Social workers in community care practice: Ideologies and interactions with older people

This article is available open access through the publisher’s website through the link below. Copyright @ 2008 The Authors.Since the inception of the NHS and Community Care in 1990, there has been a proliferation of studies examining its implementation at the front line. Considerable attention has been aimed at understanding how it is that social work practitioners, charged with the responsibility to implement community care recommendations for older people, are doing so in a challenging care environment. How a practitioner's ideological frame of reference may impact on his/her practice interactions remains relatively unanswered. However, the course by which professional ideology matures and then directs practice would appear to both complex and multifaceted. The outcome is one that may render the professional both powerful and political, and one that may leave the older care recipient both vulnerable and stigmatized. This paper explores community care practice with older people, emphasizing the ideological underpinnings in practice and their influence on practice interactions. Social work practitioners working on older people's teams in two contrasting communities in England were interviewed to discuss their assessment and care management interactions with older people. Using grounded theory and Goffman's theoretical constructs within frame analysis, a conceptual model for practice emerged, reinforcing that practitioners' understandings of social events, anchored in government and professional discourse and individual perceptions about older people, enabled them to organize and influence the interaction to lead to a professionally determined outcome. The routine work of assessment and care management became very powerful in absence of strategic intention by the practitioner. A move to more strategic behaviour occurred when practice dilemmas required practitioners to intervene, informed by their professionally based values juxtaposed against those supported within official discourse. The findings provide an insight into how social work practitioners manage to deliver community care in a complex environment. The outcomes also reinforce the need for practitioners to develop an understanding of how they construct their social realities, as this may impact on the experience of community care for older people

On the edge of a new frontier: Is gerontological social work in the UK ready to meet twenty-first-century challenges?

This article is available open access through the publisher’s website. Copyright @ 2013 The Authors.This article explores the readiness of gerontological social work in the UK for meeting the challenges of an ageing society by investigating the focus on work with older people in social work education and the scope of gerontological social work research. The discussion draws on findings from two exploratory studies: a survey of qualifying master's programmes in England and a survey of the content relating to older people over a six-year period in four leading UK social work journals. The evidence from master's programmes suggests widespread neglect of ageing in teaching content and practice learning. Social work journals present a more nuanced picture. Older people emerge within coverage of generic policy issues for adults, such as personalisation and safeguarding, and there is good evidence of the complexity of need in late life. However, there is little attention to effective social work interventions, with an increasingly diverse older population, or to the quality of gerontological social work education. The case is made for infusing content on older people throughout the social work curriculum, for extending practice learning opportunities in social work with older people and for increasing the volume and reporting of gerontological social work research.Brunel Institute for Ageing Studie

Streptococcosis a re-emerging disease in aquaculture: Significance and phytotherapy

Streptococcosis, particularly that caused by S. iniae and S. agalactiae, is a major re-emerging bacterial disease seriously affecting the global sustainability of aquaculture development. Despite a wide spread of the disease in aquaculture, few studies have been directed at assessing the in vitro antagonistic activity and in vivo efficacy of medicinal herbs and other plants against streptococcal agents. Most in vitro studies of plant extractives against S. iniae and S. agalactiae have found antibacterial activity, but essential oils, especially those containing eugenol, carvacrol or thymol, are more effective. Although essential oils have shown better anti-streptococcal activity in in vitro assays, in vivo bioassays require more attention. The extracts examined under in vivo conditions show moderate efficacy, increasing the survival rate of infected fish, probably through the enhancement of immunity before challenge bioassays. The available data, however, lack dosage optimization, toxicity and bioavailability assays of a specific plant or its bioactive compound in fish organs; hence, it is difficult to judge the validation of clinical efficacy for the prevention or treatment of fish streptococcosis. Despite the known bioactive compounds of many tested plants, few data are available on their mode of action towards streptococcal agents. This review addresses the efficacy of medicinal plants to fish streptococcosis and discusses the current gaps

Rethinking refuges: Implications of climate change for dam busting

Climate change is projected to alter river discharge in every populated basin in the world. In some parts of the world, dam removal now outpaces their construction and the diminishing cost efficiency of dams in drying regions is likely to further increase the rate of removals. However, the potential influence of climate change on the impact of dam removals has received almost no consideration. Most dams have major biological and ecological impacts and their removal would greatly benefit riverine ecosystems. However, using model regions in the Southern Hemisphere, we highlight that artificial lentic habitats created by dams can act as refuges for increasingly imperiled freshwater fishes, and dams may also prevent the upstream spread of invasive alien species in rivers. We argue that, in these and other regions where the major impact of climate change will be to reduce streamflow and aquatic refuge availability, a shifting balance between the negative and positive environmental impacts of dams requires policy makers to include climate change predictions in prioritisation processes for dam remova

