Empowering the Shamed Self: Recognition and Critical Social Work

Summary: This article provides a review of the contribution of Axel Honneth’s model of recognition for critical social work. While Honneth’s tripartite conceptualisation of optimal identity-formation is positively appraised, his analysis of the link between misrecognition, the experience of shame and eventual sense of moral outrage, is contested. Drawing on a range of sources, including the sociology of shame, Honneth’s ideas about the emotional antecedents of emancipatory action are revised to guide critical social work with misrecognised service users.

Findings: The intellectual background to Honneth’s recognition model, emanating from leading German philosophers, is described and its application to social work set out. Even so, Honneth’s model is found to be deficient in one primary regard: its assumption about the emotional antecedents to quests for withheld recognition is misapprehended. In particular, the argument in this article is that the ubiquitous emotion of shame, which Honneth argues flows from misrecognition, must be carefully addressed through the medium of relationship, otherwise it might lead to repressed shame and frustrated attempts at social struggle. To this end, a social work process is delineated for dealing with shame, following episodes of misrecognition.

Applications: Honneth’s model of recognition, along with revised ideas about how to recognise and manage shame, is incorporated into a conceptual framework for critical social work practice. With this renewed understanding of the impact of shame, following misrecognition, social workers should be better equipped conceptually to enable service users to take action for empowerment.

A study of successful applicants' views of a social work admissions process

Summary: There are substantial variations in the way that applicants are selected
for social work programmes in the UK and across the world. This article begins by reviewing the literature in this field, revealing debates about how effective and reliable are methods of assessment used during admission processes. It then describes a crosssectional survey of new social work applicants (n¼203) to two programme providers,describing demographic characteristics and their experiences of the admissions process.
Findings: A number of themes emerged from two sets of findings. There were variations in demographic characteristics, particularly in terms of gender and religion. The study was particularly interested in how students viewed the admissions process. Most students were satisfied with admissions processes, and there were some differences in views about the methods used. The article concludes by describing changes to the admissions system that were partly informed by the study. The article acknowledges the expected bias in the methodology, given that successful applicants were surveyed
and not those who were not successful.
Applications: The authors discuss the study findings in the context of national and international literature and suggest that more rigorous attention should be paid to such evaluations to enable this important area of education and workforce development to be better understood.

Panning for Gold: The Standardizing Work of Filling “Autistic” Shells – Using institutional ethnography to explore textually mediated health relations in the diagnostic process of autism.

Health reform practices in Canada and elsewhere have restructured the purpose and use of diagnostic labels and the processes of naming such labels. Diagnoses are no longer only a means to tell doctors and patients what may be wrong and indicate potential courses of treatment; some diagnoses activate specialized services and supports for persons with a disability and those who provide care for them. In British Columbia, a standardized process of diagnosis with the outcome of an autism spectrum disorder gives access to government provided health care and educational services and supports. Such processes enter individuals into a complex of text mediated relations, regulated by the principles of evidence-based medicine. However, the diagnosis of autism in children is notoriously uncertain. Because of this ambiguity, standardizing the diagnostic process creates a hurdle in gaining help and support for parents who have children with problems that could lead to a diagnosis on the autism spectrum. Such processes and their organizing relations are problematized, explored and explicated below. Grounded in the epistemological and ontological shift offered by Dorothy E. Smith (1987; 1990a; 1999; 2005), this article reports on the findings of an institutional ethnographic study that explored the diagnostic process of autism in British Columbia. More specifically, this article focuses on the processes involved in going from mothers talking from their experience about their childrens problems to the formalized and standardized, and thus “virtually” produced, diagnoses that may or may not give access to services and supports in different systems of care. Two psychologists, a developmental pediatrician, a social worker – members of a specialized multidisciplinary assessment team – and several mothers of children with a diagnosis on the autism spectrum were interviewed. The implications of standardizing the diagnosis process of a disability that is not clear-cut and has funding attached are discussed. This ethnography also provides a glimpse of the implications of current and ongoing reforms in the state-supported health care system in British Columbia, and more generally in Canada, for people’s everyday doings.

