Professional helping as negotiation in motion: social work as work on the move

The delivery of welfare and professional helping, such as in medicine, nursing and social work is largely treated as though it is achieved through static and immobile practices. Research has been dominated by a focus on the sedentary as studies have stayed rooted in places like hospitals and offices, failing to follow practitioners when they go out to see their service users in their communities and homes. This paper explores the mobile character of professional helping through a focus on social work by examining what its practices look like through the lens of movement based social science. The paper draws on empirical data from my mobile and sensory ethnography of child protection work, where I went along with social workers and interviewed them in the car and observed them on home visits to families. It is argued that attention to movement gets to the heart of what these practices are, as shown in the multiple meanings of car journeys, and how keeping children safe relies on worker’s capacities to move their bodies when in the home by walking, playing with and staying close to the child. Professional help goes on through what Jenson calls “negotiation in motion”. Fundamentally, social work is work on the move

Who uses NHS health checks? Investigating the impact of ethnicity and gender and method of invitation on uptake of NHS health checks

Background NHS Health Checks is a national risk assessment prevention programme for all individuals aged 40-74 that reside in England. Through the systematic assessment of an individual’s ten year disease risk, this programme aims to provide early identification and subsequent management of this risk. However, there is limited evidence on how socio-demographic factors impact on uptake and what influence the invitation method has on uptake to this programme. Methods NHS Health Check data from April 2013 to March 2014 was analysed (N = 50,485) for all 30 GP Practices in Luton, a culturally diverse town in England, UK. Data was collected for age, ethnicity, uptake (attendance and non attendance) and invitation method (letter written, verbal face-to-face, telephone). Actual usage of NHS Health Checks was determined for each ethnic group of the population and compared using Chi-square analysis. Results The overall uptake rate for Luton was 44 %, markedly lower that the set target of 50–75 %. The findings revealed a variation of uptake in relation to age, gender, level of deprivation. Ethnicity and gender variations were also found, with ‘White British’ ‘Black Caribbean’ and ‘Indian’ patients most likely to take up a NHS Health Check. However, patients from ‘Any Other White Background’ and ‘Black African’ were significantly less likely to uptake an NHS Health Check compared to all other ethnic groups. Ethnicity and gender differences were also noted in relation to invitation method. Conclusions The findings revealed that different invitation methods were effective for different ethnic and gender groups. Therefore, it is suggested that established protocols of invitation are specifically designed for maximizing the response rate for each population group. Future research should now focus on uncovering the barriers to uptake in particular culturally diverse population groups to determine how public health teams can better engage with these communities

Austerity urbanism and Olympic counter-legacies: gendering, defending and expanding the urban commons in East London

This article reflects on an occupation led by single mothers to contest the destruction of social housing in post-Olympics East London. In the process, it argues for a more gendered theorisation of the urban commons. Drawing on auto-ethnography, participant observation and qualitative interviews, the article argues three central points: First, that the occupation demonstrates the gendered nature of the urban commons and the leadership of women in defending them from enclosure; second that the defence of an existing urban commons enabled the creation of a new temporary commons characterised by the collectivisation of gendered socially reproductive activities; and third that this commoning has had a lasting impact on housing activism at the city scale and beyond. This impact is conceptualised as an ‘Olympic counter-legacy’ that is characterised by the forging of new relationships and affinities, the strengthening of networked activism and circulation of tactics between campaign groups

Ethnic minorities’ reactions to newcomers in East London: symbolic boundaries and convivial labour

In much public discourse on immigrants in Western Europe, perceptions towards newcomers are discussed in relation to what white national majorities think. However, today, new migrants often move into places which are already settled by previous migrants. Surprisingly little is known about the local experiences, perceptions and attitudes towards newcomers among long-established ethnic minorities in areas which they have made their home, and where they predominate not just in numbers but also by way of shops, religious sites, school population, etc. Based on ongoing ethnographic fieldwork in East London (UK), this paper looks at long-established ethnic minority residents’ attitudes towards newcomers from Eastern Europe, and how these are shaped by their own histories of exclusion. By bringing together theories on symbolic boundary making with the concept of ‘convivial labour’ (Nobel 2009; Wise 2016), it shows how experiences of stigmatization impact on perceptions of white newcomers, and how these perceptions are characterized by a combination of empathy and resentment

