2) safety issues after leaving the abuser; 3) barriers to obtaining housing; and 4) responses from housing and domestic violence advocacy systems related to survivors’ housing needs. Four major themes emerged from the in-depth interviews: 1) stable, affordable housing is critical in increasing safety; 2) survivors face multiple systemic or individual barriers; 3) survivors develop and utilize an array of creative and resourceful strategies; and 4) survivors identified a variety of supportive services tailored to address their needs. The findings inform practice, policy and research for both the housing and domestic violence service systems with an emphasis on collaboration to meet the complex safety and stable housing needs of survivors and their families, particularly following the impact on housing of the 2008 US economic crisis and subsequent recession.
This article draws on the author’s experience of a narrative inquiry project with young people who were designated within the policy context in Scotland as at risk of social exclusion and in need of ‘More Choices, More Chances’. The project explored how the young people’s narratives of transition integrated the concept of ‘critical moments’, namely how the complex interplay between self and social structures was seen to be embedded at key transitional stages. The relevance of professional support was also examined through engaging with themes of identity construction and inclusion at these ‘moments’, and through highlighting choices and constraints to choice as the overarching theme.
This article focuses on the methodological dimensions of the research through the lens of ethical practice and social justice, interrogating notions of researcher reflexivity, empowerment, authenticity and transferability in accessing and representing the marginalized ‘voices’ of the participants, and exploring the ethical dilemmas which arose in this process. The use of visual tools to prompt and represent the young people’s narratives is examined in the light of the interweaving of substantive and participatory aims. In conclusion key questions are posed in relation to how far the research may contribute to a social justice agenda.
Substance-using women use contraception less frequently than do women in the general population, and as a result have higher numbers of unplanned pregnancies. In addition, substance-using women regularly utilize abortion as a means for controlling their number of births. A number of factors complicate this phenomenon, including sex-for-drugs exchanges. This study analyzed data from interviews with women receiving substance abuse treatment in San Francisco, CA. Interviews explored behaviors associated with contraception and abortion as well as complicating factors surrounding prostitution. The existing literature in this area lacks theoretical insight into these behaviors. In this article, the Theory of Contraceptive Risk Taking (TCRT) is used to explore the behaviors of this sample. The TCRT predicts that contraceptive risk-taking (i.e. not using contraception) will occur after a woman navigates a series of steps in a decision-making process, including weighing costs and benefits of contraception and pregnancy, estimating her probability of becoming pregnant, and measuring her ability to obtain an abortion should her risk be unsuccessful. The participants identified many costs of contraception. The theory largely explained the behavior of this sample, except that pregnancy costs and benefits were overlooked. Implications for social work include eliminating logistical barriers to contraception and increasing benefits to contraception by offering financial incentives to use.
Situated within an arts-based research framework, photovoice method was utilized with women working in diverse aspects of the sex industry. The purpose of this project was to understand sex workers' lived experiences through their own artistic self-representation. This supports the acknowledgement of individual strengths, skills, visions, and voice. Another goal was to provide opportunities for group dialogue, engagement in community education, and activism through art. The findings from this study have implications for furthering our understanding of the lives of sex workers. Specifically, attention is given to the role of intersectionality as informing the lived experiences of sex workers. Findings from this study also highlight sex workers' shared experiences of stigma and the use of photography as an act of resistance to this stigma. This project confirms how empowerment comes about through the arts. Using photovoice method with sex workers affirms agency, self-representation, voice, and choice in sex work.
Telephone focus groups offer an alternative to the limitations of traditional face-to-face focus groups for conducting research with rural research participants or those who are unable to meet in a common location. Identified strengths of telephone focus groups include: the ability to engage participants that are geographically dispersed; an opportunity for participants to connect with those who they would unlikely meet otherwise; and the ability to conduct focus groups with a lower cost and increased participation rate. Despite the usefulness of telephone focus groups, this methodology may present challenges with the participation and engagement of focus group members. Using the example of a telephone focus group study of early childhood mental health consultants, this article introduces procedures for overcoming the challenges of telephone focus group participation and engagement, and it analyzes the effectiveness of those procedures for improving the participation and engagement of focus group members. This study provides lessons learned in using telephone focus groups in social work research.