Making Social Work Education App’ier : The Process of Developing Information-based Apps for Social Work Education and Practice

Mobile App technology in social work education remains in the embryonic stages of development with a few notable exceptions. The use of Apps in College and University settings has been reported in other sectors of higher education, although there is a paucity of research in relation to its relevance to social work education and practice. The following article describes the creation of four social work education and practice Apps by a team of social work educators. The primary focus is on the design process and the partnership approach to the creation of the tools. It also outlines the rationale for the App development, the working process and the theoretical framework underpinning mobile learning. Furthermore, it provides information on the level of usage of the Apps according to geographical location, download information and time spent on each section of the App. The article also incorporates a pragmatic summary of developmental guidelines which may aid social work educators in the development and implementation of specialist information-based Apps for education and practice.

Accessing Social Work Case Files for Research Purposes: Some Issues and Problems

The use of social work case files as an important research resource is being threatened by the increasing regulation of both the research process and access to personal identifiable information. While these developments can be seen as a reaction to specific incidents of inappropriate research and the misuse of personal information, it is argued that the pendulum has swung too far the other way, and in seeking to protect the rights of vulnerable individuals, the lives of these same individuals may go unstudied with the consequence that they receive less appropriate services. Drawing upon the current research of the authors, this article explores the difficulties encountered in gaining access to social work case files for research purposes without the explicit consent of service users and highlights the uncertainty surrounding this issue. Suggestions are made for improvements in the situation.

Reflecting on Habitus, Field and Capital: Towards a Culturally Sensitive Social Work

Summary: This article argues that the notion of the knowledge base as a central aspect of professional activity is flawed, and that it is more useful to see social work as in a continuous process of constructing and reconstructing professional knowledge. Findings: Culture is an area that has attracted widespread attention in academia and the social professions. However, there has been little examination of culturally sensitive social work practice from a realist perspective, or one that starts from the view that oppressive structures, as encoded within social class, are essential determinants of cultural experience. Following a critique of postmodern perspectives on culture, the work of Pierre Bourdieu on culture and power is explored. Applications: Three of Bourdieu's key constructs - habitus, field and capital - are utilized to develop a model for culturally sensitive social work practice that attends to the interplay of agency and structure in reproducing inequalities within the social world.

Microbial analysis of soil and groundwater from a gasworks site and comparison to a sequenced biological reactive barrier remediation process (SEREBAR)

Aims: To investigate the distribution of a polymicrobial community of biodegradative bacteria in (i) soil and groundwater at a former manufactured gas plant (FMGP) site and (ii) in a novel SEquential REactive BARrier (SEREBAR) bioremediation process designed to bioremediate the contaminated groundwater. Methods and Results: Culture-dependent and culture-independent analyses using denaturing gradient gel electrophoresis (DGGE) and polymerase chain reaction (PCR) for the detection of 16S ribosomal RNA gene and naphthalene dioxygenase (NDO) genes of free-living (planktonic groundwater) and attached (soil biofilm) samples from across the site and from the SEREBAR process was applied. Naphthalene arising from groundwater was effectively degraded early in the process and the microbiological analysis indicated a dominant role for Pseudomonas and Comamonas in its degradation. The microbial communities appeared highly complex and diverse across both the sites and in the SEREBAR process. An increased population of naphthalene degraders was associated with naphthalene removal. Conclusion: The distribution of micro-organisms in general and naphthalene degraders across the site was highly heterogeneous. Comparisons made between areas contaminated with polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAH) and those not contaminated, revealed differences in the microbial community profile. The likelihood of noncultured bacteria being dominant in mediating naphthalene removal was evident. Significance and Impact of the Study: This work further emphasizes the importance of both traditional and molecular-based tools in determining the microbial ecology of contaminated sites and highlights the role of noncultured bacteria in the process.

