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Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Social work'
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Gould, Nicholas G. "Contributions to social work education, social work and social theory." Thesis, University of Bath, 1993. https://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.387209.
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Isfeld, John Alexander. "Postmodernism and social work, is social work oppressive?" Thesis, National Library of Canada = Bibliothèque nationale du Canada, 1998. http://www.collectionscanada.ca/obj/s4/f2/dsk2/tape15/PQDD_0008/MQ32142.pdf.
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Stenson, Kevin. "Social work discourses and the social work interview." Thesis, Brunel University, 1989. http://bura.brunel.ac.uk/handle/2438/5011.
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It will be argued that, in order to understand particular exchanges between social workers and clients, it is essential to go beyond the view that sees them simply in terms of interaction between unique persons, and locate them within the wider discursive settings within which they occur. Most of the talk which takes place in these interviews concerns problematic issues within family life, particularly in terms of the relationships between parents and children. Behind these apparently mundane conversations lie agendas of social work issues which have been constructed historically with the rise of the caring professions. The early part of the thesis is concerned with uncovering the historically constructed norms of acceptable motherhood which underpin social work strategies with families and which help set the agendas of interviews. Then the analysis focuses on how general norms and objectives are translated into operational, professional techniques. This theme is carried forward through a focus on the social settings in which interviews take place, the building up of subject positions within interviews, for social worker and client, and the implications of translating from a predominantly oral to a literate based, professional mode of discourse. Finally, the analysis is concerned with the tentative attempts, marked by ambiguity and resistance, to go beyond the mere monitoring of the life of the client, and draw her/him into a form of discourse which is openly committed to social work aims, where the client seems to want to present his or her life problems in terms which are intelligible to, and manageable within, the strategies open to the social worker.
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Eliasson, Benitha. "Social Work Approaching Evidence-Based Practice. : Rethinking Social Work." Doctoral thesis, Luleå tekniska universitet, Arbetsvetenskap, 2014. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:ltu:diva-18343.
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The Swedish public sector has undergone major changes over the last decades, with increased demands to be effective and perform their tasks with high quality, but also with the demand to increase the influence of users and citizens over the support given. This development has influenced how social services organise and how their work is perform, and is one motive given as to why evidence-based practice was introduced. This development can also be traced back to the manager philosophy new public management and neo-liberalism. Evidence-based practice has its origin in evidence-based medicine, which had a large impact internationally from the 1990s.Although there are different opinions concerning how evidence-based practiceshould be understood is often described on the basis of Sackett et al.’s (2000) definition which regards evidence-based practice as an integration of different knowledge sources – the best evidence, clinical or professional expertise and the values and preferences of users. The professional have the responsibility to use all these knowledge sources in the daily work.The purpose of this thesis is to describe and analyse different processes of the introduction of evidence-based practice. One aspect is what these processes have contributed to in terms of organising ways of working and management within social services; another aspect concerns what this means for social work. With a combination of new institutional organisational theory and Berger and Luckmann’s (1967) insights into the social construction of everyday life, it is possible to analyse the introduction of evidence-based practice as a process, moving between a macro, meso and micro perspective. The empirical base for this thesis is interviews with 33 personnel from different professions and organisations. Those interviewed from thesocial services include social workers within individual and family services and socialservices managers, as well as regional representatives from a Research and Development Unit. To understand the development of evidence-based practice and its proliferation into social services I also interviewed doctors from health care in a County Council.New institutional organisational theory is useful for understanding how differentways of organising activities are spread between and within organisations. With concepts used in new institutional theory, the focus is on how evidence-based practice travels from medicine to social work, and from a national level to the local social services level, via the regional level. Giddens (1990) terms ‘disemedding’ and ‘reembedding’ are used. Different isomorphic processes are recognised in these processes, as well as strategies to decouple or loosely couple evidence-based practice from social services ordinary activities as a way to gain legitimacy. The main findings in the thesis are that evidence-based practice has been introduced with evidence-based medicine as a role model, and that this has been done from different conditions. As is described in the interviews, the development of evidencebased practice has been controlled from national organisations such as the government, the National Board of Health and Welfare and in recent years also the Swedish Association of Local Authorities and Region, while the development within the medical area was governed by national organisations but performed by the medical profession, which advocated the introduction of evidence-based practice within the profession. The regional representatives largely support the myth that is presented of evidence-based practice, and have a central responsibility in the national initiativesconducted; they are intermediary between the national initiatives on development work and the local practice. When evidence-based practice is introduced in social work this has entailed loosely coupling between the myth about evidence-based practice and the ordinary activities, this strategy is especially obvious among social services managers. Furthermore, when a medical model of evidence-based practice is used, although with a broader approach, the introduction of evidence-based practice does not reflect the social workers’ education, profession and ways of working in the same way as evidence-based medicine reflects the doctors’ education, profession andway of working. The intention to analyse the introduction of evidence-based practice from a micro perspective is about understanding how evidence-based practice is received by the social worker and their managers. When the interviews with the doctors, social workers and managers are analysed there is less coherence between evidence-based practice and social workers’ work than between evidence-based medicine and doctors’ work. This means that social workers have to shape and construct their daily work anew through internalising the new habits and routines into everyday work, something that takes energy and time, which most interviewees feel does not exist.This thesis also highlights the need for social work to approach evidence-based practice both at an organisational and a structural level, and from the level where the daily work is performed by social workers. Finally, there exists among almost all interviewees a great interest in introducing evidence-based practice, especially among the social workers, but at the moment it is not re-embedded in social work.Godkänd; 2014; 20140731 (beneli); Nedanstående person kommer att disputera för avläggande av filosofie doktorsexamen. Namn: Benitha Eliasson Ämne: Arbetsvetenskap/Human Work Science Avhandling: Social Work Approaching Evidence-Based Practice Rethinking Social Work Opponent: Professor of Health Care Organisation Mike Dent, Faculty of Health Sciences, Staffordshire University, Storbritannien Ordförande: Professor Elisabeth Berg, Avd för arbetsvetenskap, Institutionen för ekonomi, teknik och samhälle, Luleå tekniska universitet Tid: Måndag den 29 september 2014, kl 13.00 Plats: A109, Luleå tekniska universitet
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Trevillion, Steven. "Social work and social networks." Thesis, Brunel University, 1998. http://bura.brunel.ac.uk/handle/2438/5522.