Within the context of research ethics beneficence consistently receives less attention than non-maleficence and research ‘benefits’ are predominantly understood in tangible, intentional terms. Scanter attention has been given to the more subtle aspects of the research process that elicit less tangible, and often unexpected, benefits for research participants. Drawing on a study conducted with social workers in two childcare social work settings, this article outlines how psycho-social approaches to research – and specifically the concept of containment – can provide fruitful theoretical and conceptual frameworks for the development of more complex understandings of beneficence in the research process. The article concludes by proposing that there is scope to enhance the experience and quality of research if, from the outset, attention to containment is embedded within the research process. Realizing ‘containing’ research involves firstly, recognizing the capacity of researchers to retain an observational stance of ‘negative capability’ that attends to research processes and secondly, understanding the importance of social researchers being contained through appropriate support systems that help to manage the anxiety inherent in social work research contexts specifically, and human relations research, more broadly.
This study centers on an intervention that uses visual methods to structure conversations among teachers about their undocumented Latino/Latina immigrant students living in the US. Given negative perceptions of undocumented immigrants and cultural misunderstandings, recent demographic shifts have challenged many communities, and presented issues especially relevant to majority-culture teachers who teach immigrant students. We describe an innovative intervention methodology that incorporates photographs with facilitated discussion using Visual Thinking Strategies to promote awareness, empathy, and understanding. This study uses qualitative data to identify the ways in which images function to facilitate difficult discussions; to determine the relationship between images, facilitated discussion, and attitude shifts; and to determine whether such attitude shifts are schema changes. Findings show images effectively engage participants in discussion, elicit openness and reflection, and increase empathy. Indications of schema change derive from participants’ descriptions of shifts in awareness, perspective-taking, attitude change, and more complex thinking about Latino/Latina immigrants.
Recent research has shown that social workers are particularly well placed to disseminate information about health-related social programs such as Canada’s Compassionate Care Benefit (CCB). Low uptake of the CCB may be due, in part, to a lack of knowledge. In response to this, we report on the development of CCB knowledge tools aimed specifically at social workers. Social worker-specific tools about the CCB were developed through a multi-step process. Using a computer-based qualitative messaging survey (n = 16), social workers chose what they determined to be the most important messages needed to gain knowledge about the CCB. Using these chosen messages, draft tools were created and then refined for content and aesthetics using a focus group (n = 8) and information from key informant interviews (n = 3). Further research is needed to evaluate tool implementation effectiveness and use in practice. This study contributes to the understanding of knowledge translation strategies specific to social workers, and particularly those working in end-of-life settings.
Methodological debates concerning feminist research design tend to focus more on the process of data collection than on the process of data representation. Nevertheless, data representation is fraught with difficulties, especially in communicating research findings concerning vulnerable populations to diverse individuals and groups. How do feminist social work researchers represent the voice of the research participants to community and service organizations while simultaneously meeting the expectations of the academic or political institutions soliciting the research? In this article, we discuss how we approached this dilemma with data collected through a research study on immigrant women experiencing homelessness and housing insecurity. Guided by feminist methodological principles, we drew on the tenets of critical realist theory, integrating this analysis with poetic inquiry to reconstruct the women’s voices in the representations of research data. We discuss these modalities and provide two case examples to illustrate their application.
This article is an in-depth reflection on the author’s 10 year experience of editing a qualitative social work research journal. The process issues of managing authors and reviewers are discussed as are the methodological and theoretical challenges involved in the submission and review process. The article concludes with an assessment of the present status and future direction of the journal.
By way of review of the first decade of this journal’s life, we consider, first, how far the journal Qualitative Social Work offers a case study of qualitative research in social work – its patterns, designs and developments. Second, and as a subsidiary intention, we develop the field-testing of a relatively full framework for understanding kinds, purposes and methods of social work research.
