Editorial

As we are of a certain age, the theory and practice of ‘radical social work’ was an important influence during our training and early social work practice. So it was with considerable interest that we opened a book which landed through the letterbox recently, provocatively entitled Subversive Action—Extralegal Practices for Social Justice. Our day just got more interesting! As an academic journal, the British Journal of Social Work has an established reputation for publishing quality articles which reflect national and international trends and practices and for reporting solid research. What the British Journal of Social Work tends to publish less of—because the journal receives few submissions in this vein—is radical calls to action. From the safe distance of the editorial seat, we can hypothesise why this is so: arguments for marginal gains and incremental developments are grounded in known territory rather than the challenging unknowns of radical action. Yet, should the British Journal of Social Work be more of a vehicle for pushing the boundaries of social work and, if so, how? Should this respectable and respected journal expose more of the direct challenges that face social workers in action, whose driving motivations include (or at least, once included) social change and social justice and empowerment which revolutionalises lives. Have such concepts been colonised and made mainstream and in so doing lost their radical power?

The editors of this very readable book write that it took several years to gather the collection of ‘stories’ that speak to present-day social work practices in a variety of settings and countries. The long gestation was worth it. This is an interesting book that took us as editors back to a time when we each nurtured the kernel of radical social work in our developing practice. Yet, as Deena Mandell, a social work educator, and Alex Hundert, a radical activist, argue: ‘… even if we all adopted a critical social work stance, we cannot escape the constraints of … the structures of neo-liberalism’ (p. 23). This raises at a fundamental level the who, what, where, how and when involved in challenging oppression and inequalities and how far individuals are prepared to go—either as gate-keepers of state resources or as professionals committed to working anti-oppressively. We will ensure that this book is more comprehensively reviewed (we assume that is why it was sent to us) but, for the time being, it is interesting to look at the articles in this issue as a snap shot of where we currently are as a profession and the relationship of that position to those 1970s calls for radical social workers who would act as agents of change and challenge.

In the following four articles, the authors all examine the different ways in which social work is developing as a profession. The first of these, by McLaughlin, Leigh and Worsley, examines the way in which social work as a profession in England has reacted to external regulation. By placing this article in a brief but interesting historical account, the authors set out the landscape for future changes—most notable of which is the government’s insistence that a new regulator be brought into force. Such are the perils of writing about current social policy matters with so much change in the air! A careful reading of this article will help to place the new proposals in the 2016 Queen’s Speech into a helpful context.

How social work students identify with their chosen profession forms the topic for the article from Norway by Terum and Heggen, who look to fill a gap that exists in the literature and research about how professional socialisation occurs. Using a longitudinal study, they examined the affective aspects of this process and the extent to which education increases among students the feelings of identification and commitment to the profession. Interestingly, they used a comparison with nursing students to help understand how social work education, as distinct from nursing education, fosters professional socialisation. The assumption here is that ‘being proud’ to be in a profession is an important motivation, which in turn will drive the social worker to do a good job. One of the interesting findings they reported was that social work students were affected by the type of feedback and encouragement that they received from teachers and supervisors in the university setting.

Staying with social work training, from Jordan, Al-Makhamreh, Alnabulsi and Asfour point out the need to take into consideration the cultural sensitivities of the immediate society and workplace. There are significant differences between the Western world and, for example, Jordanian village life. The Western-based ideal of field training therefore needs to be altered to include the specific issues of community mobilisation and the environment, which they argue is best achieved through self-directed learning approaches. They used a small-scale survey to examine factors such as how this approach can affect students’ self-esteem, awareness and levels of satisfaction. This helped to develop culturally competent social work practice.

