This is an in-depth single case study of a frontline social work team based in the third sector. The Bromyard Team provided comprehensive parenting assessments in care proceedings and safeguarding matters. This research is partly derived from the author‟s own experience and makes use of ethnographic and psychoanalytically informed observations of ordinary day to day work processes in the professional team. The study aims to identify, understand and conceptualize the variety of emotional forces and relationship dynamics that impact on first line managers in social work and social care settings in order to deepen and extend understanding of these demands, and the stresses and conflicts managed by professionals in these roles. The author undertook Management Consultative Interviews (MCIs) with the managers of this service, in which they were afforded space to think about their roles and detailed field logs of researcher/observer experiences were used to gather data. The emergent data identified four emergent episodes, these were analyzed using aspects of thematic analysis informed by psychoanalytic theory. The overall findings of the study are that the first line manager often finds themselves assailed from all sides: task related anxieties that filter through the front line workers, organisational anxieties and projections that trickle down from above, wider environmental anxieties that rock the stability of services and also impact on more senior staff, personal anxieties and projections that invade the professional space and organisational/systemic anxieties arising from inter-group, cross-boundary role tensions. The author recommends that rather than being left to cope with such experiences, front line managers need effective and robust support, which would promote further understanding of the emotional and unconscious forces affecting their role.

This thesis examines hard to reach adolescents in respect of; the link between historical, contextual and familial factors, the young people’s inner working model and the manner of intervention with such young people and how one might understand what is most helpful. Psycho-social case work with seven Black and Minority Ethnic (BME) adolescent boys in an area of high social deprivation and ethnographic study of the direct and wider environment was undertaken. This environment of trauma organised systems, within a community dominated by gang violence was impactful on the whole project. The data was analysed by means of a case study approach using psychodynamic, attachment and neurodevelopmental paradigms. The findings suggest that early and ongoing adverse relational and attachment experiences impacts on four aspects of ‘hard to reachness’: Biological, Unconscious, Relational and Environmental. This includes neurochemical disregulation, excessive use of projective processes, emotional immaturity, difficulties with reciprocity and taking responsibility. The four aspects of ‘hard to reachness’ correspond to four domains of intervention: Management and Safety, Therapeutic, Relationship and Social/External. The relationship is seen as central to successful intervention and the worker needs to be able to move between domains as required. Three groupings of presentations were identified; Chameleons, Reactors and Fragmentors based on neurodevelopmental arousal states, types of projective process and attachment styles. Reactors were seen to be typical of the hard to reach group. It is argued that the Reactors continue to rely on very early teleological or concrete behavioural defences which are interactive rather than interpsychic. Thus their behaviour is seen as immature, annoying and deliberate rather than archaic defences against anxiety where neither workers nor young people understand the powerful unconscious forces underlying their acting out.

The professional judgements made by child and family social workers are crucially important for the welfare and protection of vulnerable children. Social workers make assessments of need and risk in relation to children, often in the context of suspected abuse or neglect. A key part of assessment involves visiting the child and their parents in the family home. This qualitative study investigated UK child and family social workers’ experiences of undertaking initial home visits. Through a psychosocial analysis of narrative interviews (n=18) and focus groups (n=2), this study captures how social workers use their observations and experiences within the family home in order to arrive at a professional judgement. This research fills a significant gap in the literature in relation to home visiting, which has been identified as an integral, although ‘hidden’, aspect of social work practice. Specifically, this study identifies the initial visit as involving a delicate balance between three interconnected domains of activity: sense-making (generating hypotheses about need, risk and parenting capacity), self-regulation (managing emotional responses during the visit) and managing the encounter (directing the discussion and use of professional role). This thesis extends our current understanding of decision-making in social work, advancing a conceptualisation of the role of emotion in professional judgement. The analysis describes how social worker’s emotions during the home visit can act as a resource informing assessment, alerting them to salient information. The social worker’s emotional responses can also potentially act as a risk for professional judgement, through the creation of bias. The thesis suggests that the extent to which emotions act as a resource or as a risk, depends on individual, situational and organisational factors. Drawing on these findings, this research offers a series of recommendations for practice, including how organisations can facilitate effective professional judgement through the provision of emotionally intelligent support.