Young people living with HIV in the US have the potential to live long and healthy lives. However, the psychosocial impact of an HIV diagnosis, complicated by poverty, inequality, stigma and marginalization, create structural and behavioral challenges for young people that can overwhelm them and their health care providers. This narrative provides a reflective analysis of insights and discussions captured through participant observation at a five-day conference for young people living with HIV. The manuscript provides practitioners with an additional interpretive lens, highlighting participant observation as a valuable methodology to better understand and design programs for young people living with HIV. The article calls for youth-led, peer-based approaches that focus on support for disclosure of HIV status, self-esteem in relationships and adherence to medication.
Foster youth in the United States face significant barriers in a transition to independence which is markedly abrupt compared to the ‘emerging adulthood’ that is expected of most young adults. While many of the difficulties that foster youth face in this transition are known at the larger demographic level, first-person narratives of the process of ‘aging out’ of foster care are largely missing from academic literature. To date, most qualitative studies rely on methods that are not grounded in trust-based relationships between researchers and youth (e.g. hit-and-run focus groups, interviews conducted by research assistants unknown to youth, indirect assessment of youths’ emotional states). In an attempt to advance youths’ own narratives, we used critical ethnography to engage youth in sharing their perspectives on the process of ‘aging out’ of foster care. Youths expressed anxiety about their subjective experiences of ‘aging out’, including economic challenges and housing instability, loss of social support, and pressure to be self-reliant. Youths’ narratives during the early stages of transition from foster care provide insights for professionals, policy makers, and future research.
Home visits are a key method in social care but little is known about how they are conducted. This study analyses transcripts of audio-recordings of visits made by social care workers to their clients and contributes to an understanding of how such interactions are performed.
Attention was paid to how the agenda for home visits was set through topic shifting, asking questions, interrupting and telling stories. This allowed the visits to be compared with a number of theoretical models of assessment. Variations in how workers asked questions and responded to clients’ stories suggested that they had some discretion to act as street-level bureaucrats.
This article explores participant observation as a research method and more specifically addresses the intriguing situation of the researcher’s role in interacting with participants in the setting. The materials used in the analysis are field notes from participant observations focused on staff at two eldercare units in a mid-sized city in Sweden. Because limitations when referring to Raymond Gold’s roles of participant observations are known but sparsely described and discussed, this text attempts to provide that description and discussion. The specific question posed in the article is, (How) do roles for the researcher in participant observations change during the course of fieldwork? Randall Collins’ theory on interaction ritual chains is used as an analytical tool to identify symbols in the two staff groups. The examples chosen from the field are symbols displayed at the units, which moreover illustrate that the researcher’s roles in participant observations not only change once or twice during the course of fieldwork but also change continuously. Consequently, fieldworkers shift roles in different situations when observing a variety of people and settings. Observations are developed in the interaction between the researcher and the participants; therefore, referring observations to a number of roles is restrictive and limiting.
This article focuses on two small groups of adult cystic fibrosis patients (from a larger sample) who, for very different reasons, do not self-care. These two distinct counter-narratives may be located at the extreme margins of a continuum of responses to the demands of body and society. They are described and contrasted here as controlled and chaotic and are dominated by ‘supportive’ and ‘unsupportive’ voices respectively. The patient’s own voice, by way of contrast, is often silent or silenced by these dominant others. Despite the loss of self that becomes evident in these narratives, limited sites of resistance remain as both sets of participants sought to disrupt, parody and subvert expectations to self-care with stories of ‘malingering’ and ‘self-neglect’. Finally, some practical suggestions are provided for social workers to engage patients whom might otherwise be regarded as ‘difficult’.
In this article I build on Stanley Witkin’s ideas about ‘relational poetry’ to explore the meaning(s) of a clinical encounter. Drawing on social constructionist approaches to inquiry, and notions of the ‘relational-poetic’ which invite us to pay specific attention to resonance, I present a poetic dialogue between Ronna Bloom and myself. Reflecting on this process, I discuss the role of poetic writing in creating possibilities for new conversations on the everyday meanings of practice.