In the next article from the UK, Paul Garrett challenges Michael Gove (the then Secretary of State for Education and Health), drawing on the work of Loic Wacquant to argue that, in the face of proponents of neo-liberalism, social work should employ critical sociology. This resonates with our earlier remarks about the lack of a radical agenda or pathway in social work. Garret argues that funded research tends towards the safe topics and compliant researchers who dance to the funder’s tune. This narrows the range of issues with which social work is deemed to grapple and, by concentrating on the ‘what works’ approach, leads towards ‘fixes’ that include privatisation of welfare and social care and the creation of the idea that social work needs a new elite workforce that only an employer-driven curriculum can provide.

On a related theme, Rozas and Harran write from a USA perspective to encourage the adoption of a human-rights framework, which would at first sight seem to be an obvious link for social work. However, the authors make the point that the relationship between social work and human rights is complex and seldom is the link made explicit. They extend a pedagogical tool that was used to help students understand racism to include concepts of social injustice and to make the link with a human-rights conceptual framework in which they can place their developing practice. They conclude by commenting that making a firm commitment to human rights in principle is one thing, but it is another to see that the principles and fundamentals of human rights permeate throughout the social work curriculum and in everyday practice.

The next article also considers the impact of a broader ideology permeating practice. Drawing on a participatory research project and a knowledge exchange project, Ward and Barnes explore the application of a feminist ethic of care to the procedurally driven world of formal service provision for older people. In so doing, they seek to open up a ‘transformative dialogue’ about care-giving and receiving which recognises the essential permeability of the personal–professional divide. Only by transforming the relationships between older people and those working with them, the authors argue, can the experience be truly ‘care-full’ for both parties. Care should be seen as an interdependent process which is fundamental to well-being. Given the fact that the vast majority of us might benefit from some form of care as we age, even if we neither ask for it nor get what we need, this article challenges us all to acquire a new mindset as professionals on an experience of which we all have, or will in the future have, personal experience.

The next nine articles provide between them a comprehensive look at the multi-layered and multi-stranded context of child welfare. First, Rick Hood looks at the use of the information infrastructure in England. We live in a data-rich society (in the developed world at least) but what is often lacking is doing anything meaningful with this information let alone understanding what it means. In England, local authorities have been required for some time to collect data for all children in need and child protection services. Hood summarises the results of a major study which used both cross-sectional and longitudinal analyses of these national data-sets and explored variations and patterns of response to increased demand for services. Looking at over 150 authorities over a thirteen-year period reveals some fascinating patterns, including how measures that were introduced to reserve child protection interventions for high-risk cases have been usurped into mechanisms to manage demand. As Hood points out, all of this is taking place in an austerity-driven context and, as he suggests, while it is interesting to understand how authorities manage demand, we also need to understand whether services are meeting communities’ needs.

In a challenging paper which forms our Editors’ Choice, Barn and Das draw on an empirical study conducted in London to consider the intervention of Family Group Conferences (FGCs) and their use with families from backgrounds which they describe as culturally diverse. The authors point out that it is something of an irony that a method which originated in New Zealand and was prompted by the rising numbers of Maori children in state care shows British and Minority Ethnic (BME) families to be under-represented currently in the UK. Moreover, there is little research evidence or critical commentary focusing on the significance of cultural and racial issues in FGCs. Their study, employing a selected sample, demonstrates the complexities of culturally competent practice in situations of multiple diversity—for example, the nuanced understandings involved in matching coordinators with families. The study showed FGC practitioners in London making strenuous efforts to employ a critical understanding of culture but acknowledging gaps in their practice. The authors suggest that their findings have the potential to inform improvements in social work practice across the board as well as in the use of FGCs.