Neptune to the Common-wealth of England (1652): the republican Britannia and the continuity of interests

In the seventeenth century, John Kerrigan reminds us, “models of empire did not always turn on monarchy”. In this essay, I trace a vision of “Neptune’s empire” shared by royalists and republicans, binding English national interest to British overseas expansion. I take as my text a poem entitled “Neptune to the Common-wealth of England”, prefixed to Marchamont Nedham’s 1652 English translation of Mare Clausum (1635), John Selden’s response to Mare Liberum (1609) by Hugo Grotius. This minor work is read alongside some equally obscure and more familiar texts in order to point up the ways in which it speaks to persistent cultural and political interests. I trace the afterlife of this verse, its critical reception and its unique status as a fragment that exemplifies the crossover between colonial republic and imperial monarchy at a crucial moment in British history, a moment that, with Brexit, remains resonant

Time, the Written Record, and Professional Practice: The Case of Contemporary Social Work

Drawing on a three year ethnographically-oriented study exploring contemporary professional social work writing, this paper focuses on a key concern: the amount of time taken up with writing, or ‘paperwork’. We explore the relationship between time and professional social work writing in three key ways. Firstly, as a discrete, measurable phenomenon - how much time is spent on writing? Secondly, as a textual dimension to social work writing – how do institutional documents drive particular entextualisations of time and how do social worker texts entextualise time? Thirdly, as a particular timespace configuration of lived experience - how is time experienced by professional social workers? Findings indicate that a dominant institutional chronotope is governing social work textual practice underpinned by an ideology of writing which is at odds with social workers’ desired practice and professional goals. Methodologically, the paper illustrates the value of combining a range of data and analytic tools, using textual and contextual data, as well as qualitative and quantitative frames of analysis

Serious case reviews: The lived experience of Black children

Despite the many high‐profile Black child deaths in England, race as a factor remains a largely underexplored factor of serious case reviews (SCRs). Evidence from analysis of SCRs indicates that race receives limited attention, or is virtually absent. Given that the main function of SCRs is to provide opportunities for learning lessons to improve practice, the way in which issues of race and culture may influence child protection processes for Black children is therefore of critical importance. In this article, we employ content analysis to examine the extent that race and cultural factors are considered in SCRs involving Black children. It is argued that race is often an important factor influencing Black children's experiences of abuse and neglect, as well as their encounters in the child protection system. This article therefore poses two key questions: (a) What questions are asked about race, ethnicity, and culture in SCRs concerning Black children? (b) How did the SCRs extract lessons to be learnt for improving practice to safeguard Black children? By extending the analysis of race and ethnicity in SCRs, this article furthers our understandings of the needs of Black children in the child protection system

The 'living of time': entangled temporalities of home and the city

This paper explores the entanglements between urban and domestic temporalities in order to understand what it means to live in the city. Inspired by the film Estate: a reverie (Zimmerman, 2015a), and drawing on a series of home-city biographies, this paper explores the ‘living of time’ through the memories, experiences, and narratives of residents living on different housing estates near Kingsland Road in Hackney, East London. We address two key questions: how are residents' experiences of urban living shaped by multi-layered and entangled temporalities of home and the city? What can an understanding of the urban and domestic 'living of time’ reveal about temporality, home and the city? We explore the ways in which entangled and multi-scalar ‘roots’ and ‘routes’ (Clifford, 1997) chart migration, housing and family histories for urban residents which, in turn, shape and help to articulate narratives of domestic and urban change in terms of stability and instability. We then turn to the overlapping and/or contested temporalities of urban and domestic lives, whereby residents’ home lives – and their wider ideas about the estate, street, neighbourhood or city as home – are affected by processes of urban change in complex and often contradictory ways. Finally, we investigate the ways in which home-city temporalities have shaped, and are shaped by, people’s hopes and fears for their future homes. Urban dwelling is shaped by multiple and multi-layered temporalities, intertwining the past, present and future, generations and life courses, and housing, family and migration histories. The urban and domestic ‘living of time’ reveals how residents adapt to, negotiate and at times resist processes of change and continuity at home and in the city