The decision to move into assisted living (AL) can be viewed as a life-changing process for older adults and their families; and each may possess differing views of this process. This qualitative study examined the AL decision-making process as described by twenty-two older adult and family member dyads. Participants described emotional and logistical components related to the AL moving decision. Further, fifteen of twenty-two dyads expressed conflicting or differing views of the AL moving decision. Our discussion examines the need for future studies to explore the impact of family and older adult disagreements on the older adult’s AL adjustment; the necessity for community-based agencies and AL settings to provide social services over the duration of the decision-making process; and the importance of employing social workers skilled in family practice in the AL setting.
Placement breakdown is a frequently occurring phenomenon in the context of out-of-home care. Although research has pointed to the many problems associated with placement instability and breakdown, less is known about foster parents’ experiences. We carried out deep interviews with foster parents to investigate connections between their caring experiences and experiences of placement breakdown. Results of our study demonstrate that breakdown is a complex process rather than a single event – a process that starts in the discrepancy between the statutory obligations of the social services toward the foster home and the foster parents’ perceptions of the kind if information and support they actually receive from the social services. High demands are placed on foster parents’ ability to provide care and offer a loving home to children who have been raised in difficult environments and who have behaviour problems. The road to breakdown also included a lack of knowledge about the child’s needs, insufficient understanding of the placement process, a difficult relationship with the social worker, and a lack of individualized service with the right supports at the right time. Although the placement may have ended in breakdown, foster parents described a continuing relationship between their families and child which was of lasting significance.
This article discusses some of the ethical and methodological challenges experienced throughout a doctoral study focusing on boarding house residents in Sydney, Australia, particularly participants’ fear of retribution. Informing the research were forty interviews with a range of participants including current and former licensed boarding house residents, proprietors of boarding houses, and staff of community organizations and government agencies providing support services or monitoring the conditions in boarding houses. The article discusses and analyses the complexity and understandings of anonymity, confidentiality, informed consent and the meanings and implications of de-identification. Some of the strategies to address these complexities are presented and are significant for qualitative researchers, particularly doctoral and early career researchers.
The aim of the current study was to examine how females survive natural disaster in non-western culture and to gain understanding of their unique experiences in rebuilding their lives. In September 1999, a major earthquake, named ‘921 Earthquake,’ measuring 7.3 on the Richter Scale occurred in Taiwan. Many people survived, struggling a great deal in their efforts to reconstruct their lives. Five years after this earthquake, many survivors, including women, were reported to have rebuilt self-sufficient lives. Given the vulnerability of women and their greater difficulties in resuming their lives, an important question was how these women were able to be successful in this endeavor. Utilizing a grounded theory approach, 16 female 921 Earthquake survivors who had been helped by social workers, no longer received government aid and had successfully regained their selfsufficiency, voluntarily participated in this study. The study findings revealed that the coping strategies guided by female gender norms in the family, embedded in Taiwanese culture, including: children’s needs are the first priority as a maternal role norm; men working outside and women working inside; and female gender norms of supporting the family when husbands could not, were the major resources participants accessed and utilized to successfully cope with the difficulties after the 921 Earthquake. The participants’ narratives demonstrated that cultural norms can serve as coping resources for survivors. Implications for social work practice are addressed.
Parents are gatekeepers for their children’s mental-health treatment, yet many are unclear about what behaviors warrant intervention. Seeking treatment is further complicated for immigrant parents whose cultural backgrounds may influence their understanding of mental health. This analysis uses qualitative data from [MASKED], which is a representative study of newly immigrated youth (12–18 years) and their parents, to examine parental perceptions of mental health and to determine patterns of help seeking and service use. Sixteen parents participated in semistructured qualitative interviews that used vignettes to elicit parental beliefs about adolescent behavior and mental health. Findings suggest parents 1) identify behavior that meets diagnostic criteria as problematic; 2) ascribe those behaviors to a range of etiologies; and 3) desire to intervene. Two areas of service delivery emerged as problematic: many parents expect services delivered in ways that conflict with current practice standards, and new immigrant families often encounter cultural and practical barriers to accessing care.