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An exploration of the relationship between patterns of social interaction and social work practice which incorporates thirteen publications. The thread running throughout is the way in which new forms of social care practice are made possible by cross-boundary linkages. A 'Critical Review' sets the context and analyses the works. This is followed by the first published work which applies anthropological models to the study of social marginalisation. The second publication introduces the social network concept and investigates patterns of reciprocity and dependency in social care. The next section of the thesis consists of a 'commentary' on the Griffiths and Wagner Reports. This is followed by a closely related work arguing that there is a fundamental opposition between market and network models of social and community care. The thesis then looks at the ways the culture concept can be used to illuminate the cross-boundary practices associated with community care. The concept of culture and its relationship to cross-boundary working is developed more fully in the next section where it is argued that collaboration culture is paradoxical because it incorporates both respect for difference and a commitment to collective action and that resolving this paradox through collaborative work is a complex and skilled activity. The next section introduces a comparative dimension and suggests that studies of collaboration could be based on looking at the ways in which modern welfare systems try to solve the problem of potential fragmentation and lack of coherence. The work which follows on from this makes use of discourse analysis and network analysis to compare and contrast the rhetoric of partnership and collaboration with the way in which individuals think about their day-to-day cross-boundary work. This raises questions about the changing nature of working relationships in the field of social care and is followed by an investigation into the nature and effects of globalisation on social work in Europe. 'The Co-operation Concept in a Team of Swedish Social Workers' is an attempt to develop a cross-national framework for the analysis of community care focused on the cross-boundary networks of a team of hospital based social workers in Stockholm. The thesis then returns to somewhat broader concerns by means of a work which investigates the contribution of theories of social interaction to theories of social work. These concerns permeate the penultimate section on networking but in a more applied and specific way. The book which constitutes this section of the thesis argues that there is a distinctive theory of networking and that it can be applied to the whole range of social welfare and social care specialisms. The final work explores the impact of globalisation on the ways in which social workers currently experience their roles and develop their sense of professional identity.
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Roffe, Michael. "The social organisation of social work." Thesis, Loughborough University, 1996. https://dspace.lboro.ac.uk/2134/7334.
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The need to try to work in partnership with parents during a child protection investigation is a legally-derived expectation of social work practice. Yet very few empirical studies have examined what social workers and their clients say to each other when parents are being assessed for the risk they might present to their children. The patterning of such talk, and how this might perform a range of activities is addressed in this thesis. Social work can be said to derive its practice from twin concerns with 'care' and 'control'. I describe the ways these themes are made relevant by participants in child protection investigations using an approach based on Conversation and Discourse Analysis. The main sources of data are transcriptions of audio recordings of six extended meetings between social workers and parents. The discourse of the worker-client meetings is examined for how it orients to, constitutes and makes relevant the participants' contrasting roles and responsibilities. A central analytic theme I consider is the conversational management of co-operation in social work. This arises out of my examination of research on the professional-client relationship in social work and also studies of institutional interactions in particular settings. Goffman's (1984) concept of 'footing' and Edwards and Potter's (1992) recent reworking of this within a 'discursive' approach to social psychology are enlisted among other sources to analyse the interactions. The series of analyses which I present show how local interactional difficulties are created by the professional's attempts to affiliate with parents. These are resolved sequentially and interactionally as the talk oscillates between various activities associated with the participants' accountability. I take social work to be constituted by the orientations of the participants to the control and care dimensions of child protection. Throughout the thesis, the aim is to validate my approach through a dialogue with other research studies and also through considering the participants' own orientations to the issues under discussion.
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Delgado, Araceli. "Social Work Students' View on the Integration of Religion in Social Work." CSUSB ScholarWorks, 2019. https://scholarworks.lib.csusb.edu/etd/842.
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This study focused on social work students’ views on the integration of religion in social work. This study allowed students to gain knowledge and insight on the importance of discussing religion with clients. The study examined social worker students’ experiences during their involvement in the social work program which looked into how prepared they were in situations where religion was necessary to discuss with clients and other outcomes.
Qualitative interviews were conducted with ten participants who discussed their experiences in internships during their involvement within the social work program. Participants were in different years in the BASW and MSW program and were from various ethnicity, age, gender, and specializations. Main findings were that participants believed religion plays a huge role in clients’ everyday lives and that the social work program is not teaching students how to discuss religion with clients during their internships. Another finding was that a few social work students were not prepared to discuss clients’ religious practices. Agency employers also discouraged social work students from discussing clients’ religious practice.
This study enhances the social work profession and allow social workers to better service diverse and cultural clients by highlighting the importance of religion in some clients’ lives. The social work profession can improve the quality of service that is given to clients that have a religious practice and can be assessed for appropriate services based on their individual needs. Social work students can learn to integrate this topic into their assessments.
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Preston-Shoot, Michael. "Researching social work law." Thesis, Liverpool John Moores University, 2002. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.402840.
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Thompson, Neil. "Existentialism and social work." Thesis, Keele University, 1990. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.293995.
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Hall, Christopher J. "Social work as narrative : an investigation of the social and literary nature of social work accounting." Thesis, Brunel University, 1993. http://bura.brunel.ac.uk/handle/2438/5293.
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This thesis investigates what can be gained by approaching social work reports and conversations as narratives. A conventional approach to social work accounting practices is to treat such documents as (more or less) accurate descriptions of social workers' clients, their problems and proposed remedies. Such a realist approach was found to be flawed, since it assumes straightforward access from accounts to external reality, not considering the constructedness of such documents. Drawing on theoretical themes from the sociology of scientific knowledge, literary theory, conversation analysis, ethnomethodology and sociolinguistics, this thesis explores the construction and reception of social work accounts as rhetorical, narrative and interactional processes. The documents analysed represent some of the occasions on which social workers describe and recommend social work intervention with children and their families - research interviews, court reports, internal memos, case file entries and journal reports. On these occasions, social work is performed and displayed in descriptions of people and their attributes, justifications for social work intervention and excuses for lack of success. The main theme of the thesis is that social work accounts can profitably be analysed as stories. To explain their work and their clients' world to a variety of audiences, social workers are heard to tell competent, professionally persuasive stories. A variety of storytelling features are explored, looking in particular at plot, character, the construction of the reader and the authority of the writer. Stories are heard to vary with reading occasions and critical audiences, and it is the study of reading relations which is a main focus of the analysis - to whom are these accounts addressed and how are they available to be read? Rhetorical features are investigated in order to understand how social work accounts are made available to be read as morally and factually persuasive. A critical reading is also offered, which questions the adequacy of the accounts, and makes available the possibility of reading unheard stories. Reflexive interludes comment on the claims of the thesis writer in terms of the efforts of the social work writer. The implications of this study are that treating social work accounts as textual accomplishments undermines social workers' claims for reporting objectively about their clients and their problems. Social work can be seen as constituted in and through the performance and reception of stories: doing competent social work is achieved through telling competent social work stories.
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Scholar, H. F. "Qualifying social work education and the collective identity of social work in England." Thesis, University of Salford, 2017. http://usir.salford.ac.uk/44661/.
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This critical review examines seven peer-reviewed papers reporting research related to aspects of social work education in England, carried out against the backdrop of reforms following the work of the Social Work Task Force. The review takes a reflexive approach to the task of demonstrating the doctoral qualities and credentials of the portfolio, that is, the papers and commentary together, drawing on ideas from critical realism to support this process. It discusses the papers individually, considering their limitations; their originality and impact at the time they were produced; and the contribution they make as a body of work. Acknowledging the challenges of retrospectively connecting the papers, the review identifies links between them in their relevance to professional identity. It suggests that attention should be given to the notion of collective professional identity, conceived of as a shared occupational social identity, but including the capacity for action in the face of threats or challenges, and in contributing to the development of the profession. The review argues that qualifying social work education in England located in the universities but connecting with practice via placements, provides an important space for the shaping, maintenance and articulation of a collective identity for social work.