Our next paper, also from the UK, takes an approach to child protection which seems obvious but is often neglected. Barlow, Dawe, Coe and Harnett present a pre-birth pathway intervention developed in Oxfordshire, comprising focused assessment and support to ‘vulnerable’ (by which they mean those referred to the social services department) pregnant women. The authors point out that abuse and neglect of babies under one year old constitute a significant proportion of child protection cases in the UK and research shows that abuse and neglect during the first few years of life have a disproportionate effect on later development. The aim of concentrating on this period is to identify and address risk factors pre birth. The pathway utilises a number of validated assessment scales and standardised tools and the woman (and her partner where relevant) are offered intervention designed to strengthen parenting capacity. The pre-birth pathway is extended to further assessment when the baby is two months old, which also addresses parent–child interaction and child development. Although the model was still being piloted, the authors suggest that early results warrant further evaluation to determine its potential for wider application within social work practice.

In a related field, Farmer and Dance look at adoption practice in England. The starting point for their study is the considerable emphasis on the process of matching the child with adoptive parents, yet there is considerable variation in those family-finding processes which precede the matching. This study, funded by the Department of Education, sought to compare the effectiveness and outcomes in ten local authorities with respect to family-finding for ‘harder-to-place’ children. Following a review of 149 adoption recommendations, the researchers followed a subset of sixty-seven children in real time from the start of the matching process to six months post adoption. The initial survey of LA adoption managers showed widely differing attitudes to and principles guiding matching, which clustered into four approaches in practice. Children with complex needs were deliberately overrepresented in the sub-sample and one important finding was that outcomes were poorer where these difficulties had been underplayed with potential adopters. The study found four factors which helped achieve quality and speedy placements and four which led to poor matches. This is an important and detailed study which requires careful reading for all those involved in adoption practice, whether in the English system or another.

A lack of access to adequate food, referred to as ‘food insecurity’, has become an unwelcome feature in the USA with estimates of 21 per cent or eight million households with children experiencing this phenomenon. Huang and Vaughn describe a large-scale research study that attempted to determine what, if any, was the long-term impact of dealing with food insecurity on behaviour. In a surprising outcome, they suggest that any effect on behaviour is most likely to be transient and their study showed no long-term association between behaviour and food insecurity.

The next cluster of articles examine child protection services and work with parents of children in the care system in three different countries, whose varying contexts add a richness and depth to our understanding of processes and effects. The use of strengths-based approaches has increased over the last decade. This recognises the centrality of the worker–client relationship as being a keystone in any attempt to change. Oliver and Grant describe findings from a Canadian study that examined the experiences of front line workers as they used strengths-based alongside ‘management’ approaches to intervention. From interviews with social workers, they characterise strengths-based work as ‘enacting, firm, fair and friendly practice’. The authors also chart the tensions and difficulties that are inherent in implementing such an approach.

Removing children from the care of their parents is a grave undertaking and the separated parent(s) inevitably find this intervention difficult to accept. At the same time, agencies have a responsibility to work with the parents to give them the opportunity to change their behaviour and attitudes. Bjorn Oystein Angel writes about a Norwegian project that attempted to increase the personal capital of the parent and their ability to recognise in themselves elements that needed to change. Over a weekend course in a hotel, parents were brought together and jointly explored feelings, thoughts and experiences. In this way, they were exposed to knowledge about what it means to be an effective parent at the same time as increasing their understanding of societal expectations of good parenting. Several strategies were used to help participants counteract the feelings of powerlessness that they all had experienced. These techniques helped the individual strengthen not only their parenting abilities and competence, but also their self-image, which in turn helped them to take responsibility for their behaviours.

In a fascinating article examining the use of algorithms in risk modelling, Philip Gillingham focuses on the tools being developed in New Zealand and their potential to predict adverse outcomes for vulnerable and at-risk children. If they live up to early promise and development continues, this opens up an approach which could be a valuable asset to social workers. This is a process by which algorithms effectively ‘learn’ by being subject to various data-sets and outcomes to ignore some factors and recognise others that are significant. Early results suggest that there is enough here to warrant further development. However, Gillingham suggests that their intended use, let alone unintended use, raises serious moral and ethical concerns.