In this qualitative case study researchers interviewed 16 parentally bereaved children and their 11 surviving parents in order to conceptualize the emotional impact of losing a parent to death and to understand the possible influence of one bereavement program’s attempt to address these issues. An inductive constant comparative method was used to identify themes which were enriched through deductive computer assisted analysis. Themes presented by children and parents are discussed in terms of the emotional impact of the death and the influence of the program on each issue. Themes revealed were Sadness, Anger, Being Set Apart, Worries, Trauma, and Contemplation of Suicide.
The painful route that many survivors take to disclosing sexual assault is well documented, as is the low rate of formal reporting of such incidents. Previous research has examined self-disclosure in traditional settings but not online, where this research found a small but significant amount of help-seeking behaviour occurring. An in-depth analysis of 31 questions and answers on Yahoo! Answers in Australia containing disclosures of sexual assault was conducted. Drawing on interpretive descriptive methodology, clear patterns of help-seeking behaviours and responses were identified and categorized. These patterns constitute what we termed the ‘dance of disclosure’, a theme that could form the basis for further research in this area. Survivors disclosing on this site frequently expressed feeling ‘nowhere else to turn’. In particular a highly vulnerable group was identified as utilizing this medium – survivors who had been abused by people close to them in the past when they were under the age of puberty. Although most responses were supportive, a small number of negative comments were of concern, given survivors’ particular sensitivity to feedback and the influence initial responses have on their inclination to disclose further. As these sites attract survivors reluctant to make contact with social workers and online disclosure can leave victims open to internet predators, we encourage sexual assault counselling centres to consider new outreach methods such as informal monitoring of these sites to offer support and notify survivors of available professional services. It concludes by mentioning some innovative online outreach methods currently being practiced.
This article considers social work engagement with the arts. We are interested in claims made in the social work literature about why art matters (or should matter) to social work, and about what art achieves for people and communities and ideas. We focus in particular on the images and metaphors at play in descriptions of arts-informed social work projects. Our intent is to offer a framework for understanding what social work communities think (and hope, and imagine) happens when we take up the arts in education, practice and research.
This exploratory study sought to investigate how a small sample of self-selected women attending hospital for a miscarriage in the first 20 weeks of pregnancy experienced the treatment they received. Six women who had a miscarriage between June 2006 and December 2007, and sought treatment at six Melbourne metropolitan hospitals, participated in semi-structured interviews during August–September 2008. Thematic analysis revealed that participants perceived hospital responses to miscarriage to be inadequate. Findings suggested that there was no consistent response, there was little compassion or acknowledgement of the miscarriage and that information provision was largely absent; social workers were rarely involved. Participants indicated that they wanted a more consistent and specialized hospital response, with timely access to diagnostic testing equipment as necessary, the offer of social work, information provision and staff to be compassionate in their care and to acknowledge their pregnancy loss.
In 2007, a collaborative project was initiated between Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology’s (KNUST’s) Department of Sociology and Social Work (DSSW) and the University of Utah (U of U) College of Social Work (CSW) to establish a Bachelors of Social Work (BSW) Program in Kumasi, Ghana. As part of this initiative, there was a specific need to develop a field education component in the emerging BSW. To assist in establishment of an effective field education program, a research team from the U of U CSW returned to Kumasi, Ghana in 2008 to conduct a qualitative exploratory case study. This article presents initial research findings regarding perceptions of key community stakeholders about the role of social work in this developing country; and their perceptions regarding the necessity of practica for preparing students to practice social work. From evidence sources, themes about professionalism, gender/role of women and community structures emerged concerning perceptions of the role of social work. Themes specific to exposure to vulnerable populations, skill development, understanding the roles and perceptions of social workers in Ghana, and the importance of field education will be presented and implications for future international collaborations will be examined.
