Phenomenological Understandings of Child & Family Social Work in England: Provisional imperatives and infinite responsibilities

This PhD by publication submission comprises six peer reviewed journal articles and a thematic essay that take a critical perspective on social work’s use of theory derived from sociological and psychological perspectives. This thesis will draw upon phenomenology to make the case that social work should focus, first of all, on the lived experience of the people who use its services and to prioritise the meanings they make of their experiences prior to applying external theoretical 'professional' meanings. Theorists such as Hannah Arendt, Martin Heidegger, Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Emmanuel Levinas offer a theoretical framework that sees the human condition as embodied in the social world and therefore consisting of plural accounts of experience that do not easily lend themselves to oversimplified ontic descriptions of the social or psychological realms that claim to explain the commonalities of 'humanity'. I will argue that adopting this position allows social work to develop a more ethical mode of practice based on Levinasian ideas about ethics preceding knowledge and extending that argument into provisional, rather than categorical, imperatives and assuming an infinite responsibility that extends beyond completion of social work ‘interventions’. Hence social work’s need to develop and build theory ideographically rather than nomothetic application and the need for social workers to be theorists rather than theoreticians

Expertise differences in anticipatory judgements during a temporally and spatially occluded dynamic task

There is contradictory evidence surrounding the role of critical cues in the successful anticipation of penalty kick outcome. In the current study, skilled and less-skilled soccer goalkeepers were required to anticipate spatially (full body; hip region) and temporally (–160 ms, –80 ms before, foot–ball contact) occluded penalty kicks. The skilled group outperformed the less-skilled group in all conditions. Both groups performed better in the full body, compared to hip region condition. Later temporal occlusion conditions were associated with increased performance in the correct response and correct side analysis, but not for correct height. These data suggest that there is enough postural information from the hip region for skilled goalkeepers to make highly accurate predictions of penalty kick direction, however, other regions are needed in order to make predictions of height. These data demonstrate the evolution of cues over time and have implications for anticipation training

From Aristotle to Arendt : a phenomenological exploration of forms of knowledge and practice in the context of child protection social work in the UK

This paper attempts to explore the relationship between different forms of knowledge and the kinds of activity that arise from them within child protection social work practice. The argument that social work is more than either ‘science’ or ‘art’ but distinctly ‘practice’ is put through a historical description of the development of Aristotle’s views of the forms of knowledge and Hannah Arendt’s later conceptualisations as detailed in The Human Condition (1958). The paper supports Arendt’s privileging of Praxis over Theoria within social work and further draws upon Arendt’s distinctions between Labour, Work and Action to delineate between different forms of social work activity. The author highlights dangers in social work relying too heavily on technical knowledge and the use of theory as a tool in seeking to understand and engage with the people it serves and stresses the importance of a phenomenological approach to research and practice as a valid, embodied form of knowledge. The argument further explores the constructions of service users that potentially arise from different forms of social work activity and cautions against over-prescriptive use of ‘outcomes’ based practice that may reduce the people who use services to products or consumables. The author concludes that social work action inevitably involves trying to understand humans in a complex and dynamic way that requires engagement and to seek new meanings for individual humans

In search of social work's post-risk paradigm

This paper describes a paradigmatic shift in child protection practice within the UK, arguing that there is a move away from the risk paradigm but that its replacement is not yet defined. The paper draws upon the critical literature to elucidate this shift and to give examples and arguments for why the risk paradigm is unsustainable and how this has created an essential tension within the profession. While the case against the risk perspective is strongly argued there is not yet a coherent perspective to replace it which is problematic as practitioners are left with a toolkit of technical interventions to guide their practice but what is missing is the capacity to develop an ethic of practice due to a failure of social work in the UK to engage with philosophical questions about its remit. The conclusion is drawn that social work needs to focus more on ethical fluency rather than being stuck on statistical understandings of practice and policy in order to achieve a shift in paradigm from ‘risk’ to ‘ethics’

Correct response (%; SD) for the skilled and less-skilled groups in the full body and hip region spatial occlusion conditions and for the -160, -80 and ball contact temporal occlusion conditions.

<p>Correct response (%; SD) for the skilled and less-skilled groups in the full body and hip region spatial occlusion conditions and for the -160, -80 and ball contact temporal occlusion conditions.</p