Falling levels of political enagagement have attracted attention from politicians, think tanks and researchers alike, and considerable column inches have been devoted to possible solutions. The purpose of this three paper thesis is to investigate and contribute to the empirical evidence for just one of these possible solutions: volunteering. There is a rich and varied literature on the contribution of volunteering and voluntary associations to civic life and in Chapter One this literature is given a novel classification, by causal mechanism. Volunteering is often considered to be a formative experience, important in setting up a lifetime civic and political habit. Chapter Two (Paper One) uses longitudinal data from the 1958 British birth cohort study to assess whether volunteering as a young adult can promote political engagement in middle age. Data from the early waves of the study is used to account for potential confounders, particularly social class. Volunteers are more likely to be engaged with politics than non-volunteers: but volunteers are also more likely to be well-educated people, with professional jobs who come from middle-class homes with parents who socialised them to engage in this way. Chapter Three (Paper Two) addresses the question of whether volunteering can be said to affect political engagement by using fixed effects modelling to account for these and other time-invariant effects. The data are drawn from the British Household Panel Survey, and enable an examination of relatively short term effects. In Chapter Four (Paper Three), the structural equation modelling framework, and cross-sectional data from the Citizenship Survey, is used to analyse the role of trust as a mediator between volunteering and political engagement. Trust is a key component in the social capital literature. Finally, Chapter Five presents a summary of key findings, important limitations and suggestions for further work in this area.

The ‘Big Society’ idea proposed by David Cameron (2010a) suggests that civil society take an active role in supporting community members and promoting self-determination. To date, the processes of the public sector and professional powers have limited the ability of communities to make such changes and are a barrier to the development of community engagement (National Institute for Health and Care Excellence) (NICE) 2008). It is argued that community engagement has the potential to improve health, yet there is limited understanding about how this works (NICE 2008). This study has taken a critical ethnographic approach to explore community engagement from the perspective of community members who are actively engaged in the process. The study explored this perspective within a community centre and involved volunteers, users and managers of the facility, exploring the concept of community and levels of engagement. The findings, presented in three major themes of ‘Volunteers’, ‘Community’ and ‘Conflict’, illuminate how the culture of civil society is different from that of the public services, suggesting that social interactions nurture and sustain community members. This is in contrast to the hierarchical structures of public services and the economic focus that has been prevalent in regeneration projects. The current Coalition Government has focused on the development of health visiting and has re-introduced the community aspect of health visiting practice (Great Britain, Department of Health 2011a). The findings of this study are timely and indicate that if health visitors are to build community capacity as envisaged then they must be sensitive to the cultures and practices of communities, and engage with communities rather than expect communities to engage with the health visiting service.

This thesis explores the philanthropy of economic elites in Brazil and the UK, positing their practice as part of a global elite philanthropic project. It argues that this project serves to further the aims of global capitalism, while attempting to mitigate the negative effects of capitalism’s fallout. Although the historical development of elite philanthropy in Brazil and the UK has been markedly different, accounting for technical differences in contemporary practice in these countries, recent decades have seen attempts to build an institutionalised philanthropic sector in Brazil based on British (and American) models. Today, the conceptual and ideological framework for the design of philanthropy in both countries is remarkably similar. In ethnographic enquiry into this common project, practices under the banners of ‘philanthrocapitalism’ and ‘strategic philanthropy’ emerge as the expression of deeply held ideologies of social change. These relate to the transposition of corporate strategies to philanthropy, to market-based solutions to social problems, and to attempts to eradicate poverty via better incorporation of the poor into existing economic structures. This enquiry, however, reveals how other aspects of elite experience also become entangled in the philanthropic project. In Brazil and the UK, elites use philanthropy to forge positive identities of wealth, and as a tool for managing inheritance. Among Brazilian family businesses, historical family narratives of philanthropy and corporate social responsibility aid business succession processes, in attempts to keep family firms – and family capital – intact with the passing of time. Finally, this thesis explores the work of philanthropic intermediaries, and the central role played by philanthropy advising and donor education programmes in shaping and disseminating philanthropic trends. Ethnography among intermediaries, however, reveals myriad ambiguities in their work. These serve to highlight elite philanthropy’s inability to confront the structures of inequality inherent to global capitalism, and the corresponding limits to its own project.

