Gaining Access to Data Sources in Statutory Social Work Agencies: The Long and Winding Road

This paper details a researcher's experience of gaining access to three statutory social work agencies in order to conduct a study examining how social workers respond to family support cases and how parents and carers experience the intervention of social workers in these cases. The stages in gaining access are outlined, the gate-keepers involved at each stage are identified and some of the difficulties encountered are highlighted and discussed. The paper concludes that researchers need to give greater priority to access considerations and that social work agencies need to give greater priority to co-operation with researchers.

Public religions and civil society: the case of London Methodism

Amendments to secularization theory have brought the issue of public religions to the fore in recent years. In particular, the work of Casanova and Beyer has maintained the importance of functional differentiation whilst pointing to the flow of religious discourses across social boundaries. These issues, however, have received little ethnographic attention, such that many of the problems associated with theories of differentiation and globalization have not been engaged in a sustained manner. Research within black majority London Methodist congregations is drawn upon to suggest ways in which these theories can be reconsidered. Three related issues are focused upon: the continued importance of the nation-state (including national stratifications); the importance of a practical approach to religion, such that discourses are understood as ‘practical discourses’; and the importance of not privileging religion by reifying it in functional terms. These considerations have ramifications not only for secularization theory, but the general field of the sociological study of religion.

Parents' Views on Social Work Interventions in Child Welfare Cases

This article reports the findings of the third part of a three-part research project examining the potential for social workers to shift from a child protection to a child welfare orientation in their practice. Whilst social workers in the United Kingdom have been encouraged to make such changes they have been hampered by concerns to manage risk. Findings from the first two parts of the project had indicated that there was potential for a substantial proportion of child protection work to be redesignated as child welfare work, but that were this was achieved in practice there was evidence of continued influence of child protection processes as social workers sought to manage the risks inherent in child welfare cases. The study reported here sets out to ascertain the views of parents who were subject to child welfare interventions. The findings indicate that while parents feel apprehension with regard to contact with social workers, in the majority of cases successful relationships are formed. It is argued that social workers display considerable skill in monitoring potential risks whilst engaging with families and that the subtleties involved in such activity are not captured by official measures of governance which concentrate on more abstract indicators of performance.

Care proceedings: Exploring the relationship between case duration and achieving permanency for the child

The 1989 Children Act in England and Wales and the derivative 1995 Children (NI) Order in Northern Ireland provide the legislative framework within which issues pertaining to the care and supervision of children that come before the Courts are examined. Both pieces of legislation were intended to address a number of problems with the way that such issues were dealt with by the Court, particularly the tendency for proceedings to become protracted and for children to ‘drift’ in care as a consequence. The imposition of the ‘No Delay’ principle in both jurisdictions was designed specifically to address these concerns. However, since the introduction of both the 1989 Children Act (implemented in October 1991) and the 1995 Children (NI) Order (implemented in November 1996), there has been a steady increase in the average duration of proceedings and concerns remain about the impact that this may be having upon the children involved. This paper presents the findings of a research study (McSherry et al., 2004) that explored the complex relationship between the duration of care proceedings and costs to children in terms of the likelihood of achieving permanency.

Social Work in the Republic of Ireland: A History of the Present

This article reports on research carried out into the nature and position of social work in the child protection and welfare system in Ireland. Employing a methodology of a history of the present, this research sought to crtically examine the nature and position of social work within the social as a 'psy expert'. Selected findings relating to the genealogical and archaeological construction of social work discourse in Ireland are provided to illuminate how its particular historical pathways both enabled and constrained its development. It was found that, to some extent, conceptualizations of social work in the context of its space within the social were applicable to the Irish context. however, it was also found that a number of other factors were also significant, implying the need for problematization of existing theories of the social. Although some of the findings relate directly to the particular spatial context of Ireland, others are transferable to the UK and international contexts. The research asserts that, while social work represents a diffuse and complex activity, enabled and constrained by its genealogical context, the potential exists in the profesion for greater attention to be apid to its archaeoloigcal construction. In light of contemporary neo-liberal conditions of governance, the need for such attention is emphasized.