ABSTRACT We present an original phenomenological study conducted with a local authority Early Help and Prevention social care team, in which we investigated the lived experience of parents and practitioners of young people who misuse drugs amid a practice agenda focused on harm reduction. Our findings reflect practitioners’ lived experience of direct work with young people and parents, and parents’ approach to their risk-taking children. Our data identifies key concerns reflecting wider social discourse surrounding young people, in particular; the juxtaposition of adolescents as both vulnerable children, and agentic risk-takers, in the context of children’s rights, and the role of adults in young lives. Our findings indicate a complex position amid multifactorial needs, risk, and offending behaviour, and reveals tensions between professionally driven harm reduction approaches, versus parents’ attempts to control and protect their children, and highlight the complex transition made may protective adults as agentic adolescents forge their life chances.

ABSTRACT This paper offers a case study of a large UK local authority adult care department as it introduces a new practice model. The change programme is examined through a lens of complexity theory. Complexity offers a way of understanding constantly changing systems and uses concepts such as ‘feedback loops’ and recognition of ‘emergent’ behaviours to offer a means to anticipate patterns of change in otherwise unpredictable systems. In this study, complexity is found to offer a helpful understanding of behaviour across the complex adaptive system of a large organisation but it falls short at recognising the cause of behaviours that can be obstructive. The author suggests the use of psychoanalytic theory to acknowledge the emotion that might be the driver for resistance to change and notices how effectively the two theories applied together can bring rich understanding as well as strategic oversight to a complex social care system. This study provides a useful, theoretically informed insight into change management and leadership within a social work agency that is moving away from transactional practice and promoting creative, autonomous, relationship-based practice. The study advances understanding of how complexity and psychoanalytic theory can be used in tangent to support organisational change within social care.

ABSTRACT Digital storytelling (DST), broadly defined, is a storytelling method that is interwoven with digitised images, texts, sounds, and other interactive elements, and it has been increasingly used for social work and healthcare interventions. While the term DST has become more popular, its role in actual social work interventions is not clear. The ambiguity of DST presents a hurdle to further theorisation for social work practice and research. This article aims to provide a narrative review and derive a conceptualisation that is in line with social work’s psychotherapeutic and systems orientation. The review has derived a two-layer conceptualisation. In a broad sense, DST can be seen as an umbrella term covering different sorts of storytelling activities that use digital communication media. Practitioners and researchers can adopt a set of parameters for describing and comparing different practice designs. More specifically, DST can be seen as a kind of narrative practice utilising digital communication media. This definition offers a conceptual base for DST, which helps further theorisation and research in social work practice.

ABSTRACTReflection of feelings is a hallmark strategy of non-directive child-centred play therapy that enhances children’s emotional awareness and equips them with emotionally expressive words. The case presented here describes the application of child-centred play therapy by a social worker with two young children (aged four and six) with sibling rivalry issues. One of the sessions was videotaped, which enabled the use of conversation analysis to dissect the language patterns used by both the clients and the social worker. This in-depth verbal analysis illuminated subtle nuances in the children’s interactions and behaviour while also providing the social worker with the opportunity to reflect on practice. This case discussion presents a snapshot of that session and allows readers to understand how such therapy occurs.

ABSTRACTThis paper aims at finding an answer to the question of how social workers perceive their own self in the practice of field social work with families. In the theoretical introduction of the paper, different theories related to the self of a social worker, which are perceived as intersecting, are presented. The text works with data from research focusing on critical reflexivity of social workers working with vulnerable children and their families. It is based on interviews and subsequent focus groups with twelve communication partners, field social workers working with families. The data was processed using the grounded theory of K. Charmaz. Within the communication partners’ narrations, two opposing narratives of ‘the self of a good social worker’ were formed, the ‘self’ of a technicist professional versus the ‘self’ of a reflexive worker. The created data is discussed from a psychoanalytic and psychosocial perspective with an emphasis on implications for the practice of social work.

ABSTRACT Our current age of connectedness has facilitated a boom in interactive dynamics within social networking sites. It is, therefore, possible for the field of Social Work to draw on these advantages in order to connect with the unconnected by strengthening online mutual support networks among users. The aim of this article is to examine whether ‘connectedness’ in social networking sites improves online social capital and resilience of social service users. Through our analysis of social networks carried out on an experimental model, we observed the patterns of connectedness on Facebook of 50 social service end-users from Málaga, Spain. The detection of online communities through the modularity algorithm has allowed us to ascertain whether individuals’ offline realities mirror their online realities. At the same time, we examined the influence certain interactions (likes, comments, etc.) have on leadership through online ethnography. Finally, online social capital, understood as the combination of connectedness and online interaction, has been correlated with users’ resilience. The results reveal that both connectedness and interaction feed themselves and have correlations with resilience.

ABSTRACTThe research conducted applied an Appreciative Inquiry methodology to explore experiences of social work practice educators just before and following the implementation of the Professional Capabilities Framework to discover more about the impact of the assessment framework on their role in supporting and assessing social work students during their placements. A three-staged approach was applied to discover how practice educators were supported and enabled during a time of transitional change.Findings suggest that the practice educator role has multiple dimensions, although their central positioning within the professional development of social work student’s practice learning is not fully recognised through adequate channels of support and encouragement. A significant finding pertained to the importance of the relationship established between the practice educator and the student as being integral to the assessment process.Solutions considered include developing a more streamlined approach to training and support and development, stronger local partnerships and increased recognition within the social work community.

ABSTRACTThis article examines racial microaggressions within social work practice from the perceptions of providers. Semi-structured qualitative interviews were conducted with 30 social workers about racial microaggressions and strategies for combating them in social work practice. Themes emerged include: (1) identifying racial microaggressions in social work settings; (2) proposing strategies for addressing racial microaggressions; and (3) identifying and responding to racial microaggressions in the institutional environment. The implications drawn from the study’s findings, highlight areas for consideration within social work practice that may help to guide subsequent efforts towards recognising, minimising, and responding to racial microaggressions within social work.

ABSTRACTThis article presents findings from a qualitative research study of the Mulberry Bush School (MBS), a therapeutic residential primary school caring for children with severe social, emotional and behavioural difficulties. The article notes the challenges of working with children who have experienced traumatic relationship breakdown, and reviews ideas and practices developed at MBS to support the children’s development. There is a discussion of the research study’s methodology and main findings. The researchers argue that the therapeutic milieu at MBS maintains a creative tension between a secure, playful context and one where emotional disorder and disturbance are not suppressed. The study describes how a particular psychodynamic model of reflective practice has been successfully instituted at MBS to create a ‘staff therapeutic milieu’ supporting the group living and group learning through which therapy principally occurs. The article closes with comments on the applicability of this model to residential child care practice generally.