Social Work Education and Training in Europe and the Bologna Process

A short review of the last three decades shows that social work programmes have developed similarly in (almost) all European countries, both in terms of structural and content-related characteristics. Here I would like to focus on the following aspects: Increased academic focus of training, Generalist programme, International/European orientation. Increased academic focus means that social work programmes have been established at uni-versities or comparable higher education institutions, such as universities of applied sciences. The only exception is France where the approximately 150, generally fairly small colleges and the 14 larger instituts regionaux have a hybrid position between vocational colleges and universities and are roughly comparable to academies.

Social Workers Involvement in Taiwan's 1999 Earthquake Disaster Aid: Implications for Social Work Education

On September 21, 1999, a strong earthquake devastated Taiwan's central areas and claimed more than two thousand casualties. Social work roles in the disaster aid were surveyed with standardized questionnaires six months after the earthquake; in addition, interviews of the key informants, documental research, focus groups and open-ended questionnaires were utilized to collect qualitative data. The study found that social workers had significant roles and functions in both rescue and recovery stages especially in linking the victims' needs with resources. Social workers, including from public and private sectors as well as from campuses including the faculties and students of social work departments, have been deeply involved in helping the victims. Regrettably, most Taiwanese social workers participated in the rescue aid with limited training in disaster aid; social work practice in disaster aid is not included in current curriculums of college level. This means that social work roles and functions in the disaster aid process have not been fully realized by Taiwan's society and professional education.

Policy Contexts of Social Work in Britain: the wider implications of 'New' Labour and the 'New Legal Regime'

Several commentators have expressed disappointment with New Labour's apparent adherence to the policy frameworks of the previous Conservative administrations. The employment orientation of its welfare programmes, the contradictory nature of the social exclusion initiatives, and the continuing obsession with public sector marketisation, inspections, audits, standards and so on, have all come under critical scrutiny (c.f., Blyth 2001; Jordan 2001; Orme 2001). This paper suggests that in order to understand the socio-economic and political contexts affecting social work we need to examine the relationship between New Labour's modernisation project and its insertion within an architecture of global governance. In particular, membership of the European Union (EU), International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Trade Organisation (WTO) set the parameters for domestic policy in important ways. Whilst much has been written about the economic dimensions of 'globalisation' in relation to social work rather less has been noted about the ways in which domestic policy agenda are driven by multilateral governance objectives. This policy dimension is important in trying to respond to various changes affecting social work as a professional activity. What is possible, what is encouraged, how things might be done, is tightly bounded by the policy frameworks governing practice and affected by those governing the lives of service users. It is unhelpful to see policy formulation in purely national terms as the UK is inserted into a network governance structure, a regulatory framework where decisions are made by many countries and organisations and agencies. Together, they are producing a 'new legal regime', characterised by a marked neo-liberal policy agenda. This paper aims to demonstrate the relationship of New Labour's modernisation programme to these new forms of legality by examining two main policy areas and the welfare implications they are enmeshed in. The first is privatisation, and the second is social policy in the European Union. Examining these areas allows a demonstration of how much of the New Labour programme can be understood as a local implementation of a transnational strategy, how parts of that strategy produce much of the social exclusion it purports to address, and how social welfare, and particularly social work, are noticeable by their absence within policy discourses of the strategy. The paper details how the privatisation programme is considered to be a crucial vehicle for the further development of a transnational political-economy, where capital accumulation has been redefined as 'welfare'. In this development, frameworks, codes and standards are central, and the final section of the paper examines how the modernisation strategy of the European Union depends upon social policy marked by an employment orientation and risk rationality, aimed at reconfiguring citizen identities.The strategy is governed through an 'open mode of coordination', in which codes, standards, benchmarks and so on play an important role. The paper considers the modernisation strategy and new legality within which it is embedded as dependent upon social policy as a technology of liberal governance, one demonstrating a new rationality in comparison to that governing post-Second World War welfare, and which aims to reconfigure institutional infrastructure and citizen identity.

Social Work and a New Social Order - Challenging Neo-liberalism's Erosion of Solidarity

The world in which social work operates today is a very different world from that in which most of us took their social work training, and the changes we are facing are profound. This paper argues that these changes are not merely a regime change in social policy but that they are essentially about a re-ordering of social relationships and attempt to model them on neo-liberal ideas. In view of these pressures it is understandable that social workers often try to ignore those changes and withdraw into a private world of therapeutic relationships in which the methods they trained in are made to be still valid, or they simply go along with new service delivery designs without asking too many questions. Both reactions fail to question what the "social" can still mean in the light of these changes and how social workers can fulfil their mandate to be responsible for the social dimension of public life. Nothing less than a head-on challenge of the basic presuppositions of neo-liberalism (Willke 2003) and their manifold applications to social service delivery systems will thereby suffice.