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Mompati, Tlamelo Odirile. "The dissonance between social work education and social work practice : the case of Botswana." Thesis, National Library of Canada = Bibliothèque nationale du Canada, 1995. http://www.collectionscanada.ca/obj/s4/f2/dsk3/ftp04/mq23426.pdf.
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Kallestad, Tommy. "Social Work Values : Empowerment, organizational values & professional doxa inside the social work field." Thesis, Mälardalens högskola, Akademin för hälsa, vård och välfärd, 2021. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:mdh:diva-55153.
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This study explores the field of social work values in the social work profession. The aim of the study is to explore how social work values are related to empowerment practices and organizational structures inside the social work field. By using the perspective of empowerment and professional doxa these structures inside the social work field are explored in interviews with nine social workers. These nine interviews show how social workers relate to values insides their profession, how empowerment practices are done, and what kind of organizational conflicts social workers may experience. By using the perspectives of empowerment and professional doxa the interviews been analysed and connected to both local and global concerns for the social work field. Many professional conflicts were found by taking these perspectives that are discussed in this study, as for example role conflicts social workers could experience. Other conflicts were those of structural failures that caused harm to client contacts and economic factors that were deemed more important for organizations than good client outcomes.
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Baisley, Kerry Wade. "Aids : social construct and implications for social work." Thesis, University of British Columbia, 1989. http://hdl.handle.net/2429/27284.
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The social construction of AIDS (Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome), or the ways in which people perceive or think about it, is the focus of this thesis. Exploratory research is conducted through guided interviews with social workers involved in AIDS care. Their responses and perceptions are compared to those gathered from similar interviews with individuals diagnosed with AIDS or ARC (AIDS Related Complex) and family members and lovers of people with AIDS and ARC. The constructivist model is employed as the methodological framework in this process.
News magazines and professional literature augmented the data collection process. AIDS has been in the forum of public discussion for some time. Given this fact, news magazines were included as they contain data pertaining to the construct of AIDS distributed to the general public. Social workers confirmed the importance of such material by stating that much of their AIDS related information was gathered from newspapers, articles, and television programmes.
Foucault's analysis of sexuality contextualizes the news reporting of AIDS and the actions of those who live with AIDS. Sexuality is socially constructed and employed in the development of knowledge and the exertion of power. Sexuality exists as a form of social control. This perception clarifies the social construction of AIDS and the decisions and actions made by those living with AIDS.
The analysis of interviews and documentary materials concludes that AIDS has been constructed in three ways; medically, socially, and politically. Social workers and those who live personally with AIDS had the greatest perceptual agreement when they spoke of the social components of this syndrome. They were the furthest apart when they spoke of the political aspects of this illness. Individuals with AIDS and ARC spoke of their explorations of alternative therapies and their attempts to gather knowledge about their illnesses. They also spoke of the conflicting situations which sometimes developed between themselves and the authorities they dealt with through institutionalized medicine. Social workers mentioned some of these issues, but appeared to operate on the institutional side of certain issues rather than acting as advocates for those who live with AIDS. A clear example of this is terms of reference. Those who live with AIDS used terms such as "People with AIDS" or "PWA." Social workers, on the other hand, defended their use of the clinical term "patient."
Interviews with social workers revealed how stereotypes and attitudes towards gay men changed as health care providers had direct experience with those living with AIDS. Interviews discovered that in caring for "patients" many professionals grew to care about people. Discrepancies in financial assistance and institutional support were also noted. Private agencies such as AIDS Vancouver and the PWA Coalition were found to supply many of the services needed in the community outside of hospitals. Social workers noted that they depended on those agencies when making referrals to the community. Governments were chastized for their responses to this health crisis.
General questions for social work in health care are posed as the result of these findings. Where does social work "fit" in the political framework of health care? As professionals where should and do social workers place their allegiance while engaging in every day work? Social workers should be aware of the importance of their attitudes towards those they work with and realize how that work can be effected by such perceptions. Such work begins with an analysis of one's own attitudes and beliefs.Arts, Faculty of
Social Work, School of
Graduate
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Radian, Elizabeth. "Social action and social work education in Canada." Thesis, National Library of Canada = Bibliothèque nationale du Canada, 2000. http://www.collectionscanada.ca/obj/s4/f2/dsk2/ftp03/NQ54806.pdf.
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Szabo, Alexander Gregory. "The social construction of altruism and social work /." Access Digital Full Text version, 1990. http://pocketknowledge.tc.columbia.edu/home.php/bybib/1093831x.
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Thesis (Ed.D.)--Teachers College, Columbia University.Typescript; issued also on microfilm. Sponsor: Paul Byers. Dissertation Committee: Herve Varenne. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 153-162).
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Gallagher, Geraldine. "Gender, social enquiry reports, and social work disposals." Thesis, University of Stirling, 2005. http://hdl.handle.net/1893/3247.
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Throughout the nineties a range of factors, not least the series of suicides at Cornton Vale women's prison, highlighted concerns about how the criminal justice system deals with female offenders in Scotland. There has been a review of community-based disposals and the use of custody for women (Scottish Office, 1998a), an Inspection of Cornton Vale was conducted (HMI, 2001), and a Ministerial Group on Women's Offending was set up (Scottish Executive, 2002a). Despite this concern the numbers of female offenders being sentenced to custody has continued to rise. This study sought to examine the nature of criminal justice social work services delivered to female offenders and the way in which ideological and policy shifts have impacted on it. Differences relating to gender, with regard to both practitioners and clients, within the context of criminal justice social work in Scotland,w ere considered.T his included a consideration of the impact of the policy shift from the "welfare" to the "justice" model. Thirty-five interviews were conducted with criminal justice social work staff and material was drawn from 420 Social Enquiry Reports. The study examined practices and policies which relate to how women are supervised, how these relate to the presentation of information in social enquiry reports, and in turn how this may relate to the final court disposal imposed. A discrepancy between policy and practice was identified in that the latter draws on the "welfare" model more than is endorsed by formal policy. This greater emphasis on the "welfare" model applies to work with female offenders in particular. There were concerns amongst criminal justice social work staff that such a difference in approach might be discriminatory. A new "welfare" model of supervision appears to have been adopted in the supervision of female offenders. This model emphasised the importance of the working relationship, between supervisor and client, within which women offenders should be allowed scope for negotiation. Information on female offenders derived from both interviews with criminal justice staff and the data obtained from SERs is used to review social control theory (Hirschi, 1969), as it exists, as an explanation of female offending. Carlen's study (1988) of female offenders suggested that integral to their involvement in offending was a rejection of the controls to which they are subjected and of their gender roles. By contrast the profile of women offenders as identified in this study suggests that women are offending partly in an endeavour to conform to, or at least cope with, their gender roles. Female offenders were reported as having experienced greater adversity and this appears to havee licited a protective response from social workers. This protection began in women's childhoods and is evident in their treatment as adults. The organisation of community service is considered by female social workers to have an inherent gender bias which renders it less suitable for female offenders. These concerns appear to have foundation in terms of an apparent gender bias in the operation of community service schemes. Female offenders sentenced to community service were more likely to have had their SERs compiled by male SER writers, while female offenders sentenced to probation were more likely to have their SERs compiled by female SER writers. Female social workers specifically appear to adopt a stronger welfare orientation when compiling reports on female offenders apparently motivated by an inclination to protect. This has implications for gender specific allocation of work. The effect is not protection if reports arc undermining community service as a possible alternative to custody for women, as appears to be the case when the SER writer is female.