Detailed case studies from the clinical literature suggest the efficacy of psychodynamic psychotherapy for bulimia, yet few empirical studies examine the aspects of psychodynamic intervention identified as helpful to the recovered patient. In-depth interviews were conducted with fourteen recovered female bulimic patients, ranging in age from 22–46, who had been in individual psychodynamically-oriented treatment for at least two years and had terminated this treatment no less than six months ago. The findings included five major thematic categories that recovered patients identified as beneficial to recovery: 1) engagement and building the therapeutic alliance; 2) decoding the adaptive and psychological meaning of the symptom; 3) the nature of the therapy relationship; 4) signs of progress as the therapy work deepened; 5) adjunctive treatment approaches. These findings underscore the relational field in psychotherapy and suggest that recovered bulimia patients may perceive psychodynamic treatment as effective when integrating adjunctive and behavioral treatment interventions, such as medication, journaling, and keeping food diaries.
We set out to assess the processes by which a personal empowerment-oriented intervention based on learning spaces and the Rahyab problem-solving model can help newly married women in Iran to gain more control over their life situations. Learning to use the problem-solving model independently was an important component of this seven months’ educational program. A descriptive field study design based on qualitative methods was employed for data collection and analysis. The analysis of these processes showed how, through group and individual interventions, these women could influence their intimate relationships by altering their thoughts, their management of emotions, and their overt behavior. We invite more research on how empowerment-oriented interventions can be used to support newly married women as a part of family educational programs.
Social work’s commitment to an environmental perspective has been its hallmark, the feature that has distinguished it from other helping professions. Yet the definition and utility of person-in-environment have been inconsistent and poorly conceptualized, varying by practitioner as well as by cohort and era. As this thematic analysis of interviews with 30 clinical social workers reveals, ‘environment’ has both broad and specific meanings in contemporary practice, with horizontal (current) and vertical (historical) dimensions ranging from situational triggers to cumulative adversity. Social work clients bring to the clinical encounter a personal and socio-cultural history that they live ‘with,’ as well as a multi-faceted present context that they live ‘within.’ While participants in this study agreed that inclusion of context was essential for understanding a client’s story and struggle, they did not find environment to have significant clinical ‘power’ for treatment decisions or as a guide to practice. These findings raise important questions about what constitutes a uniquely ‘social work’ intervention, particularly in an era when treatment is increasingly shaped around de-contextualized psychiatric diagnosis.
This article presents the findings of a study on child–parent interaction during suspicion of child sexual abuse as seen from the children’s point of view. Study methods followed the principles of grounded theory approaches. Data were drawn from research interviews and child abuse assessment interviews with thirteen children referred to the child protection services because of suspected child sexual abuse. During analysis the core concept of Interactive Regulated Participation was constructed on the basis of the following main categories developed from the children’s narratives: conversations on suspicion, receiving information, contributing in decision-making, sharing feelings and thoughts, and engaging in conversations on meaning-making. These categories help us understand the difficult situation children find themselves in when a suspicion of child sexual abuse is raised, and help us explore and support child–parent interaction in this specific situation. Attention to variations in child–parent interaction may help professionals and parents to focus on children’s opportunities to talk about possible abuse as well as on the children’s situation in the midst of child sexual abuse allegations.
About 700,000 cases of physical, sexual and emotional abuse and neglect are substantiated each year, making childhood maltreatment a common form of trauma in the histories of adults. We summarize the literature on the consequences of child maltreatment across the lifespan, agreeing with those researchers who see maltreatment as a public health problem. We examine low-income women’s perceptions of the impacts of childhood abuse on their adult experiences through 19 life narratives collected during 2008. Using a theoretical lens of Hobfoll’s Conservation of Resources, we discuss themes of loss and developmental stress in women’s experiences of childhood maltreatment. We conclude with implications for professionals and case managers working with low-income women, suggesting that assessment for childhood maltreatment is an important aspect of supporting low-income women and their families on the road to self sufficiency.
