Habitus, Symbolic Violence, and Reflexivity: Applying Bourdieu’s Theories to Social Work

During the mid- to late-twentieth century, Pierre Bourdieu crated a conceptual framework that describes how underclass status becomes embodied in individuals, and the ways that personal, professional, and political fields perpetuate this oppression. Bourdieu’s theories also outline the role of the “critical intellectual” in undermining oppression and fighting for social justice. Using key terms from Bourdieu’s explanatory framework, this article examines the power relations and symbolic violence built into the interactions between social workers and clients, and offers suggestions as to how reflexive and relational social work can help workers reduce this impact. This paper also explores the role of social workers in addressing social inequalities by examining Bourdieu’s writings in terms of macro approaches to disparity

Drug Use, the Drug Environment, and Child Physical Abuse and Neglect

Although drug use is considered a risk factor for child maltreatment, very little work has examined how the drug environment may affect physical abuse and neglect by parents. Utilizing information from a telephone survey with 2,597 respondents from 43 cities with valid police data on narcotics incidents, we analyzed the relationship between drug use, drug availability, and child maltreatment using multilevel models. City-level rates of drug abuse and dependence were related to more frequent physical abuse. Parents who use drugs in areas with greater availability of drugs reported more physical abuse and physical neglect. Emotional support was protective of all types of maltreatment. While most child welfare interventions focus on reducing parental drug use in order to reduce child abuse, these findings suggest environmental prevention or neighborhood strengthening approaches designed to reduce the supply of illicit drugs may also reduce child abuse through multiple mechanisms

Impact of residential versus outpatient substance abuse treatment on child welfare outcomes: A secondary analysis of NSCAW II data

Between 40–80% of substantiated child maltreatment cases in the United States contain somedegree of parental substance abuse. After child welfare becomes involved, outcomes forchildren of parents with substance abuse issues are substantially worse than for children of nonsubstance-abusing parents. While some studies have demonstrated that substance abusetreatment can improve child welfare outcomes, results are largely inconclusive as to whetherresidential substance abuse treatment is more effective than outpatient options. Using data fromthe National Survey of Child and Adolescent Well-Being II, this study evaluates the effects ofresidential versus outpatient substance abuse treatment on family progress for families involvedin the child welfare system.Using propensity score weighting to control for substance abuse severity and other variables thatmay select parents into treatment, results indicate that child welfare workers were more likely(RRR = 4.40, p = 0.026) to indicate that families had deteriorated or made no progress in caseswhere parents attended residential treatment. Placement of children in out-of-home care alsoincreased the likelihood that workers would indicate that a family had deteriorated or made noprogress.At the same time, results from this study indicate that child welfare workers were also morelikely (RRR = 3.77, p = 0.022) to believe that a family had made substantial progress when aparent attended residential treatment. This finding was especially true for parents when thecaseworker assessed domestic violence as a pre-existing condition (RRR = 7.89, p = 0.044),suggesting a moderating relationship between treatment setting and caseworker assessment.Considering the importance of worker assessments to child welfare outcomes such asreunification and case closure, this study’s findings have implications for treatment assignmentfor child welfare involved parents. Findings from this study also provide support for theprovision of ancillary services, such as domestic violence counseling in residential programs

Building an Evidence-Driven Child Welfare Workforce: A University-Agency Partnership.

The federal government increasingly expects child welfare systems to be more responsive to the needs of their local populations, connect strategies to results, and use continuous quality improvement (CQI) to accomplish these goals. A method for improving decision making, CQI relies on an inflow of high-quality data, up-to-date research evidence, and a robust organizational structure and climate that supports the deliberate use of evidence for decision making. This article describes an effort to build and support these essential system components through one public-private child welfare agency-university partnership

Building Analytic Capacity and Statistical Literacy Among Title IV-E MSW Students

This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor and Francis in Journal of Public Child Welfare in 2015. The published version is available at https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/15548732.2015.1043421?tab=permissions&scroll=topBuilding and sustaining effective child welfare practice requires an infrastructure of social work professionals trained to use data to identify target populations, connect interventions to outcomes, adapt practice to varying contexts and dynamic populations, and assess their own effectiveness. Increasingly, public agencies are implementing models of self-assessment in which administrative data are used to guide and continuously evaluate the implementation of programs and policies. The research curriculum described in the article was developed to provide Title IV-E and other students interested in public child welfare systems with hands-on opportunities to become experienced and "statistically literate" users of aggregated public child welfare data from California's administrative child welfare system, attending to the often missing link between data/research and practice improvement.The curriculum presented here would not have been possible without the support of the California Department of Social Services, which provides funding for the CCWIP, and the School of Social Welfare at the University of California, Berkeley, which provided the platform to test the curriculum via a second-year MSW research sequence. The authors would also like to thank Barbara Needell of the CCWIP, who co-authored the curriculum and who provides ongoing technical assistance to state and local public child welfare agencies, in the spirit of the quality improvement framework presented here

Drug Use, the Drug Environment, and Child Physical Abuse and Neglect

Although drug use is considered a risk factor for child maltreatment, very little work has examined how the drug environment may affect physical abuse and neglect by parents. Utilizing information from a telephone survey with 2,597 respondents from 43 cities with valid police data on narcotics incidents, we analyzed the relationship between drug use, drug availability, and child maltreatment using multilevel models. City-level rates of drug abuse and dependence were related to more frequent physical abuse. Parents who use drugs in areas with greater availability of drugs reported more physical abuse and physical neglect. Emotional support was protective of all types of maltreatment. While most child welfare interventions focus on reducing parental drug use in order to reduce child abuse, these findings suggest environmental prevention or neighborhood strengthening approaches designed to reduce the supply of illicit drugs may also reduce child abuse through multiple mechanisms

Building Analytic Capacity and Statistical Literacy Among Title IV-E MSW Students

Building and sustaining effective child welfare practice requires an infrastructure of social work professionals trained to use data to identify target populations, connect interventions to outcomes, adapt practice to varying contexts and dynamic populations, and assess their own effectiveness. Increasingly, public agencies are implementing models of self-assessment in which administrative data are used to guide and continuously evaluate the implementation of programs and policies. The research curriculum described in the article was developed to provide Title IV-E and other students interested in public child welfare systems with hands-on opportunities to become experienced and “statistically literate” users of aggregated public child welfare data from California’s administrative child welfare system, attending to the often missing link between data/research and practice improvement