An audit of assessment and reporting by Approved Social Workers (ASWs)

This paper examines the routine practice of Approved Social Workers (ASWs) in adult mental health services in Northern Ireland. It begins with a review of existing literature on the ASW role before describing how a retrospective audit, using a mixed methods approach, was used to collect data on eighty-four assessments carried out to determine whether compulsory admission to hospital was needed. Respondents were also asked to consider how such assessments might be affected by proposed changes to the law in this field. The key findings highlighted a number of areas of practice that may be improved. There were inconsistencies in how the assessments were recorded and an uneven distribution of workloads across ASWs. Some problems were identified with interagency working and, in a quarter of the assessments, the ASW reported having felt afraid or at risk. The authors make a number of recommendations, which include: the use of a standard reporting procedure; that organisations should consider how to deliver a more even distribution of ASW workload; that protocols should be developed that ensure that ASWs are not left alone in potentially risky situations; and that joint assessments with General Practitioners should be required, rather than just recommended.

Innovative Approaches to Involving Service Users in Palliative Care Social Work Education

Service user involvement in social work education is now a firmly established concept in UnitedKingdom.As a result, it is common practice for service users to occupy central roles the education and training of social work students and staff in both qualifying and postqualifying programmes. This paper describes an initiative, undertaken inNorthern Ireland, which compares two methods of user involvement employed with undergraduate and postqualifying social work students. In both situations the students firstly observed discussedDVDexcerpts of narratives from people affected by cancer and secondly observed live facilitated interview with a 25-year-old male service user who shared his experiences being diagnosedwith cancer at a young age.Understanding the social work role in palliative care is crucial as all social workers, regardless of practice context, will have some degree involvement in helping individuals and families to address end-of-life care issues. paper compares the findings of evaluations from two student groups which may help inform social work educators about the effectiveness of different teaching methods used achieve meaningful and effective user involvement with seldom heard groups.

Recent advances in the analysis of behavioural organization and interpretation as indicators of animal welfare

While the incorporation of mathematical and engineering methods has greatly advanced in other areas of the life sciences, they have been under-utilized in the field of animal welfare. Exceptions are beginning to emerge and share a common motivation to quantify 'hidden' aspects in the structure of the behaviour of an individual, or group of animals. Such analyses have the potential to quantify behavioural markers of pain and stress and quantify abnormal behaviour objectively. This review seeks to explore the scope of such analytical methods as behavioural indicators of welfare. We outline four classes of analyses that can be used to quantify aspects of behavioural organization. The underlying principles, possible applications and limitations are described for: fractal analysis, temporal methods, social network analysis, and agent-based modelling and simulation. We hope to encourage further application of analyses of behavioural organization by highlighting potential applications in the assessment of animal welfare, and increasing awareness of the scope for the development of new mathematical methods in this area.

Making Sense of Leaving Care: The contribution of Bridges Model of Transition to Understanding the Psycho-social process.

This paper is based on research into the transition of young people leaving public care in Romania. Using this specific country example, the paper aims to contribute to present understandings of the psycho-social transition of young people from care to independent living by introducing the use of Bridges (2002) to build on existing theories and literature. The research discussed involved mixed methods design and was implemented in three phases: semi-structured interviews with 34 care leavers, focus groups with 32 professionals, and a professional-service user working group. The overall findings confirmed that young people experience two different, but interconnected transitions - social and psychological - which take place at different paces. A number of theoretical perpectives are explored to make sense of this transition including attachment theory, focal theory and identity. In addition, a new model for understanding the complex process of transitions was adapted from Bridges’ (2002) to capture the clear complexity of transition which the findings demonstrated in terms of their psycho-social transition. The paper concludes with messages for leaving and after care services with an emphasis on managing the psycho-social transition from care to independent living.

Developing a social work curriculum on political conflict – Findings from an IASSW funded project

This paper presents the findings from an innovative project funded by the
International Association of Schools of Social Work (IASSW) and undertaken by
an international team of academics investigating the development of a global
curriculum for social work in the context of political conflict. Coupled alongside
the emerging research and literature on the subject, our small-scale survey
findings indicate support for the need for social work educators to address
political conflict more systematically within social work curricula at both
undergraduate and post-qualifying levels of social work education. The paper
illuminates the opportunities for creative pedagogy whilst also examining the
threats and challenges permeating the realisation of such initiatives. In this way,
the implementation of a proposed curriculum for political conflict is given meaning within the context of IASSW’s Global Standards for social work education. Given the exploratory nature of this project, the authors do conclude that further research is warranted in regard to potential curriculum development and suggest using a comparative case study approach with more in-depth qualitative methods as a way to address this.

Systematically Identifying Relevant Research : Case Study on Child Protection Social workers' Resilience

Context: The development of a consolidated knowledge base for social work requires rigorous approaches to identifying relevant research. Method: The quality of 10 databases and a web search engine were appraised by systematically searching for research articles on resilience and burnout in child protection social workers. Results: Applied Social Sciences Index and Abstracts, Social Services Abstracts and Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI) had greatest sensitivity, each retrieving more than double than any other database. PsycINFO and Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health (CINAHL) had highest precision. Google Scholar had modest sensitivity and good precision in relation to the first 100 items. SSCI, Google Scholar, Medline, and CINAHL retrieved the highest number of hits not retrieved by any other database. Conclusion: A range of databases is required for even modestly comprehensive searching. Advanced database searching methods are being developed but the profession requires greater standardization of terminology to assist in information retrieval.