Social Work as Laboratory for Normative Professionalisation

In most Western countries, the professional status of social workers is instable and insecure. Of course, most Western countries are themselves instable, ridden with feelings of insecurity and in search of reassurance and promises of control. But social work hardly lends itself as a projection screen for visions of professional control and efficiency in the face of insecurity. On the contrary: within the present cultural and political climate, social work connotes primarily with unpopular social problems, with people unable to cope adequately with the competitiveness and the rate of change of post-industrial societies, that is to say: it connotes more with dependency and helplessness then with autonomy and control. Moreover, whereas public discourse in most Western country is dominated by a neo-liberal perspective and the intricate network of economic, managerial, consumerist and military metaphors connected with it, social work still carries with it a legacy of 'progressive politics' increasingly labeled as outdated and inadequate. Although the values of solidarity and social justice connected with this 'progressive heritage' certainly have not faded away completely, the loudest and most popular voices on the level of public discourse keep underscoring the necessity to adapt to the 'realities' of present-day postindustrial societies and their dependence on economic growth, technological innovation and the dynamics of an ever more competitive world-market. This 'unavoidable' adaptation involves both the 'modernization' and progressive diminishment of 'costly' welfare-state arrangements and a radical reorientation of social work as a profession. Instead of furthering the dependency of clients in the name of solidarity, social workers should stimulate them to face their own responsibilities and help them to function more adequately in a world where individual autonomy and economic progress are dominant values. This shift has far-reaching consequences for the organization of the work itself. Efficiency and transparency are the new code words, professional autonomy is dramatically limited and interventions of social workers are increasingly bound to 'objective' standards of success and cost-effectiveness.

Three Decades of Social Work in France: from Security within the Welfare State to a State of «Disembedded Modernity»

This article gives an overview of trends in policy on the functions and role of social work in French society over the past twenty years. The author suggests several reasons for the current feeling of crisis of professional identity among professionals and the complexities of the political demands made on social work. These are analysed as a consequence of the specific French context of decentralisation of the State and of the multitude of approaches to organisation and to professional training programs. On a broader level, it seems that French social work reflects many characteristics of “modernity” being concerned with difficulties in defining a clear identity, lack of a clear territorial and institutional base (or “disembeddedness” to borrow Giddens term) and difficulties in finding a clear voice to make its values heard in an increasingly politicised arena of public debate.

What is Practice Research in Social Work - Definitions, Barriers and Possibilities

Practice is subject to increasing pressure to demonstrate its ability to achieve outcomes required by public policy makers. As part of this process social work practice has to engage with issues around advancing knowledge-based learning processes in a close collaboration with education and research based perspectives. This has given rise to approaches seeking to combine research methodology, field research and practical experience. Practice research is connected to both “the science of the concrete” – a field of research oriented towards subjects more than objects and “mode 2 knowledge production” – an application-oriented research where frameworks and findings are discussed by a number of partners. Practice research is defined into two approaches: practice research – collaboration between practice and research – and practitioner research – processes controlled and accomplished by practitioners. The basic stakeholders in practice research are social workers, service users, administrators, management, organisations, politicians and researchers. Accordingly, practice research is necessarily collaborative, involving a meeting point for different views, interests and needs, where complexity and dilemmas are inherent. Instead of attempting to balance or reconcile these differences, it is important to respect the differences if collaboration is to be established. The strength of both practice and research in practice research is to address these difficult challenges. The danger for both fields is to avoid and reject them.

The introductory course on the field of social work; a statement of purpose, content and methods of the introductory course and a selective bibliography for teachers of the introductory course.

Mode of access: Internet.

Requirements for state social work positions in the South.

At head of title: Bureau of Government Research, Univ. of Kentucky.

Social workers in 1950; a report on the study of salaries and working conditions in social work, spring 1950.

Mode of access: Internet.

United Nations Asia and the Far East Seminar on Training for Community Development and Social work, Lahore, West Pakistan, 9-20 December 1957.

"21 July 1958."

The New York school of social work, 1898-1941,

Reproduced from type-written copy.

Research projects, 1949 : studies reported by members of the Social Work Research Group /

Mode of access: Internet.

Integrating the camp, the community and social work

Report on the first three years of the Ann Arbor boys' guidance project organized in 1935. cf. p. 4.

Some aspects of social casework in a medical setting; a study in the field of medical social work,

"The Committee on functions ... presents in this volume the third of a series of studies which have been chiefly concerned with the content of medical social practice." -- Foreword.