The nature and culture of social work with children and families in long-term casework:Findings from a qualitative longitudinal study

Social work in the United Kingdom is preoccupied with what social workers cannot do due to having limited time to spend with service users. Yet remarkably little research has examined what social workers actually do, especially in long-term relationships. This paper draws from an ethnographic study of two social work departments in England that spent 15 months observing practice and organizational life. Our findings show that social work some of the time has a significant amount of involvement with some service users and the dominant view that relationship-based practice is rarely achieved is in need of some revision. However, families at one research site received a much more substantial, reliable overall service due to the additional input of family support workers and having a stable workforce who had their own desks and were co-located with managers in small team offices. This generated a much more supportive, reflective culture for social workers and service users than at the second site, a large open plan "hot-desking" office. Drawing on relational, systemic, and complexity theories, the paper shows how the nature of what social workers do and culture of practice are shaped by the interaction between available services, office designs, and practitioners', managers', and service users' experiences of relating together

White noise : a critical evaluation of social work education’s engagement with whiteness studies

Literature about whiteness and white identities has proliferated across the social sciences and humanities over recent years. However, there has so far been only a small amount of writing in social work, almost all concerned with social work education, which has attempted to make use of ideas developed in this body of literature. This paper summarises the major themes examined in the field of whiteness studies and discusses two broad critiques of approaches to the topic, concerned with the reification of whiteness and the reflexive focus of much work in this field. It then evaluates social work education’s engagement so far with these concepts and finds that, while social work education literature has started to discuss whiteness, it has not so far considered critical approaches to whiteness studies and has not engaged with recent, more situated and nuanced work about whiteness, such as studies that are concerned with performativity. The paper makes some suggestions about how whiteness studies can be used in social work education to enable more complex understandings of race and power

Building heteronormativity: the social and material reconstruction of men's public toilets as spaces of heterosexuality

This paper concerns changes in the spatial structure of British public toilets for men over the last ten years from secluded, indistinctly public/private spaces towards open, largely public structures. It examines a number of past and present toilet spaces in the British city of Manchester using spatial syntax analysis to consider how spaces have been adapted and policed differently in order to reduce opportunities for sex between men. It considers howthese changes relate to shifts in the legislative context and in planning and policing initiatives away from explicit homophobia towards policies of inclusion of certain sexualminorities. The paper concludes that the way in which inclusion and a post-homophobic context have been expressed through legislative changes and planning and policinginitiatives in relation to public toilets has led to a more explicit heteronormalisation of public spaces. The discussion relates to current debates in cultural geography about the consequences of greater participation of sexual minorities in public and issues of surveillance, control and privacy in public spaces

Knowledge/ignorance and the construction of sexuality in social work education

This paper explores how systems of knowledge about sexuality in social work operate alongside systems of ignorance—ways of not knowing sexuality or not knowing parts of it—which work to exclude particular ideas, behaviours and groups of people. It uses discourse analysis of literature aimed at social work students in order to examine how these systems manifest themselves in social work education. The paper analyses the following aspects of dominant discourses about sexuality and lesbians and gay men in this literature: -demands for greater visibility of lesbians and gay men; -the positioning of internalised homophobia as the defining feature of lesbians’ and gay men’s oppression; and -the ways in which not knowing lesbian or gay experience is constructed as an objective position. The paper ends by suggesting ways in which sexuality might be understood differently in social work education contexts

Children’s Safeguarding Social Work Practitioners: Remote and Hybrid Working Practices and Experiences, 2022