Although serious illness is often associated with aging, many young adults are affected by various life-threatening and chronic illnesses, and thus have experiences that do not correspond to socio-cultural expectations for young adulthood. In this article, we describe a qualitative study exploring young adult women’s experiences of serious illness. Ten participants diagnosed with a life-threatening or chronic illness in the previous three years participated in phenomenological interviews and photovoice project that focused on what it is like to be seriously ill during young adulthood. Our analysis reveals that participants experienced serious illness with respect to their position in the life course; specifically, participants perceived ill health as being inconsistent with young adulthood. This finding is illustrated by three inter-related themes: feeling abnormal and ‘off time,’ realizing vulnerabilities, and renegotiating expectations for young adulthood and the future. We propose that these themes offer evidence of how illness is experienced within the broader socio-cultural context of individuals’ lives. We conclude that social workers involved in supporting this population are well positioned to address life course disruptions brought about by illness and aid in negotiating ill health with respect to expectations for young adulthood.
This article offers a critical exploration of the concept of resilience, which is largely conceptualized in the literature as an extraordinary atypical personal ability to revert or ‘bounce back’ to a point of equilibrium despite significant adversity. While resilience has been explored in a range of contexts, there is little recognition of resilience as a social process arising from mundane practices of everyday life and situated in person-environment interactions. Based on an ethnographic study among single refugee women with children in Brisbane, Australia, the women’s stories on navigating everyday tensions and opportunities revealed how resilience was a process operating inter-subjectively in the social spaces connecting them to their environment. Far beyond the simplistic binaries of resilience versus non-resilient, we concern ourselves here with the everyday processual, person-environment nature of the concept. We argue that more attention should be paid to day-to-day pathways through which resilience outcomes are achieved, and that this has important implications for refugee mental health practice frameworks.
The experience of mothering for women recovering from drug abuse in the criminal justice system is a serious issue. This article describes a study nested in a multi-method community participatory project to improve the services of the Therapeutic Drug Court (TDC) for citizens in our community. Interviews with felonious female offenders with minor children completing a TDC and mental health associates who work with them were analyzed using an interpretive phenomenological approach in the Heideggerian tradition. Findings revealed that mothers could reclaim a vision of parenting with or without their children, with help. This article shows how this reclamation occurs.
This article explores the dilemmas I encountered when researching social work education in England as an insider researcher who was simultaneously employed as an educator in the host institution. This was an ethnographic project deploying multiple methods and generating rich case study material which informed the student textbook Becoming a Social Worker (Humphrey, 2011). But a series of dilemmas materialized over the four-year period of the project. First, ethical dilemmas emerged around informed consent and confidentiality when conducting surveys of students and reading their portfolios. Second, professional dilemmas stemmed from the ways in which my roles as a researcher, academic tutor, social worker and former practice educator converged and collided. Third, political dilemmas pertained to the potential for the project to crystallize and convey conflicts among stakeholders in the university and community. Since the majority of research in social work education is conducted by insiders, we have a vital interest in making sense of such complexity.
This article focuses on children’s experiences of the evolving Japanese special education system. Relatively little disability research has focused on non-Western children, which restricts our understanding of the extent to which and how cultures vary in their responses to disability, and the impact of those differences on the developing child. ‘Developmental disabilities’ is a term used by Japanese educators to refer to various neurologically-based conditions which cause ‘milder’ difficulties with school functioning, for example, learning disabilities, Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorders (ADHD), and Asperger’s Syndrome. Public schools in Japan recently implemented formal special education services for children with developmental disabilities. Our previous ethnographic research at Greenleaf Elementary School described how educators and parents balanced new requirements to provide formal individualized services with traditional Japanese practices of educating and socializing children within peer groups, in part, through practices that encourage supportive peer relationships. Using a longitudinal, multiple case study design, we describe how three children with developmental disabilities experienced these socialization practices, focusing on their active, individual efforts to connect with peers. Prior to their involvement in special education, all three children struggled with peer relationships. Over time, they used opportunities provided by educators to connect with peers and find their Ibasho, a place where they felt comfortable and accepted, within their peer groups. Children developed relationships with peers through self-regulating contact with them, and through their specialized interests and play. Understanding the experiences and creative responses of children from diverse cultural and subcultural groups provides a unique perspective from which to view our own disability policies and practices.