Technical assistance, neo-colonialism or mutual trade? The experience of an Anglo/Ukrainian/Russian social work practice learning project

Since the collapse of the Soviet Union there has been a steady stream of Western consultants ready to work in Eastern Europe and Russia and share professional and academic expertise and experience. Social work, unknown as a discrete discipline or profession in the Soviet Union, has been a growth area with funding from a variety of sources to help promote East-West partnerships.Social work theory and practice emphasises critical appraisal of policy and embraces issues of power, discrimination and oppression. Social work educators should therefore be especially alert to the complex ethical questions which these kinds of collaborations raise, and adept at finding practical solutions or workable compromises. This article explores these ethical and political issues with reference to a project to develop social work practice learning in a Russian oblast' (region). The project was an ambitious partnership of British, Ukrainian and Russian educators, involving numerous Russian social work and related agencies, and four Russian universities and colleges in one oblast'. The authors use a series of vignettes to help the reader achieve insights into these East-West transactions. The article concludes with a discussion of different interpretations of these dealings, using three prisms: technical assistance, neo-colonialism and mutual trade

Scoping the biosecurity risks and appropriate management relating to the freshwater ornamental aquarium trade across northern Australia

The current scoping study provides for a preliminary understanding of the numerous existing and potential pathways for incursions from the aquarium trade into freshwater ecosystems in tropical Australia, encompassing the lands and waterways north of the Tropic of Capricorn. A finding of this desktop project is the lack of consolidated nformation relevant to tropical Australia in terms of biotic incursion of even the better documented taxa (e.g. freshwater fishes) and a lack of information on most taxa in the aquarium trade (e.g. shrimps, molluscs, diseases in the wild). This is the consequence of the extent and scale of the aquatic biosecurity task as well as ad hoc biological sampling, under-resourcing of ecological surveys, monitoring and reporting in the grey or published literature, all of which is compounded by the remoteness of much of tropical northern Australia

W(h)ither the academy? An exploration of the role of university social work in shaping the future of social work in Europe

A controversial proposal to pilot the training of child protection social workers through an intensive work-based route in England is being supported and funded by the UK Government. Frontline, the brainchild of a former teacher, locates social work training within local authorities (‘the agency’) rather than university social work departments (‘the academy’) and has stimulated debate amongst social work academics about their role in shaping the direction of the profession. As a contribution to this debate, this paper explores the duality of social work education, which derives its knowledge from both the academic social sciences and the experience of practice within social work agencies. While social work education has traditionally been delivered by the academy, this paper also explores whether the delivery of training in the allied professions of probation and nursing by ‘the agency’ is equally effective. Finally, this paper explores the Helsinki model which achieves a synergy of ‘academy’ and ‘agency’. It suggests that there are alternative models of social work education, practice and research which avoid dichotomies between the ‘academy’ and the ‘agency’ and enable the profession to be shaped by both social work academics and practitioners

Leadership in context: Insights from a study of nursing in Western Australia

This paper investigates the importance of integrating context when analysing the role and practice of leadership within a specific organization or profession. It does this with reference to a study of nursing in Western Australia. Using theoretical sampling, qualitative data were collected through interviews and focus groups with targeted stakeholders in Western Australia’s public health system. The main purpose of the data collection and analysis was to identify perceptions and understandings of leadership among key stakeholders. Findings emerged which identified the importance of considering specific dimensions of the cultural, social and institutional context in order to understand the practice and experience of leadership among nurses in the Western Australian public health sector

Mind the gap!: Students' Understanding and Application of Social Work Values

This paper discusses a research project that explored the development of student social workers' values during the first year of professional education at one Scottish university. Questionnaires, based on a vignette, and focus groups established baseline information at the outset of the study. These methods were reapplied a year later to identify the extent to which students' values framework had developed, and the factors that had supported this. The study revealed that, by the end of that year, students could both identify and apply values to support them in their work with individuals to a greater extent than they could those to help them challenge structural discrimination. The study also highlighted the need for university-based teaching, and practice learning experiences, to provide more opportunities for reflection and discussion to support the development of values in student social workers