Process Modelling for Control of Product Wall Thickness in Thermoforming

The present paper describes the results of an investigation into the modelling of plug assisted thermoforming. The objective of this work was to improve the finite element modelling of thermoforming through an enhanced understanding of the physical elements underlying the process. Experiments were carried out to measure the effects on output of changes in major parameters and simultaneously simple finite element models were constructed. The experimental results show that the process creates conflicting and interrelated contact friction and heat transfer effects that largely dictate the final wall thickness distribution. From the simulation work it was demonstrated that a high coefficient of friction and no heat transfer can give a good approximation of the actual wall thickness distribution. However, when conduction was added to the model the results for lower friction values were greatly improved. It was concluded that further work is necessary to provide realistic measurements and models for contact effects in thermoforming.

A novel approach to dynamic modelling of polymer extrusion for improved process control

Polymer extrusion is a complex process and the availability of good dynamic models is key for improved system operation. Previous modelling attempts have failed adequately to capture the non-linearities of the process or prove too complex for control applications. This work presents a novel approach to the problem by the modelling of extrusion viscosity and pressure, adopting a grey box modelling technique that combines mechanistic knowledge with empirical data using a genetic algorithm approach. The models are shown to outperform those of a much higher order generated by a conventional black box technique while providing insight into the underlying processes at work within the extruder.

Shaping the Future of Mental Health Policy and Legislation in Northern Ireland: The Impact of Service User and Professional Social Work Discourses

This paper explores the complex interrelationship between service user and professional social work discourses and provides a critical commentary on their respective contributions to the recent review of mental health policy and legislation in Northern Ireland. The analysis indicates that dominant trends in mental health care, as mediated through service structures and institutional identities, have tended to prioritize the more coercive aspects of the social work role and reinforce existing power inequalities with service users. It is argued that such developments underline the need for a ‘refocusing’ debate in mental health social work to consider how a more appropriate balance can be achieved between its participatory/empowering and regulatory/coercive functions. Whilst highlighting both congruence and dissonance between respective discourses, the paper concludes that opportunities exist within the current change process for service users and social workers to build closer alliances in working together to reconstruct practice, safeguard human rights and develop innovative alternatives to a traditional bio-medical model of treatment.

Enhancing process insight in polymer extrusion by grey box modelling

Due to the complexity and inherent instability in polymer extrusion there is a need for process models which can be run on-line to optimise settings and control disturbances. First-principle models demand computationally intensive solution, while ‘black box’ models lack generalisation ability and physical process insight. This work examines a novel ‘grey box’ modelling technique which incorporates both prior physical knowledge and empirical data in generating intuitive models of the process. The models can be related to the underlying physical mechanisms in the extruder and have been shown to capture unpredictable effects of the operating conditions on process instability. Furthermore, model parameters can be related to material properties available from laboratory analysis and as such, lend themselves to re-tuning for different materials without extensive remodelling work.

Grading gems: Appraising the quality of research about social work and social care.

The impetus towards basing practice and policy decisions more explicitly on sound research requires tools to facilitate the systematic appraisal of the quality of research encompassing a diverse range of methods and designs. Five exemplar tools were developed and assessed in terms of their usefulness in selecting studies for inclusion in a systematic review. The widely used ‘hierarchy of evidence’ was adapted and used to appraise internal validity. Four tools were then developed to appraise the external validity dimensions of generalizability (two scales) and methods of data collection (two scales). Methods of combining the scores generated by each tool were explored. Qualitative and quantitative studies were appraised, not separated into two spheres but by using complementary tools developed to appraise different aspects of rigour. There was a high level of agreement between researchers in applying the tools to twenty-two studies on decision making by professionals about the longterm care of older people. The scales for internal validity and generalizability discriminated between the qualities of studies appropriately. The two tools to appraise data collection gave diverse results. Excluding studies that scored in the lowest category on any scale appeared to be the scoring system that was most justifiable. This approach is presented to stimulate debate about the practical application of the evidence-based initiative to social work and social care. This study may assist in developing clearer definitions and common language about appraising rigour that should further the process of selecting robust research for synthesis to inform practice and policy decisions.