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.

Secure Implementation in Production Economies

This paper shows that, in production economies, the generalized serial social choice functions defined by Shenker (1992) are securely implementable (in the sense of Saijo et al., 2007) and that they include the well-known fixed path social choice functions.

The Participation of Disabled Children and Young People: A Social Justice Perspective

There is an increasing expectation that children, young people and their parents should participate in decisions that affect them. This includes decisions about their health and social care and collective or public decisions about the way in which such services are designed, delivered and evaluated. Indeed this has become a policy priority across the United Kingdom. The participation of disabled children and young people, however, has been slow to develop in the United Kingdom and concerns have been expressed about progress in this area. Drawing on the results of an Economic and Social Research Council-funded, mixed-methods study, the aim of this article is to explore the participation of disabled children and young people through a social justice lens. Participants, recruited by purposeful sampling, included 18 disabled children and young people, 77 parents and 90 professionals from one health and social care trust in Northern Ireland. There were four phases of data collection: surveys to parents and professionals, parent interviews, interviews with children and young people using creative and participatory techniques, and a focus group with professionals. Results showed that for most disabled children and young people, decision-making was firmly grounded in a family-centred model. However, when children and young people were drawn into participatory processes by adults and recognised as partners in interactions with professionals, they wanted more say and were more confident about expressing their views. Choices, information and resources were at times limited and this had a key impact on participation and the lives of these children, young people and their parents. The article concludes by exploring implications for further research and practice. The need for a two-pronged, social justice approach is recommended as a mechanism to advance the participation agenda.

Research methods for social work

The book considers

Social Capital in Inter-Organizational Partnership Research

This chapter focuses on the use of social capital as a construct to examine and explain the formation and operation of inter-organizational partnerships. In particular it shows how social capital contributes to the sustainability of a public sector partnership. In this research context social capital is defined as the networks, trust, norms and values that enable individuals and organizations to achieve mutual goals through collaboration. This definition draws upon the author’s empirical research on partnerships and partnership working in the field of post-compulsory education and her practical experience of establishing, managing and leading international partnerships for teaching and research in teacher education. The emphasis is on the practical application of social capital to qualitative data and on identifying sources of evidence, including research literature from different disciplines in the social sciences to interpret and theorize primary data. The first section of the chapter considers the complexities of defining social capital in the context of rival theoretical and political perspectives and leads to a discussion of the dimensions of social capital that are found in effective and sustained partnerships.

The troubling concept of class: reflecting on our ‘failure’ to encourage sociology students to re-cognise their classed locations using autobiographical methods

The troubling concept of class: reflecting on our ‘failure’ to encourage sociology students to re-cognise their classed locations using autobiographical methods Abstract This paper provides a narrative of the four authors‟ commitment to auto/biographical methods as teachers and researchers in „new‟ universities. As they went about their work, they observed that, whereas students engage with the gendered, sexualised and racialised processes when negotiating their identities, they are reluctant or unable to conceptualise „class-ifying‟ processes as key determinants of their life chances. This general inability puzzled the authors, given the students‟ predominantly working-class backgrounds. Through application of their own stories, the authors explore the sociological significance of this pedagogical „failure‟ to account for the troubling concept of class not only in the classroom but also in contemporary society.

The impact of social competence between physical activity and motor performance

Objective: To identify the association of low physical activity (PA) participation in children with various motor performances (MP) and to establish the impact of social competence (SC). Methods: Sixth grade children from PHAST study at Brock University (n=1958; 50.53% males) had MP test results from Bruininks-Oseretsky Test of Motor Proficiency, Participation Questionnaire (PQ) used for PA and Harter Social Competence Scale for self-perceived SC. Comparative tests, multiple and logistic regressions were performed. Results: Significant differences in PQ measures in MP quartiles and SCs. MP and SC are independent predictors of PA (p<.05) except with SES on free play activity, making MP not significant. Lower MP increased the odds of low total PA and organized sport participation but not for free play activities (OR~1). Higher SC reduced the risk of low participation in all PA measures. Conclusions: SC improves PA participation, including free play and organized sports, despite the child’s MP.

Ethics and Social Responsibility in the Life Sciences

Social Sciences and Humanities Research CouncilHomerton College, Cambridge, U.K.

Multilevel multitrait-multimethod model: application to the measurement of egocentered social networks

Our goal in this paper is to assess reliability and validity of egocentered network data using multilevel analysis (Muthen, 1989, Hox, 1993) under the multitrait-multimethod approach. The confirmatory factor analysis model for multitrait-multimethod data (Werts & Linn, 1970; Andrews, 1984) is used for our analyses. In this study we reanalyse a part of data of another study (Kogovšek et al., 2002) done on a representative sample of the inhabitants of Ljubljana. The traits used in our article are the name interpreters. We consider egocentered network data as hierarchical; therefore a multilevel analysis is required. We use Muthen's partial maximum likelihood approach, called pseudobalanced solution (Muthen, 1989, 1990, 1994) which produces estimations close to maximum likelihood for large ego sample sizes (Hox & Mass, 2001). Several analyses will be done in order to compare this multilevel analysis to classic methods of analysis such as the ones made in Kogovšek et al. (2002), who analysed the data only at group (ego) level considering averages of all alters within the ego. We show that some of the results obtained by classic methods are biased and that multilevel analysis provides more detailed information that much enriches the interpretation of reliability and validity of hierarchical data. Within and between-ego reliabilities and validities and other related quality measures are defined, computed and interpreted