The effects of social service contact on teenagers in England

Objective: This study investigated outcomes of social service contact during teenage years. Method: Secondary analysis was conducted of the Longitudinal Survey of Young People in England (N = 15,770), using data on reported contact with social services resulting from teenagers’ behavior. Outcomes considered were educational achievement and aspiration, mental health, and locus of control. Inverse-probability-weighted regression adjustment was used to estimate the effect of social service contact. Results: There was no significant difference between those who received social service contact and those who did not for mental health outcome or aspiration to apply to university. Those with contact had lower odds of achieving good exam results or of being confident in university acceptance if sought. Results for locus of control were mixed. Conclusions: Attention is needed to the role of social services in supporting the education of young people in difficulty. Further research is needed on the outcomes of social services contact

Productive osseous changes about the wrist in rheumatoid arthritis

Radiographs of 225 consecutive patients with adult-form rheumatoid arthritis were examined for evidence of productive osseous changes about the wrist. The prevalence of new bone on the ulnar styloid was 10%. This form of new bone is probably due to overlying chronic tenosynovitis. A collar of new bone around the ulnar head is a result of degenerative change in the distal radioulnar joint. In general, productive osseous changes in rheumatoid arthritis may represent inflammatory periosteal bone formation, osteophytosis, or contact remodeling. We found no evidence of an association between diffuse idiopathic skeletal hyperostosis and extensive productive osseous changes in patients with rheumatoid arthritis.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/46784/1/256_2004_Article_BF00350967.pd

Protocol for the Foot in Juvenile Idiopathic Arthritis trial (FiJIA): a randomised controlled trial of an integrated foot care programme for foot problems in JIA

<b>Background</b>: Foot and ankle problems are a common but relatively neglected manifestation of juvenile idiopathic arthritis. Studies of medical and non-medical interventions have shown that clinical outcome measures can be improved. However existing data has been drawn from small non-randomised clinical studies of single interventions that appear to under-represent the adult population suffering from juvenile idiopathic arthritis. To date, no evidence of combined therapies or integrated care for juvenile idiopathic arthritis patients with foot and ankle problems exists. <b>Methods/design</b>: An exploratory phase II non-pharmacological randomised controlled trial where patients including young children, adolescents and adults with juvenile idiopathic arthritis and associated foot/ankle problems will be randomised to receive integrated podiatric care via a new foot care programme, or to receive standard podiatry care. Sixty patients (30 in each arm) including children, adolescents and adults diagnosed with juvenile idiopathic arthritis who satisfy the inclusion and exclusion criteria will be recruited from 2 outpatient centres of paediatric and adult rheumatology respectively. Participants will be randomised by process of minimisation using the Minim software package. The primary outcome measure is the foot related impairment measured by the Juvenile Arthritis Disability Index questionnaire's impairment domain at 6 and 12 months, with secondary outcomes including disease activity score, foot deformity score, active/limited foot joint counts, spatio-temporal and plantar-pressure gait parameters, health related quality of life and semi-quantitative ultrasonography score for inflammatory foot lesions. The new foot care programme will comprise rapid assessment and investigation, targeted treatment, with detailed outcome assessment and follow-up at minimum intervals of 3 months. Data will be collected at baseline, 6 months and 12 months from baseline. Intention to treat data analysis will be conducted. A full health economic evaluation will be conducted alongside the trial and will evaluate the cost effectiveness of the intervention. This will consider the cost per improvement in Juvenile Arthritis Disability Index, and cost per quality adjusted life year gained. In addition, a discrete choice experiment will elicit willingness to pay values and a cost benefit analysis will also be undertaken

The use of biomedicine, complementary and alternative medicine, and ethnomedicine for the treatment of epilepsy among people of South Asian origin in the UK

Studies have shown that a significant proportion of people with epilepsy use complementary and alternative medicine (CAM). CAM use is known to vary between different ethnic groups and cultural contexts; however, little attention has been devoted to inter-ethnic differences within the UK population. We studied the use of biomedicine, complementary and alternative medicine, and ethnomedicine in a sample of people with epilepsy of South Asian origin living in the north of England. Interviews were conducted with 30 people of South Asian origin and 16 carers drawn from a sampling frame of patients over 18 years old with epilepsy, compiled from epilepsy registers and hospital databases. All interviews were tape-recorded, translated if required and transcribed. A framework approach was adopted to analyse the data. All those interviewed were taking conventional anti-epileptic drugs. Most had also sought help from traditional South Asian practitioners, but only two people had tried conventional CAM. Decisions to consult a traditional healer were taken by families rather than by individuals with epilepsy. Those who made the decision to consult a traditional healer were usually older family members and their motivations and perceptions of safety and efficacy often differed from those of the recipients of the treatment. No-one had discussed the use of traditional therapies with their doctor. The patterns observed in the UK mirrored those reported among people with epilepsy in India and Pakistan. The health care-seeking behaviour of study participants, although mainly confined within the ethnomedicine sector, shared much in common with that of people who use global CAM. The appeal of traditional therapies lay in their religious and moral legitimacy within the South Asian community, especially to the older generation who were disproportionately influential in the determination of treatment choices. As a second generation made up of people of Pakistani origin born in the UK reach the age when they are the influential decision makers in their families, resort to traditional therapies may decline. People had long experience of navigating plural systems of health care and avoided potential conflict by maintaining strict separation between different sectors. Health care practitioners need to approach these issues with sensitivity and to regard traditional healers as potential allies, rather than competitors or quacks