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Li, Hsien-Ta. "Learning in social work practice." Thesis, University of Edinburgh, 2013. http://hdl.handle.net/1842/7939.
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The research question underpinning this study is ‘How is learning organised within the context of social work practice in the third sector?’ The research objective is to establish conceptual frameworks that theorise the organisation of learning in this context. Drawing upon literatures from Organisational Behaviour, Management, Social Work, Sociology and Psychology (e.g., Ballew and Mink 1996; Foucault 1995; Mayer and Salovey 1997; Ouchi 1979; Weihrich 1982) and undertaking an ethnographic inquiry in the Old-Five-Old Foundation in Taiwan, which collects documents as secondary data and gathers primary data through participant observations and interviews, this study establishes interdisciplinary frameworks to answer this research question. It argues that practitioners’ learning is organised by five kinds of structuring forces. At the macro level, practitioners’ direction of learning is organised by service purchasers’ demanding (an inter-organisational level structuring force) and the service provider’s planning (an organisational level structuring force). The evaluation of practitioners’ learning is organised by the service provider’s monitoring (an organisational level structuring force). At the micro level, practitioners’ methods of learning are organised by practitioners’ puzzle solving and instructors’ instructing (individual level structuring forces). By looking at the macro and micro structuring forces (cross level analysis) that organise practitioners’ learning, including their direction and methods of learning and the evaluation of their learning (process analysis), this study systematically analyses the organising of learning through both a cross-level analysis and a process analysis, deepening an understanding of the organising of learning and thus making an original contribution to previous studies of learning in the organisational setting (e.g., Argyris and ch n 1978; Nonaka and Takeuchi 1995; Senge 1990; Wenger 1998, 2000).
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Thompson, Brigid Susan. "Social Work: Policy and Practice." Thesis, University of Canterbury. Sociology, 2001. http://hdl.handle.net/10092/922.
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This thesis explores the connection between policy creation and social work practices that are related to this policy. The main aim of the thesis is to fill a gap that exists in the research in relation to the connection between particular policies concerning the care and protection of children and the social work practices related to these. Primarily, I am interested in the experiences of social workers in community groups and the issues and problems they face in trying to integrate these policies into their everyday practice. The thesis presents four case studies that highlight the interactive relationship that exists between policy and practice. These case studies have been developed from the interviews I conducted with care and protection community workers in Christchurch in 1999. The first two case studies - the development of the Children, Young Persons and Their Families Act (1989), and the process of devolution that occurred through the 1980s and 1990s - look at particular policy developments that have impacted on care and protection social work, and explore the way that policy creation and implementation is contingent on the specific time and place in which it is developed. The second two case studies - Family Group Conferences and Strengthening Families - focus on two quite different forms of social work practice and provide an insight into the way that policy is implemented and used by practitioners at ground level. These four case studies form the basis of an argument around the idea that policy and practice are dynamic and interactive processes that will inform and change one another. Rather than seeing policy as something that is created by bureaucrats in the state and applied by practitioners at the ground level, I argue that the policy process is more complex than this. The case studies provide practical examples of this idea, and explore the complexities of policy development and the relationship between policies, policy actors and specific community social work practices - an area about which there has been little research.
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Ingram, Richard David. "Emotions and social work practice." Thesis, University of Dundee, 2013. https://discovery.dundee.ac.uk/en/studentTheses/5d51faba-aa6a-491e-8760-6fad435f250e.
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This thesis examines the role that emotions have within social work practice. The key tenets of the literature relating to emotions are considered and a conceptual framework is proposed which will provide a conceptual and definitional underpinning to the thesis. Emotions and emotional intelligence are located within wider social work literature, and links are established with reflective practice, relationships with service users, social work skills, policy, legislation and supervision. Social workers across a Scottish local authority were asked to respond to a survey questionnaire and a selected cohort from this sample participated in semi-structured interviews based on the emerging themes from the survey. The data reported a complex picture of the role of emotions with a key challenge being the place of emotions within constructs of ‘being professional’. There was strong evidence that the relationship based aspects of practice were felt to be important and that emotions often were a key element and a useful tool, but this was counterbalanced by a strong view that the emotional content of practice should be removed from the written articulation of practice and in some cases from supervision. The value of informal support from colleagues was highlighted in terms of ‘safety’ and accessibility. The discussion of the results examines the impact of competing contextual factors such as professional narratives and organisational culture on how social workers experience and report the emotional content of their practice, and an ‘emotional gap’ is identified whereby social workers adopt a dramaturgical response to how they present aspects of their practice. The conceptual framework is considered in relation to the findings, and it is concluded that emotions are an inescapable aspect of the individual and collective experience of social work, in spite of the aforementioned contextual issues. Conclusions and implications for practice are drawn, and a model is developed which identifies the cultural and organisational shift required to reduce the perceived disjuncture between emotions and social work as a profession.
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Yuill, Chris. "Alienation, wellbeing & social work." Thesis, St George's, University of London, 2015. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.687075.
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Alienation theory has been underused in research on workplace and wellbeing. This thesis therefore seeks to apply alienation theory to a study of the wellbeing of social workers. The specific objectives were as follows: 1) to identify potential causes of alienation among social workers who are employed in the public sector. 2) to analyse how those alienating experiences condition the wellbeing of those social workers. 3) to critically assess the utility of alienation theory in researching wellbeing in the workplace. A Marxist methodology was deployed in this research, which sought to analyse critical dynamic and dialectic relations between surface phenomena and deeper structural relations inhered within capitalism. This was achieved by subjecting data to a two-step analysis where data was (1) initially analysed in accordance with standard procedures before (2) incorporating the results from that analysis into a dialectical whole which seeks to identify the network of relations that give rise to surface phenomena. Semi-structured interviews with 16 social workers working in a variety of services provide the empirical basis of the research. The study found instances of historically situated alienation among social workers animated by a series of contradictions in their working lives and in their relations with service users. Those alienating experiences impacted on wellbeing in two related ways. First, the social workers experienced frustration and disillusionment at not being able to enact their professional skills in their work due to a lack of autonomy and control in their working lives. Second, the alienating and contradictory experiences accrued over time led to a 'crash point where wellbeing and health were highly compromised. Overall, the main advantages of applying alienation theory was that guided research into workplace wellbeing that reached beyond limited psychological constructs of stress and instead sought to find causal structural relations.
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Sokhela, Duduzile Martha. "Contracting in social work supervision." Pretoria : [s.n.], 2007. http://upetd.up.ac.za/thesis/available/etd-09302008-095648.
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Sekudu, Johannah. "Abortion : a social work study." Thesis, University of Pretoria, 2001. http://hdl.handle.net/2263/28535.
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Bargawi, Khalid Yousef. "Social work community services provided by community development and social work centers : a comparative study of the perception and self-reporting of social work-educated and non-social work-educated professionals in Saudi Arabia /." The Ohio State University, 2002. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1486546889383701.