This study explores the inter-related roles of professional identity and informal learning in shaping responses by social workers to the context of change. The background for the study is the multiple policy reforms, changing the modality of public services of Denmark into the requirements of the competition state. Aiming to understand the relations between professional identity and informal learning, the study examines, how workers engage in informal learning in microrelations of everyday practices in a context of change. The study employs a qualitative research strategy, leaning on an interpretivist and a social constructivist approach. The data collection is done through semi-structured interviews, involving 20 social workers located in different municipalities in Denmark. The study concludes that the social workers' adjustment of professional identity in response to organisational change is mediated and facilitated by informal learning through microrelations of the workplace. Confirming the essential role of microrelations, the study illustrates, how the microrelations at work provide a space that facilitates informal learning to strengthen the capacity to act and to adjust professional capacity in relation to the context of change. Finally, the study documents how professional identity is based on a core of professional autonomy that itself is formed by exclusion of ‘the other’. The study adds to an area of research that is not yet well documented. Giving a voice to social workers, this study is the first to explore the narratives of social workers in terms of, how workers adjust professional capacity in a context of change as well as documenting how microrelations emerge at the workplace, offering a space for informal learning and adjustment of professional identity.

Volunteering is viewed as having a role to play in meeting policy objectives of Government at a local, Scottish, UK and EU level. One of those roles is in preparing people for paid employment. Some research has suggested that volunteering enhances employability, and this has become something of a universal truth. However, the majority of research on volunteering and employability is based upon the experience of the individual who has been volunteering. The perspective of other players in the labour market has typically not been taken into consideration. This research aims to fill this gap in knowledge by considering the roles played in employability by the employer, and by labour market intermediaries, specifically volunteer-involving organisations. Drawing on existing models of employability which demonstrate the importance of the labour market context, this qualitative research aims to better understand experiences of volunteering and employability that go beyond the individual volunteer. Taking a critical realist approach, the research is based upon in-depth interviews, and, in the case of employers, a pre-interview online survey. The data was analysed thematically to draw out themes within and across participating organisations. The research has found that volunteer-involving organisations are providing a key specialist role in employability provision, offering coaching and support to volunteers. Funding available for employability has allowed these organisations to become more financially sustainable, but there are tensions relating to the impact on volunteering, and balancing the needs of organisations with the demands of Government programmes and the needs of volunteers. From a labour market viewpoint, while third sector employers actively seek volunteering experience, public and private sector employers demonstrate an ambivalence towards volunteering; suggesting that while it can provide experience for those outwith the labour market, it does not form a part of the recruitment process, except where applicants are able to demonstrate its relevance.

The research undertaken explored social work as a moral enterprise. The study explored social work practice at the 'front-door' of services for children and older people in one English local authority. The study was primarily an interview-based study, but incorporated direct observation and conversational interviewing in order to explore social work practice within Walmsley local authority. Respondents in the four teams were responsible for undertaking assessments, which informed 'threshold-decisions'. The study found social workers were not neutral, impartial decision-makers. Social workers were not merely embedded in decision-making either; decision making was found to be embodied within the culturally and social situated bodies of the social workers. The senses provided social workers with a way of 'seeing' service users and getting a 'feel' for a case. Through embodied assessments, and negotiated performances between social workers and service users, identities were ascribed to service users by respondents. The identities were found to reflect a service users' moral and social position; their 'moral status'. The study highlights the visceral nature of social work practice and argues that moral status is an invisible domain within assessments, but furthers understanding of how social workers make sense of cases. The study found five 'types' of service user within Walmsley local authority; the Vinnie Jones; the Potentials; the Laughable; the Lovelies and the Challengers. The typology helps demonstrate the relationship between moral status, social locations and risk identities. Additionally, the typology illustrates who was found to be deserving, or morally worthy of 'going the extra mile' for.

Social work´s emergence and historical evolution has been intertwined with evolving notions of human rights (HR) and social justice (SJ). These two principles permeate definitions of social work and codes of ethics for social work across the world, and the Global Standards for social work education promote human rights and social justice as unifying themes of the profession. Yet there is little understanding of how these themes are represented and transmitted to social work students in specific national contexts. This thesis explores understandings of HR and SJ among social work educators and the mechanisms used to transmit HR and SJ to social work students in two contrasting European countries, England and Spain. Using a critical realist framework, a web survey of social work educators and students was followed by qualitative interviews with educators in each country to identify opportunities and challenges in engaging with theories and practice implications of this HR and SJ based profession. The findings show that neoliberal ideology, which increasingly pervades higher education institutions and social work agencies in both England and Spain, places pressure on social work educators to convey narrow understandings of HR and SJ and adopt increasingly bureaucratic and distant relationships with students. The thesis brings to the fore the challenges experienced by social work educators and students in each country engaging with HR and SJ in social work curricula. But it also identifies key spaces for the promotion of a HR and SJ based social work and examples of resistance to neoliberal ideology in social work education. The thesis concludes that social work education at university degree level remains a fertile site for the deconstruction of, and development of resistance to, neoliberal ideology that threatens the HR and SJ basis of the social work profession.