This data collection is a part of the data from the study 'Becoming agile in local authority children's safeguarding social work services'. It features transcripts of of 41 interviews, conducted with 7 social work practitioners, who each took part in between 4 and 8 interviews, over the course of 6-12 months. Interviews explored practitioners' everyday working practices, interactions with other practitioners, supervisors, and parents and children who used services, and practitioners' experiences of their work. The interviews in this collection happened between March 2021 and July 2022, and includes practitioners describing their practice in the context of social distancing because of Covid restrictions, and later periods where social workers were working using a hybrid of co-present and remote interactions with other practitioners and people who used services. These participants were part of a group of 21 practitioners: other practitioners did not give consent for their data to be shared.Since 2010, agile approaches have been implemented increasingly enthusiastically by local authorities and the NHS in the UK. ‘Agile’ means approaches that are designed to enable simpler, more flexible organisational systems and working practices, which respond more directly to the needs of people using services. Changes include moving services online and providing employees with access to digital technologies that enable them to work more remotely and flexibly. In children’s safeguarding social work, agile approaches have led to new working practices such as remote working and increased communication between colleagues via digital information systems. Earlier research suggested that while social workers often welcomed greater flexibility about where and when they could work, agile approaches also produced new challenges in keeping information secure and maintaining working relationships with colleagues. This project aimed to: Document how service leaders, supervisors, social workers and service users described agile working Identify practitioners’, supervisors’ and service users’ practices, relationships and experiences when engaged in agile working Examine how these identified practices impact on social workers’ and service users’ communication and sense-making Develop evidence about good working practices in these contexts. The project took place from April 2020 to August 2022. During the first part of this period, most social work practice was remote, moving towards a hybrid of remote and co-present practices, often supported by digital technologies. Three local authorities in different regions of England took part in the project. 21 practitioners participated in the study, being interviewed regularly over the course of 6-12 months about their practices, relationships and experiences. Examples of participants' everyday working practices — meetings, supervision sessions, and conversations with service users — were also observed, with most of these being online, remote practices. 14 service leaders were interviewed about how and why agile approaches were being designed and implemented. 18 young people and parents who had used children's safeguarding social work services also participated through individual interviews and focus groups.</p

Children’s Safeguarding Social Work Practitioners: Remote and Hybrid Working Practices and Experiences, 2022

This data collection is a part of the data from the study 'Becoming agile in local authority children's safeguarding social work services'. It features transcripts of of 41 interviews, conducted with 7 social work practitioners, who each took part in between 4 and 8 interviews, over the course of 6-12 months. Interviews explored practitioners' everyday working practices, interactions with other practitioners, supervisors, and parents and children who used services, and practitioners' experiences of their work. The interviews in this collection happened between March 2021 and July 2022, and includes practitioners describing their practice in the context of social distancing because of Covid restrictions, and later periods where social workers were working using a hybrid of co-present and remote interactions with other practitioners and people who used services. These participants were part of a group of 21 practitioners: other practitioners did not give consent for their data to be shared.Since 2010, agile approaches have been implemented increasingly enthusiastically by local authorities and the NHS in the UK. ‘Agile’ means approaches that are designed to enable simpler, more flexible organisational systems and working practices, which respond more directly to the needs of people using services. Changes include moving services online and providing employees with access to digital technologies that enable them to work more remotely and flexibly. In children’s safeguarding social work, agile approaches have led to new working practices such as remote working and increased communication between colleagues via digital information systems. Earlier research suggested that while social workers often welcomed greater flexibility about where and when they could work, agile approaches also produced new challenges in keeping information secure and maintaining working relationships with colleagues. This project aimed to: Document how service leaders, supervisors, social workers and service users described agile working Identify practitioners’, supervisors’ and service users’ practices, relationships and experiences when engaged in agile working Examine how these identified practices impact on social workers’ and service users’ communication and sense-making Develop evidence about good working practices in these contexts. The project took place from April 2020 to August 2022. During the first part of this period, most social work practice was remote, moving towards a hybrid of remote and co-present practices, often supported by digital technologies. Three local authorities in different regions of England took part in the project. 21 practitioners participated in the study, being interviewed regularly over the course of 6-12 months about their practices, relationships and experiences. Examples of participants' everyday working practices — meetings, supervision sessions, and conversations with service users — were also observed, with most of these being online, remote practices. 14 service leaders were interviewed about how and why agile approaches were being designed and implemented. 18 young people and parents who had used children's safeguarding social work services also participated through individual interviews and focus groups.</p