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Sibeon, Roger Alan. "A sociological study of the social work profession with special reference to social work education." Thesis, University of Leicester, 1987. http://hdl.handle.net/2381/9734.
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Earlier work by Leonard (1966) and Heraud (1970) in formulating a holistic, comprehensive sociology of social work has been largely overtaken by developments both in sociology and in social work. Current sociological analyses of social work exhibit two distinctive features. First, relative detachment from major recent theoretical and empirical developments in mainstream sociology : second, a tendency to focus not upon the profession as a whole but upon specific, delineated aspects e:g the relation of theory to practice, professionalisation, social work education, professional socialisation, moral-political dimensions of social work, organisational and service-delivery issues, and the relation of social work to the welfare state. This research is addressed to the task of constructing a sociology of social work which draws explicitly upon recent developments in sociology, and which is concerned with the social work profession as a whole including the various components referred to above. These components are shown to collectively comprise the following three perennial and contemporary social work concerns which are empirically inter-related : the relationship of theory to practice, the politics of social work, and professional-organisational aspects including service-delivery issues. Particular though not exclusive attention is accorded to the relative 'centrality' of social work education : the research demonstrates social work education both influences and reflects wider developments throughout the profession and is a key empirical 'site of entry' for achieving a holistic sociological understanding of the social work profession. Much of the material necessarily is concerned with substantive issues in social work per se, but a vital part of the research is critical analysis of controversies surrounding paradigmatically diverse resources available within modern sociology for constructing a theoretically as well as empirically informed sociology of social work.
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Shanks, Emelie. "Managing social work : Organisational conditions and everyday work for managers in the Swedish social services." Doctoral thesis, Stockholms universitet, Institutionen för socialt arbete - Socialhögskolan, 2016. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:su:diva-129244.
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The personal social services in Sweden have undergone major changes during recent decades, partly due to the reforms caused by the influence of New Public Management (NPM) and partly due to the trend towards greater specialisation. These changes have had consequences for both social work management and for social work practice. The consequences for practice have gained attention both from research and from the field, but the consequences for managers have rarely been discussed. In this thesis therefore, the attention is directed towards the managers. Inspired by a mixed methods approach, this thesis aims to explore the personal social service managers’ perceptions of their organisational conditions and the content of their everyday work, as well as to interpret the managers’ experiences against the background of NPM influence, increasing specialisation and the specific circumstances that come with managing politically governed organisations. The results show that the personal social service managers in general were former professionals with extensive social work experience. The managerial work was to a great extent perceived as reactive, entailing constant interruptions and acute situations. The managers experienced a heavy workload that appeared to prevent them from engaging in strategic work and leadership to the extent that they would have liked. Substantial proportions of managers were dissatisfied with their own levels of influence compared to that of politicians and, in general, the managers perceived themselves to have more influence regarding aspects that were operational (such as methods and working procedures) compared to aspects related to organisational structure. Through the managers’ descriptions of their relations with politicians, it was revealed that the roles could be muddled, and that both managers and politicians could have difficulties in distinguishing between politics and administration, or politics and profession. Several changes that could be attributed to the influence of NPM were described by the managers. Some changes had consequences for the more technical side of management, e.g. decentralised budget responsibility, increased focus on cost effectiveness and downsizing of support functions. Other changes were more related to the overarching concept of management, which had consequences for the choice of managerial training, the expectations placed on the managers, and to some extent the managers’ own views on what good management should be. Despite the many indications of changes that may be attributed to NPM, an important result in this thesis is that NPM does not appear to have permeated social work to the degree that might have been expected. Rather, there are clear indications of a remaining professional identity among managers on all managerial levels, as well a continuing bureau-professional regime within the personal social services.
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Burrows, Daniel. "Social work within a medical setting : an ethnographic study of a hospital social work team." Thesis, Cardiff University, 2018. http://orca.cf.ac.uk/111557/.
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This thesis reports on an ethnography of a hospital social work team in Wales. The aim of this study was to explore the nature of the statutory social work role within hospitals, to examine how hospital social workers do their work, and to shed light on how social work fits into the hospital context. My findings indicate that hospital social workers face constant pressure from managers and clinicians to expedite patient discharges, and exclude almost all other tasks from their role. Their daily work is a sequence of bureaucratic tasks, focused on management of the failing body, often to the exclusion of considering the wider social or psychological needs of the patient. Drawing on the work of Bauman, I argue that the bureaucratic and managerial systems in which hospital social workers operate produce dehumanising practices and distance decision makers from the human consequences and moral dimensions of their decisions. Even within these systems, however, some levels of discretion are maintained and hospital social workers use their discretion in a variety of ways. The hospital social workers in this study consistently expressed values derived from anti-discriminatory practice and, despite the constraints they encountered, were able to perform work that showed a concern for social justice, human rights and empowerment at the individual’s level. Thus, I argue that hospital social work in the UK is driven by liberal, rather than radical values, and is largely unconcerned with addressing wider issues of structure, social disadvantage and oppression. The hospital social work role involves the co- ordination of knowledge provided by clinical professions, which must then be processed to match the needs of the patient to the services that are available. Social workers are outsiders within the hospital setting and there is a considerable amount of distrust between them and the clinical professionals, which occasionally manifests in open conflict. I draw on Goffman’s dramaturgical insights to analyse how social workers manage their position within the hospital and draw on his theory of frame analysis to understand the way conflicts arise. Hospital social workers maintain a distinct identity within the hospital that is tied to their liberal values. I argue that their practices can be interpreted both as arising from the zeitgeist of liquid modernity and as adapting to the human need brought about by liquid modernity. I suggest that social work must either pursue individual liberation further, following the liberal values currently underpinning these hospital social workers’ practice, or adopt a more radical or critical approach in seeking to influence government policies around social care.
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Downs, Saige. "Master of Social Work Student Perception in Access to Documentation Training in Social Work Programs." CSUSB ScholarWorks, 2017. https://scholarworks.lib.csusb.edu/etd/471.
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This study explored the Master of Social Work (MSW) student perception of access to documentation training in their program. When a student graduates with a degree, there is an expected level of competency in regards to documentation when entering the field. Currently, there is literature available about the risk of poor documentation and the need for additional documentation training in the field of social work but the literature focusing on the perceptions of the student is very limited. The study contributed to the academic literature on social work documentation by providing awareness of the student perception of where they received documentation training in their graduate program. The research design for this study is qualitative and exploratory due to insignificant literature available. A survey was administered to graduating MSW students through a California State University School of Social Work. The findings suggested that MSW students would benefit from additional clinical documentation training from their MSW program since the student perceptions are there is limited access to training within the program. There are numerous of implications to the field of social work in regards to the lack of documentation training in MSW programs. The absence of training from students may include not having a full understanding of risk management that corresponds with documentation and will have to assume to be ethically responsible for when the student graduates from their program. This can be detrimental to the student’s professional development and can overall create a decrease in the quality of graduating MSW students.
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Harrison, Amy. "Social anhedonia and work and social functioning in eating disorders." Thesis, King's College London (University of London), 2013. http://kclpure.kcl.ac.uk/portal/en/theses/social-anhedonia-and-work-and-social-functioning-in-eating-disorders(67fecf2d-8d91-407b-a03a-7971d8b2b9c4).html.