More usually, practitioners are guided by certain assumptions about risk couched as practice wisdom. In a culture in which there is much concern about online abuse and abusive use of mobile phone texting, it is understandable that professionals might feel particularly concerned about internet and mobile phone use by young people who are, or have been, in the care system, since they are already a vulnerable population. However, as Robin Sen points out in the next article, little is actually known about this group’s use of such technology. In an exploratory qualitative study of four looked after children and six care leavers, Sen found that their experiences were not substantially different from those reported for young people outside of the care system. Most importantly, there was significant overlap between their online and offline social communities. Verbal abuse, where experienced, was from contacts known offline and a counter-factor was that these young people also experienced social support through digital communication. Sen suggests that, while digital technology influences the mode of communication, communication patterns amongst young people do not differ significantly from those of a pre-digital age, the more traditional social relationship remaining important.

The next two articles focus on the impact of this type of work on the social worker. Recent issues of the British Journal of Social Work have included articles dealing with front line issues for social workers in child protection and child welfare from a number of countries. Our next article, from the USA, seeks to identify the differential impact of a range of job stressors and burnout factors in order to deepen understanding of what is now a well-documented phenomenon. Travis, Lizano and Mor Barak applied a theory-driven longitudinal model to a sample of 362 front line social workers or social work supervisors in a large urban public welfare agency. As with previous studies in other countries, they found that family conflict, role ambiguity and role conflict were most likely to prompt exit-seeking behaviours, characterised by emotional exhaustion and psychological disengagement from work.

In the next article, Graham, Shier and Nichols critically describe their investigation into workplace congruence and occupational outcomes among social service workers in Alberta, Canada. An obvious connection would seem to be that common expectations would produce a more content workforce and improve performance. They used standardised measures, including ‘satisfaction with life’ scales and ‘intention to leave’ measures, to ‘quantify’ the mental health of the social service workers. A surprising finding was that, in the main, the social service workers (who were all engaged in child protection) seemed in a better position compared with other government workers. This pointed to the importance of achieving shared agreement between organisational and professional/personal goals and the impact of factors such as work–life balance. These two studies add to an escalating body of work on child protection workers which, we suggest, might benefit from systematic review of the international literature published as a critical commentary.

It is some years now since Paul Bywaters challenged social work in the pages of this journal to rediscover the importance of health to overall well-being (Bywaters, 2009) and our next article is one which does just that by focusing on the ‘far-reaching social consequences’ of living with Hepatitis C (HCV). Basing their arguments on twenty-one in-depth qualitative interviews, Mack and Paylor suggest that social work is uniquely placed and skilled to respond to the integrated health and social care needs of people with HCV. Not least is social work’s experience of working with a range of service user groups which might potentially be affected by HCV infection and the authors give the examples of asylum seekers from countries with high prevalence rates, older drug users, prisoners (or former prisoners) and their families. The article highlights key moments where, the authors argue, social workers could and should be involved, specifically at diagnosis and pre, during and post treatment. In the light of the dominant demands around social work with adults, it is challenging but salient to raise awareness amongst social workers of those needs which may be going unnoticed in their everyday practice.

The final article in this issue takes us back to our opening theme. The impact of neo-liberalism and its offspring managerialism were in part the rationale for the Probation Service’s drift away from mainstream social work, so much so that, in England and Wales, the training of probation officers has for more than a decade been completely separate from social work training. The new emphasis was away from social work towards offender management and the measurement of risk, using measures such as offender profiling. Raynor and Vanstone succinctly chart this history and provide a useful analysis of a project that examined probation staff effectiveness and the types of skills that were being used. By putting this alongside reconviction rates, they established that these initial findings suggest that the skilled worker was associated with lower reoffending rates. Although more research is called for, they argue that these findings endorse the relevance and importance of relationship skills and a reconnection with the core skills of social work. We are tempted to conclude this Editorial with the comment that, in the light of current penal policy and recent trends in the management of offenders, understanding probation practice as social work with people who have committed criminal offences is itself a radical agenda.