Whiting & Birch (E-Journals)
Not a member yet
1165 research outputs found
Sort by
Changing perceptions
Get PDFIn collaboration with Additional Support for People in Retraining and Employment (ASPIRE), Work Opportunities Unlimited, Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS), The Children’s Cabinet and DHHS case managers, a twelve week peer support program was established which resulted in participants not only getting to tell their life stories and be heard, but more importantly getting to rediscover the roots of their own resiliency. Resiliency theories often relate to the abilities of children to navigate through the complex issues of trauma and recovery. Seldom do we consider the application of such theories to adult life situations. Utilizing the group process that explored both the pain and resiliency of individuals who have had tremendous barriers to employment and feeling successful in the world, through peer support and problem solving with the Children’s Cabinet, many obstacles were resolved. In review of each adult’s life story one could observe both the barriers and opportunities that were embedded in the relational fabric of their life events
Integration of the learning process and the group development process in group supervision
Get PDFThis article focuses on group supervision, inviting readers to take an interest in two ongoing processes: the group process, i.e., the stages of group development, and the integration of the learning process. These processes occur as the group is reflecting on issues brought to it. Supervisees do not realize that they encounter, and are even often affected by, the intertwining of these two processes; however, supervisors should be aware of this in their desire to guide their supervisees skilfully.In addition to presenting an explanation of these processes, this article highlights conditions of success for group supervision: clarification of the institution’s mandate and the status of the supervisor, elements to be considered when setting up group supervision, the importance of negotiating the contract, and the characteristics of the group at work. Although no existing theory integrates the entirety of the practice of group supervision, we have attempted to demonstrate links between these two processes by drawing on both our own experience and a conceptual framework. We believe that our conception of group supervision is worth validating through future research.SommaireLe présent article illustre comment les processus d’intégration des apprentissages et les phases d’un développement d’un groupe s’entrecroisent et s’inter-influencent dans un groupe de supervision. Après avoir traité desdits processus, les auteurs décrivent les principaux phénomènes issus de cet amalgame. L’article se termine en décrivant les conditions de réussite d’une supervision de groupe
Social objectives of palliative day care groups
Get PDFThis paper reports an evaluation by patients, staff and volunteers involved in different types of groupwork in a palliative day care centre; policy comment and research suggests that social as opposed to healthcare objectives in palliative day care are ill-defined. Staff and volunteers completed questionnaires (n=48) and patients were interviewed (n=37) about nine social objectives formulated from the palliative day care and groupwork literature. The results demonstrate agreement between patients, staff and volunteers about objectives, with most objectives assessed being positively identified as being helpful. Formal activity groups organised around creative arts, involving creation of an artistic object were more important to staff and volunteers, while patients gave equal importance to less formal social groups. Staff valued patients supporting each other about their illness and death, while patients were divided, with some preferring not to share. The researchers suggest that the staff and volunteers’ focus on creative activities and outcomes led them to give less priority to specific efforts to engage patients in social skill development to combat social isolation
Getting the job done
Get PDFWork groups offer the potential to influence the structure, policy and procedures in agency practice. Skilfully led work groups engage workers in a process where problems are identified and explored and collaborative solutions are developed and implemented. A case example of a work group mobilized by a child welfare worker to restore parent child visitation rooms will be used to illustrate the planning process, recruitment of work group members, development of a common purpose and goals and facilitation of sessions throughout the stages of the group’s work. Implications for practice focus on group leadership skills that enhanced the work, resulting in the success of the project and agency change. Barriers to the work will be discussed with suggestions for future projects
Exploring workforce retention in child and family social work
Get PDFChild and family social work in the United Kingdom is facing a staff recruitment and retention crisis in many areas. Occupational stress, burnout, heavy workloads and insufficient resources combine to make the social work role highly demanding and unattractive to prospective recruits. This paper explores one approach to the problem which synthesises Giddens’ philosophical ideas on discursive consciousness, Habermas’ precepts on moral discourse, Boal’s use of empowering theatre and Lewin’s rendition of the action research cycle. These theoretical, philosophical and methodological components, when combined, offer a radically different approach to staff retention strategies within child welfare organisations by centring on the transformative power of human agency. It is concluded that the approach described can be extrapolated to the management of other human service professions experiencing similar recruitment and retention difficulties
Prying open the space for social work in the new millennium
Get PDFSocial work in the United Kingdom faces all manner of woes. Critical public inquiries, disgruntled users of the service, the bureaucratisation of practice, problems with recruitment, and the overhaul of training, all continue to reinforce a culture of pessimism. It has been suggested that social work in the United Kingdom stands at the crossroads where a decision must be made either to accept these depressing conditions as they are, or to challenge them by asserting a new future for a reinvigorated profession. The latter option is supported by the authors of this article because we share the view that as social workers we have available to us discursive freedom with which to analyse the profession’s contemporary ailments and to find a way through them based on a discourse of social justice. The idea and practice of discursive freedom can be captured in the heuristic notion of ‘space’ which the authors use here as a shared focus for analysing contemporary social work from four different critical perspectives. In this way a dialogue is promoted between theory and practice and within critical theory. In its method and its results this inquiry is still very much work-in-progress. This provisional quality sits comfortably with the notion of ‘space’ and gives rein to its recursive qualities. These qualities, it is argued, must lie at the heart of transformative social work