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Teague, Alan John. "Social change, social work and the adoption of children." Thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science (University of London), 1987. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.281812.
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Man, Kwong Wai. "Constructing social work : stories of the developing social worker." Thesis, University of Bristol, 2002. http://hdl.handle.net/1983/270fcd24-9b9c-444c-83ea-94d85e4631b6.
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Choi, Moo Youl. "Korean Presbyterianism and social work: a critical analysis of the social work of four presbyterian denominations." Thesis, Oxford Centre for Mission Studies, 1996. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.421115.
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Higgins, Martyn. "The dilemmas of contemporary social work: a case study of the social work degree in England." Thesis, London South Bank University, 2013. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.587547.
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The social work degree was established in 2002 to improve the status and competency of social workers. However, after the death of Peter Connelly in 2007 and the final report of the Social Work Task Force (2009) it became subject to a series of significant changes with the establishment of the Social Work Reform Board to implement the revisions to social work education and social work practice. The aim of this study is to identify how the degree can illuminate the dilemmas of contemporary social work practice. A qualitative case study of a social work degree programme in England was undertaken after obtaining ethical approval. Data was collected at two different points in time by means of interviews and focus groups. Interviews were conducted with academics (10), practice educators (8) and academics involved in practice learning (2). Two focus groups were undertaken with service users (11) and three focus groups with students (17). A total of 48 participants were involved in the data collection. A thematic analysis approach was adopted utilising Braun and Clark's (2006) model. The findings indicated that the social work degree contained a number of inherent contradictions which were reflected in social work practice. The contribution of this study lies in the linking of the identified dichotomies in social work education and practice to a wider conceptual structure. These contrasting models or understandings of contemporary social work practice needed to be contextualised within the framework of the complexity and ambivalence of late modern society within which there exist an individualised approach to risk and a loss of trust in the professions. Any reform of the social work profession would have to adopt a critical framework consistent with a late modern conceptualisation of risk and professional expertise. Key words: social work degree, social work, reform
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Owens, Sharon. "Attitudes of graduate social work students toward providing social work services to persons with HIV/AIDS." DigitalCommons@Robert W. Woodruff Library, Atlanta University Center, 1989. http://digitalcommons.auctr.edu/dissertations/3016.
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This study investigated the attitudes of graduate social work students toward providing services to persons with HIV/AIDS. The following areas were addressed: attitudes of social work graduate students toward providing services to persons with AIDS; similarities between the attitudes of first year students and the attitudes of second year students toward providing social work services to persons with AIDS, the relationship between fear of AIDS transmission and services to AIDS clients, the relationship between knowledge about AIDS and services to AIDS clients and the relationship between moral beliefs about AIDS and services to AIDS clients. The research design employed in this study, was correlational, a form of descriptive methodology.
Sixty-one students responded to a self-administered questionnaire. Five different types of services were presented to the students in the form of vignettes. These services were individual counseling, group leadership, a home visit assignment, transportation and advocacy type services.
The results of the study indicated, (a) statistically significant correlation between the attitude of social work students toward providing transportation to clients with AIDS (b) statistically significant correlation between the attitude of first year students and the attitude of second year students toward providing transportation to persons with AIDS (c) no significant relationship was found to exist between fear of AIDS transmission and the different types of services (d) a significant relationship between knowledge of AIDS and group leadership; and, (e) a significant relationship between moral beliefs about AIDS and advocacy services.
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Machado, Alice. "Social Work Students' Attitudes and Willingness to Work with Incarcerated Parents." CSUSB ScholarWorks, 2017. https://scholarworks.lib.csusb.edu/etd/540.
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Parental incarceration is a serious problem in the United States, due to the significant number of parents and children impacted by incarceration. The sizable number of individuals incarcerated in the United States has resulted in the development of forensics as a growing field that requires social workers to integrate a working knowledge into their professional practice. The researcher hypothesized social work students who had personal and/or professional experience with the criminal justice system have a more favorable attitude towards incarcerated parents and are more willing to work with this population. Quantitative data was collected via surveys constructed and administered through the online Qualtrics data collection program from a sample of 79 social work students attending a school of social work at a university in Southern California. The data was analyzed using a Chi-Squared statistical analysis test using the SPSS data analysis software program. Significant findings were found that supported the hypothesis. A significant relationship was found between the status of having visited someone in jail or prison for personal reasons, as well as having someone close who was previously incarcerated, along with having the willingness to work with children of incarcerated parents in the future. Also, a significant relationship was found between a participant’s ethnicity, wanting to work with children of incarcerated parents in the future, with believing incarcerated parents and their children are an underserved population, and believing social workers are an important part of the rehabilitation process for incarcerated parents. Participants’ gender and the belief incarcerated parents could benefit from learning parenting skills was also found to be significant. This study also found having personal experience with incarcerated individuals may impact a social work student’s willingness to work with incarcerated populations. Lastly, the results and findings of this study contribute to the body of research focused on introducing social work students, who have a willingness to work with incarcerated populations, to the field of forensics with the goal of increasing the number of social workers working with incarcerated parents.
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Roscoe, Karen D. "Social work discourses : an exploratory study." Thesis, University of Chester, 2014. http://hdl.handle.net/10034/613313.
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This study aims to critically analyse and explore how social workers (operating in the adult social work practice domain) draw on wider social (and social work) discourses in accounting for the work that they do. Utilising purposeful samples of students and qualified social work practitioners, this exploratory study of discourses analyses the implications this has on the construction of the social work identity, role and practice (action). Driven by a series of research questions, the objectives of this research were: 1) To critically analyse and explore the discourses on which students and social work practitioners draw on in their accounts of social work practice; 2) To identify and critically analyse the subject positions and discursive practices (collective ways of speaking) of social workers in respect of these discourses; 3) To critically analyse how and in what way social workers at different stages of the career trajectory draw differently upon these discourses; 4) To critically analyse and evaluate the implications for practice and service users of the respondents’ subject positioning and the discursive practices that they employ; 5) Develop a critically reflexive method (model) for social work education and research in order to make recommendations for research, education and critical social work practice (in the context of self-awareness). As this study involves several people in the exploration of adult social work (Community Care policy context), it will contribute to knowledge of the meaning given to contemporary social work. It does so by expanding the concept of discourse analysis to the wider social context in which the overall narrative (story) is ‘told’. This research aims to understand how respondents draw on discourses in particular ways and includes an analysis of the contradictions and gaps within the overall narrative of social work. Stemming from wider pre-determined narratives that are available in social work cultures, this study not only analyses the words themselves by utilising discourse analytic tools, but demonstrates new ways in which to apply critical discourse analysis in the exploration of accounts of social work. In this examination, this research critically analyses and evaluates the implications these discourses can have on identity construction (personal and professional self), as well as on those social work intends to benefit (service users).
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Hodson, Ann. "Pre-birth assessment in social work." Thesis, University of Huddersfield, 2011. http://eprints.hud.ac.uk/id/eprint/13037/.
