‘Stumbling through’? Relationship-based social work practice in austere times

In recent times relationship-based practice has become a familiar term in social work practice and education. Despite its widespread adoption, how relationship-based practice is understood varies widely. Drawing on contemporary conceptualisations of the child and family and individuals as psychosocial subjects experiencing social suffering, this paper explores how current social work practice can be understood in the context of neoliberalism and austerity. Setting these ideas in an historical context helps to inform our understanding as to why social work seems to be the focus of sustained political discontent and scrutiny, making it difficult to retain a balanced relationship-based professional stance. Contemporary responses to the current challenges of everyday practice are outlined and the contribution of psychodynamic and systemic ideas to promoting relationship-based practice is explored. The paper concludes by considering how the concept of social systems as defences against anxiety can inform our understanding of the resistance amongst practitioners to relationship-based practice and emphasises the importance of reflective spaces and places for developing and maintaining integrated, mature relational approaches to practice which impact on practice at both the individual casework and social structural level

Relational persons and relational processes: developing the notion of relationality for the sociology of personal life

The concept of relationality has recently found widespread favour in British sociology, particularly in the emergent sub-field of the sociology of personal life, which is characterised by its attachment to the concept. However, this ‘relational turn’ is under-theorized and pays little attention to the substantial history of relational thinking across the human sciences. This paper argues that the notion of relationality in the sociology of personal life might be strengthened by an exploration of the conceptualization of the relational person and relational processes offered by three bodies of literature: the process oriented thinking of American pragmatism, specifically of Mead and Emirbayer; the figurational sociology of Elias; and psychoanalysis, particularly the object relations tradition, contemporary relational psychoanalysis and Ettinger’s notion of transubjectivity. The paper attends particularly to the processes involved in the individuality, agentic reflexivity and affective dimensions of the relational person

Exploring the Concepts of Recognition and Shame for Social Work

© 2016 GAPS. Recognition and shame are both concepts that potentially offer social workers a structure to build practice on; two states experienced by both social workers and service users. ‘Recognition’, within social, political and economic thought, has been established as a field in which inequality and exclusion can be analysed. Social work theorists have also made inroads into exploring its reach. ‘Shame’ in twentieth century and contemporary sociological and psychoanalytical accounts, is understood as a force in limiting human agency, well-being and capacity This paper briefly outlines some of the defining ideas in circulation in relation to recognition and shame, and then briefly considers how psychoanalytical and contemporary social structural analysis builds on this, making links to contemporary social work thinking throughout. The paper also specifically considers some of the uses of recognition and shame for thinking about social worker and service user ‘well-being’, and the connections, through both the relational and the socio-political, which inflect social work practice

Children’s agency by design: Design parameters for personalization in story-making apps

The importance of children’s agency in the use of technologies is well-established but it continues to be challenged with applications that automatically personalize children’s content. This paper integrates educational theory of personalization with the design principles and empirical work of a story-making app called Our Story, which places a child’s agency at the center of its design. The impact of a series of studies with the OS app is summarized and implications for future design are offered. The Agentic Personalization Framework that consists of a design principle and a set of guiding questions is presented. The design principle is based on two continuous axes: agency/structure and individualism/collectivism, which give rise to four processes: personalization/customization and standardization/individualization. The guiding questions are intended to promote reflection among researchers and designers interested in supporting children’s agency with stories that children can make or interact with on tablets. The Agentic Personalization Framework is rooted in empirical studies, iterative design and theoretical developments and provides a fertile ground for research-design collaborations that place children’s agency at the heart of innovative work

Loss, Bereavement and Creativity: Meanings and Uses

Within the field of death and bereavement studies, the assumption that loss and bereavement provide the spur to creativity has become so widespread as to assume the status of a conventional wisdom. With this in mind, this article surveys the literature on the topic, extant, and contemporary, revealing its diffuseness as well as the multidisciplinary synergies produced by those working in disparate academic and clinical fields of practice. In so doing, the article explores what it means to be creative in the context of loss and bereavement, the potential for self-development and personal growth offered by creativity and loss, the theoretical premises linking creativity and loss, and the application and challenges for creative therapies in the institutional context of hospice and palliative car

Children’s representations of nature using photovoice and community mapping: perspectives from South Africa

The aim of the study was to explore children’s representations and perceptions of natural spaces using photovoice and community mapping. The sample consisted of 28 children aged 12–14 years residing in urban and rural communities in the Western Cape, South Africa. Data were collected by means of a series of six focus groups interviews (three photovoice discussion groups and three community mapping discussion groups). For the photovoice missions, children were provided with a 28-exposure disposable camera and given 1 week to complete their missions. Thematic analysis was employed to analyse the data. Three key themes emerged, namely: safe spaces in nature, unsafe spaces in nature, and children’s favourite places in nature. Socio-economic status (SES) was found to be a determining factor in how children make sense of natural spaces. Children from low SES communities indicated being more constricted in their mobility, and were unable to access to safe natural spaces compared to the children from the middle SES community. It is recommended that an expedient starting point would be to work towards and build environmentally and child-friendly communities for children, with children as key contributors in the planning process using a child participation framework.IS