Reconciling care and justice in contesting social harm through performance and arts practice with looked after children and care leavers

The proportion of young people taken into the care of the state has increased recently and there is evidence that this social group suffer negative long-term outcomes that might be conceptualised by the emergent criminological category of ‘social harm’. This discussion is then related to debates on social work which have juxtaposed an ethics of care and justice. This paper reports findings from an innovative arts-based intervention with Looked After Children and Young People and concludes that holding these competing value sets in creative tension is central to the success of the programme in helping young people to cope with and contest social harm.DANCOP. The Mighty Creatives

Georgette Heyer: what Austen left out

It has often been observed that there are certain things Jane Austen excludes from her books, most notably conversations between men at which no women are present, and the Napoleonic wars. Georgette Heyer comprehensively and systematically includes what Austen omits. Regency Buck, the first of Heyer’s regency romances, pointedly highlights a number of things that Austen keeps silent on: the Prince Regent and the Pavilion, duels, snuff, men’s clothes and pastimes, men’s conversation, Beau Brummell, curricle racing, cockfighting, boxing, and the manners of men to non-ladies. The heroine’s brother, Peregrine, takes sparring lessons at Jackson’s Saloon, shoots at Manton’s Galleries, fences at Angelo’s, and drinks Blue Ruin in Cribb’s Parlour, and we even overhear an all-male conversation. Above all, Heyer focuses on the Napoleonic Wars, which for her men are the preservative from foppishness and folly; essentially, they have a choice between fighting for Wellington or growing to be like Prinny or Byron. This chapter will examine her representation of the wars, with particular attention to the ways in which the language and imagery of warfare spills over into domestic situations

‘The lion's den’: Social workers' understandings of risk to infants

Recent research has highlighted the increasing trends in newborn and very young children entering child welfare processes and care proceedings in a number of countries. Furthermore, differential responses to risk within young families across different geographical locations and communities in the same child protection system have been found. Safe care arrangements for newborn babies may include placement with kinship carers, or with foster carers not previously known to the family. The distinctive needs of the increasing population of infants in the care system are only beginning to be fully recognised. The short and long term impact of contested infant removals on birth mothers has been powerfully highlighted, although the impact on fathers remains under-reported. There has been limited research evidence available on how decisions about the care arrangements for newborn babies are reached. In this paper, the author draws on data from an ethnographic study of pre-birth child protection in order to explore how social workers understand and frame risk to infants when assessing families during pregnancy. Data from interviews with practitioners reveal the extent to which their conceptualisations of and anxiety about risks to unborn babies, shape plans for the future care of infants

‘Everyday bordering’ in England, Sweden and Bulgaria: Social work decision-making processes when working with migrant family members

The global movement of people is a growing feature of contemporary life, and it is essential that professionals providing support services know how to best engage with migrant families. However, despite globalisation and the related processes of de-bordering, borders continue to remain significant and, in contemporary life, the ways in which immigration is controlled and surveilled—bureaucratically and symbolically—are multiple. The paper draws on data gathered in the immediate period following the so called 2015 European ‘migration crisis’ and examines whether and in what ways social workers in three European countries—Bulgaria, Sweden and England—enact bordering in their work with migrant family members. We apply the concept of ‘everyday bordering’ to the data set: whilst borders are traditionally physical and at the boundary between nation states, bordering practices increasingly permeate everyday life in bureaucratic and symbolic forms. Overall, the data show that everyday bordering affects social work practice in three ways: by social workers being required to engage in bordering as an everyday practice; by producing conditions that require social workers to negotiate borders; and in revealing aspects of symbolic everyday bordering. Our analyses shows that ‘everyday bordering’ practices are present in social work decision-making processes in each country, but the forms they take vary across contexts. Analysis also indicates that, in each country, social workers recognise the ways in which immigration control can impact on the families with whom they work but that they can also inadvertently contribute to the ‘othering’ of migrant populations

Social work and advanced marginality

This chapter explores the impact of broader social and economic policies on social work practice. It argues that the increasing inequality and polarisation of modern urban societies that is outlined in the other chapters of this book has had a direct impact on the role of social workers. The chapter begins with a brief outline of the reaction of British Governments to the banking and Eurozone crises of 2008. It then goes on to argue that the introduction of “austerity” the Conservative-Liberal Democrat Coalition Government in 2010 involved not only significant reductions in welfare spending but was a political project aimed at recasting and reducing the welfare state. The chapter then examines social work practice in the context of advanced marginality. It argues that the changes and processes examined in the other contributions have resulted in an environment where social work has an increasingly disciplinary role. The impact of neoliberal welfare retrenchment compounded by austerity is that social work practice is increasingly experienced by service users as negative or punitive interventions in their lives. This is, despite the profession clear ethical stance being one that is committed to empowermen

'Biomedical nemesis? Critical deliberations with regard health and social care integration for social work with older people’

This document is the Accepted Manuscript version of a published work that appeared in final form in International Social Work. To access the final edited and published work see http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0020872816651698.This paper questions ongoing moves towards integration into health care for social work with older people in the UK. Whilst potentially constructing clearer pathways to support integration risks reducing welfare provisions for a traditional low priority user group, while further extending privatisation. Integration models also understate the ideological impact of biomedical perspectives within health and social care domains, conflate roles and undermine the potential positive role of ‘holistic’ multi-agency care. Constructive social work for older people is likely to further dilute within aggressive integrated models of welfare: which will be detrimental for meeting many of the complex needs of ageing populations