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The Children Act 1989 imposes a duty on Local Authorities in England to ‘safeguard and promote the welfare of children’ and to ‘promote the upbringing of children by their families’ wherever possible. If, during pregnancy, concerns are identified that suggest the child may be at risk of harm a referral may be made to the Local Authority for a pre-birth assessment. When completing a pre-birth assessment social workers and other professionals are often involved in the process of collecting and analysing information, which will ultimately be used as a basis for planning and decision-making and can have life long consequences for the family. Removing a baby at birth brings with it an inevitable impact on the process of attachment and bonding, as well as the impact of subjecting a family to court proceedings and all of the emotions that entails. However, allowing a baby to be discharged from hospital to a family who are unable to provide appropriate care and protection or do not have the necessary support in place to assist them may result in irreparable harm to, or even the death of the baby. Sitting within the context of general child and family social work assessment, pre-birth assessment has received a very limited amount of specific research attention. This thesis comprises a report on the outcomes of my own research, which was exploratory in nature, and details the findings from a mixed methods study of relevant legal and procedural frameworks in England, Local Safeguarding Children Board procedures and a case study of pre-birth social work assessment practice in one Local Authority. The findings were that pre-birth assessment is a complex process guided by a national and local procedural framework which does not recognise the unique status of the unborn child. Having evolved from a historical perspective based on protecting live children, the procedural guidance is contradictory as it does not acknowledge that an unborn child has no legal status and a pregnant woman maintains rights over her own body. The case study also revealed that social workers in the host LA were practising in an environment of managerial systems which aimed to improve accountability and yet the very systems designed to ensure children did not fall through the ‘safety net’ of professional support were, ironically, prompting systems which made practice in (and research into) pre-birth social work assessment a challenge. A narrow forensic approach to pre-birth assessment was found to have developed, with the documentary process of completing pre-birth Initial and Core Assessments (as defined by the Department of Health (2003) documentation) becoming split from the process of actually ‘doing’ a social work pre-birth assessment.
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Sanders, R. "Siblings, social work and child abuse." Thesis, Swansea University, 2002. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.638762.
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This dissertation is the result of exploratory research into the significance of sibling relationships in social work with children and families. It poses five research questions relating to the emphasis on sibling relationships by social workers, the impact of adversity on children's sibling relationships, how abuse influences sibling relationships, whether sibling relationships are able to buffer the impact of abuse, and finally considers the issue of differential risk to children within families. These questions are addressed both by a review of the literature and through two empirical studies. The first study surveyed child and family social workers about their own sibling configurations and their attitudes to siblings in their work. The social workers were then asked to use a tool, the Sibling Checklist, in their work with children and families. After six months the checklists were analysed and the social workers were interviewed. The second study was a file study of the sibling relationships of children whose names were added to the child protection register. A range of quantitative and qualitative data analysis techniques, (including computer-assisted analysis of qualitative data), were employed. The findings suggest that sibling relations are a neglected aspect of social work intervention with children and families. In part this may be because there is not a great deal of empirical evidence about the impact of adverse circumstances on children's sibling relationships. Abuse has a harmful impact on the relationships between siblings as well as adverse consequences for the children as individuals, although this appears to vary depending upon the type of abuse. This impairment of the sibling relationships by interfamilial abuse may undermine the ability of sibling relationships to buffer the child against the worst effects of abuse. There was no evidence to suggest that children who are not targeted for abuse in families are less at risk of the harmful consequences of abuse than those who are targeted.
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Kwong, Har Man. "The knowledge construction of social work." Thesis, Lancaster University, 2011. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.656304.
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The ever-expanding boundary of knowledge for social work practice confronts social work practitioners with a great variety of theories and approaches which are incommensurable with each other and esoteric that renders the relationship between social work knowledge and practice problematic. To resolve this epistemological issue, proponents of the 'scientific designer-practitioner model' advocate production of scientifically proven intervention approaches for social workers' application to practice. However, the adherents of 'heuristic perspective on social work' pinpoint that the actual social work practice situations are too complex and indefinite to be. covered by codified knowledge; instead, they maintain that social workers should think like a researcher to produce and use their own practice theory/wisdom (knowledge construction) through generating and testing hypotheses in the course of intervention. Through the 'practice perspective on social work', I criticize them of misplacing emphasis on practitioners' cognitive process as to knowledge construction within intervention and suggest to investigate the infrastructure of knowledge co-construction by both social workers and service users within intervention conversation. Through the lens of conversation analysis, six transcribed interviews between social workers and their service users have been closely examined. The core epistemic activities (episactivities), some elementary conversational actions (episgears) of knowledge co-construction and some of the strategies (epistechniques) employed by social workers to handle hurdles (episbottlenecks) arising in the process of knowledge co-construction are identified. These findings imply a new set of basic conversational skills for social work which may contribute to the resolution of the epistemological issue of social work. I term them 'epistemically informed intervention'.
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Payne, Malcolm Stuart. "The politics of social work theory." Thesis, Manchester Metropolitan University, 2002. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.392984.
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Bourne, Iain P. L. "Groupwork approaches to social work supervision." Thesis, University of Bristol, 1996. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.336833.
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Pietiläinen, Anna-Kaisa. "Opportunistic mobile social networks at work." Paris 6, 2010. http://www.theses.fr/2010PA066587.
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Les réseaux mobiles opportunistes ad-hoc se forment lorsque des terminaux mobiles portés par des utilisateurs communiquent entre eux sans aucune infrastructure. Ils diffèrent ainsi des réseaux classiques comme Internet dont l'architecture suppose la disponibilité instantanée de chemins reliant les hôtes et dont les délais de propagation, et le taux de perte des paquets, sont faibles. Dans les réseaux opportunistes, la mobilité des individus induit de nombreuses déconnexions et de grandes variations des délais. Dans cette thèse nous adoptons une démarche expérimentale pour concevoir et analyser les réseaux opportunistes. D'abord l'étude détaillée des communications opportunistes via Bluetooth dans des environnements contrôlés et réels, montre qu'en dépit des limitations pratiques de cette technologie, la communication opportuniste ad-hoc constitue un paradigme de communication efficace et attractif. Nous avons ensuite conçu et implémenté MobiClique, un middleware de communication destiné aux réseaux opportunistes qui s'appuie sur la mobilité et les relations sociales des utilisateurs pour le routage opportuniste des messages. Enfin, la réalisation d'une expérience grandeur nature mobilisant 80 personnes nous a permis de collecter les informations concernant leurs réseaux sociaux, leurs contacts ad-hoc et les traces de leurs communications. Nous proposons une méthodologie d'analyse des structures des communautés temporelles dans le réseau opportuniste. Nous étudions également de quelle façon ces structures et les interactions sociales caractérisent les chemins de dissémination du contenu.
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Tkachenko, I., and P. Puzyrova. "Basic general methods of social work." Thesis, Академія Державної пенітенціарної служби, 2020. https://er.knutd.edu.ua/handle/123456789/15516.
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Tonsing, Kerstin Monika. "Social conversation at the work place." Diss., University of Pretoria, 2001. http://hdl.handle.net/2263/24865.
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Please read the abstract in the section, 00front, of this documentDissertation (MLog)--University of Pretoria, 2001.
Centre for Augmentative and Alternative Communication (CAAC)
MLog
Unrestricted
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Sandell, Karen Sue. "Different voices: Articulating feminist social work." Case Western Reserve University School of Graduate Studies / OhioLINK, 1993. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=case1056639436.
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Petersén, Anna. "Evaluations that matter in social work." Doctoral thesis, Örebro universitet, Institutionen för juridik, psykologi och socialt arbete, 2017. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:oru:diva-56146.
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A great deal of evaluations are commissioned and conducted every year in social work, but research reports a lack of use of the evaluation results. This may depend on how the evaluations are conducted, but it may also depend on how social workers use evaluation results. The aim of this thesis is to explore and analyse evaluation practice in social work from an empirical, normative, and constructive perspective. The objectives are partly to increase the understanding of how we can produce relevant and useful knowledge for social work using evaluation results and partly, to give concrete suggestions on improvements on how to conduct evaluations. The empirical data has been organised as four cases, which are evaluations of temporary programmes in social work. The source materials are documents and interviews. The results show that findings from evaluations of temporary programmes are sparingly used in social work. Evaluations seem to have unclear intentions with less relevance for learning and improvement. In contrast, the evaluators themselves are using the data for new purposes. These empirical findings are elaborated further by using the knowledge form phronesis, which can be translated into practical wisdom. The overall conclusion is that social work is in need of knowledge that social workers find relevant and useful in practice. In order to meet these needs, researchers and evaluators must broaden their knowledge view and begin to include practical knowledge instead of solely relying on scientific knowledge when conducting evaluations. Finally, a new evaluation model is suggested. It is called phronesis-based evaluation and is argued to have great potential to address and include professionals’ praxis-based knowledge. It advocates a view that takes social work’s dynamic context into serious consideration and acknowledges values and power as important components of the evaluation process.
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Johns, Jade Elizabeth. "Social work as a moral enterprise." Thesis, University of Kent, 2016. https://kar.kent.ac.uk/61309/.
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The research undertaken explored social work as a moral enterprise. The study explored social work practice at the 'front-door' of services for children and older people in one English local authority. The study was primarily an interview-based study, but incorporated direct observation and conversational interviewing in order to explore social work practice within Walmsley local authority. Respondents in the four teams were responsible for undertaking assessments, which informed 'threshold-decisions'. The study found social workers were not neutral, impartial decision-makers. Social workers were not merely embedded in decision-making either; decision making was found to be embodied within the culturally and social situated bodies of the social workers. The senses provided social workers with a way of 'seeing' service users and getting a 'feel' for a case. Through embodied assessments, and negotiated performances between social workers and service users, identities were ascribed to service users by respondents. The identities were found to reflect a service users' moral and social position; their 'moral status'. The study highlights the visceral nature of social work practice and argues that moral status is an invisible domain within assessments, but furthers understanding of how social workers make sense of cases. The study found five 'types' of service user within Walmsley local authority; the Vinnie Jones; the Potentials; the Laughable; the Lovelies and the Challengers. The typology helps demonstrate the relationship between moral status, social locations and risk identities. Additionally, the typology illustrates who was found to be deserving, or morally worthy of 'going the extra mile' for.
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Rai, Lucy. "Student writing in social work education." Thesis, Open University, 2008. http://oro.open.ac.uk/25820/.
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This thesis explores the experiences of a group of social work students undertaking assessed academic writing as part of their professional training through distance learning in the UK in 2001. Drawing upon the concept of 'academic literacies' and informed by a psychosocial approach, this thesis explores the nature of students' writing within the context of the experiences of students and tutors. Writing in social work requires students to include reflections on personal experience and values. Due to this personal aspect of writing in social work, I have taken a particular interest in the relationship between identity and writing. In doing so I draw upon current research based upon sociological perspectives on writer identity but also critically examine the potential contribution of concepts from what I will generally be referring to as a 'psychosocial' approach, which incorporates elements of psychology and psychoanalysis alongside a sociological world view. In particular I explore the ways in which a psychosocial approach to writer identity can inform our understanding of writing practices surrounding the creation of student texts in higher education. My central argument is that academic writing in social work poses a particular challenge to student writers and their tutors due to its lack of transparency and the degree of self-disclosure required of authors. This thesis shows that, in common with higher education more generally writing conventions in social work are frequently implicit and contradictory. Additionally, the integration of personal experiences and values with theoretical discussion poses significant difficulties for students and tutors. Such 'self-disclosure' has implications which become evident when applying a psychosocial perspective to writer identity. I draw together these implications in relation to three features of writing practices, namely emotion, circularity, and human interaction. Emotion in this context refers to the emotion both experienced by students whilst writing texts and responding to feedback on them. This involves a circular process based upon not only the students� actions but also their interaction with others, primarily the tutor. I conclude by offering some pedagogical implications and suggesting some future research arising from this thesis.
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Vailu'u, Carley Yvonne. "Social Work Practice with Older Adults." ScholarWorks, 2018. https://scholarworks.waldenu.edu/dissertations/5669.
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Social workers working for adult protective services (APS) face many clinical challenges to ensure the safety and well-being of older adult clients. APS social workers often interact with older adults who engage in self-neglecting behaviors that compromise their ability to function in a healthy and independent manner. The purpose of this research study was to explore challenges in direct social work practice to identify how APS services can be improved when working with the older adult population, particularly individuals who engage in hoarding behaviors. Using action research methodology, 2 focus groups were conducted to explore the experiences and knowledge of social workers who are trained in APS and in-home supportive services programs and work directly with the older adult hoarding population when investigating cases of self-neglect. The theoretical framework of cognitive behavioral theory guided the analysis of focus group data to provide insights into understanding the core manifestations of hoarding and how social workers working with this population can provide appropriate services. The overall findings of the study resulted in identifying improvements to APS service interventions. Study findings inform recommendations that allow APS social workers to effectively work with older adults who exhibit hoarding behaviors, while also advancing professional development in the field of social work. Understanding practice challenges to appropriately serve older adults that exhibit hoarding behaviors is essential in effecting positive social change in the lives of vulnerable and disadvantaged older adults, APS agencies, and communities.
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Sheehan, Brooke. "Prison Nurseries and Social Work Practice." ScholarWorks, 2019. https://scholarworks.waldenu.edu/dissertations/7745.
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This study sought to examine what gaps existed in practice through the perspectives of correctional social workers in terms of helping incarcerated mother–infant dyads bond. Additionally, it examined whether a prison nursery was viewed as a possible option within a smaller correctional facility. Theories used to guide this study included attachment theory and separation-individuation theory, which align with the research questions that sought to explore gaps in services, supports that could be established, and program feasibility. Action research, using an anonymous online survey, resulted in N = 6 social work participants who worked as prison social workers in the northeast region of the United States. Data were coded using thematic analysis to explore latent and semantic themes. Conclusions drawn from the dataset include the restrictive nature of the prison setting being a barrier to promoting attachment. An increase in parenting classes, substance use programming, and mental health treatment was seen as beneficial for supporting attachment. Promoting childhood normalcy and having access to nature and play things was seen as integral to the development of a prison nursery program. A prison nursery was seen as feasible within a smaller correctional facility in the northeast. Potential positive social change resulting from these findings include development of specific interventions to maintain mother–infant bonding in small departments of correction.