The move towards a more multidisciplinary approach to the delivery of child protection services in British Columbia raises concerns about the sharing of confidential case material. Factors associated with the information-sharing practices of social workers with law enforcement agencies were examined in this research. This descriptive study involved surveying forty-one intake child protection social workers employed by the Ministry for Children and Families in Vancouver and Coquitlam, using questionnaires. Knowledge of existing legislation, methods of accessing and sharing information with police, and attitudes about police involvement were examined, as well as workers' experience and participation in training. The analysis identified both contributors and obstacles to effective information-sharing and collaboration between social workers and police officers. Informal methods of accessing information were shown to be the most highly used and successful, but the lack of understanding of legislation and of each other's roles interfered with collaborative practice. The results of this research will be of assistance in future training, as well as the development of interagency protocols. / Arts, Faculty of / Social Work, School of / Graduate

I den här studien undersöker vi hur socialsekreterare som arbetar med barnutredningar inom socialtjänsten förhåller sig till barns delaktighet under utredningsprocessen. De utredningar vi främst fokuserar på i uppsatsen lyder under lagrummet i 11 kap. 1 §, 1 st. i SoL (2001:453). Genom sex kvalitativa och semistrukturerade intervjuer med socialsekreterare var syftet att undersöka vad de har för syn på barns delaktighet, hur de ser på sin egen kompetens gällande delaktighet samt vad de upplever sig ha för möjligheter och begränsningar att göra barn delaktiga. Genom en analys med hjälp av Shiers delaktighetsmodell (2001) fann vi att socialsekreterarna upplevde sig ha ett stort handlingsutrymme med goda möjligheter att anpassa arbetssätt och metoder utifrån olika barn. Barns delaktighet beskrivs av socialsekreterarna i termer av att barnet får fortlöpande information om det som rör barnet själv och att det generellt sker ett samtal med varje barn där barnet ges möjlighet att uttrycka sina åsikter men har en relativt liten möjlighet att påverka beslutet om insats. Enligt de intervjuade socialsekreterarna finns en hel del hinder för att kunna göra barn delaktiga som till största del beror på att vårdnadshavare inte ger sitt samtycke och att alliansen med dessa många gånger måste prioriteras. Även barnets personlighet och mognad beskrivs som en påverkansfaktor för delaktigheten, sociala och verbala barn är lättare att göra delaktiga än barn som är tystlåtna och passiva. Socialsekreterarna beskriver att deras kunskap och kompetens inom barns delaktighet är svår att definiera. Det är en kombination av utbildningar och erfarenheter samt till stor del baserad på ett kollegialt utbyte av lärdomar. Det framkommer också att barn med funktionsnedsättningar inte alltid görs delaktiga på samma sätt och att det saknas kunskap gällande hur detta bör gå till. / In this study we examine how social workers relate to children's participation during the case work process within social services. We are focusing on the case work which is regulated in chapter 11, section 1, paragraph 1 in the Social Services Act (2001:453). Through six qualitative and semi-structured interviews with social workers, we explore their views on children's participation, how they view their own competence regarding participation, and how they perceive their opportunities and limitations to involve children. Through an analysis with the help of Shier's model of participation (2001), we found that the social workers felt that they did have room for maneuver and great possibilities to adapt their working methods in relation to each individual child. The social workers describe children's participation in terms of in terms of the child receiving continuous information on matters that concern the child. There is generally one meeting with each child where the child gets the opportunity to express their own opinions but have a rather small opportunity to influence the final decision regarding social interventions. According to the interviewees there are a number of obstacles in involving children, which is mainly due to the fact that parents with their custodial rights won't give their consent and that the alliance with them must be prioritized. The child's own personality is also described as a factor that influences participation, social and verbal children are easier to involve in a participatory way than children who are quiet and passive. The social workers described their knowledge and competence in children's participation as difficult to define. It is a combination of education and experience and largely based on a collegial exchange of work experiences. It also emerges that children with disabilities are not always allowed to be involved in the same way and that there is a lack of knowledge of how to go about it.

No description available.

This thesis deals with issues the specifice of social pedagogical rehabilitation of families in the region Ústí nad Labem. Is focused on the posibility of stabilizing and restoring the functionality of families faced with multiproblems, dysfunctional to ineffectiveness. The theoretical part is divided into five chapters. Focuses on the process of rehabilitation of families, the family and its problems in connection with the performance of its own functions, such as space environment for the education of the individual and that of an area of authority for child protection work with the family. The practical part is devoted to the research survey in which they were the main methods of data collection selected document analysis, interviews with parents and observations. The collected data was then prepared a detailed case study work with the family. For themselves survey research was elected one of the families showing sings for the posibility of obtaining a sufficient amount of data needed for research. After the necessary data has been carried out their evaluation.

Psychosis most commonly first occurs during adolescence or early adulthood, disrupting the social and occupational transitions characterising this time. Studies on social and occupational outcomes in psychosis have tended to focus on observer-rated, dysfunction-based outcomes. However, mental health services are increasingly adopting a personal recovery model; focusing on facilitating hopeful and individually meaningful lives. Social inclusion is paramount to personal recovery but there is a need for greater awareness of the processes by which mental health services facilitate social inclusion for young people with psychosis. Cognitive models and research with longterm psychosis service users suggests that negative self-beliefs contribute to poorer social outcomes in psychosis, whereas personal recovery models emphasise the role of hopefulness and therapeutic relationships with optimistic mental health professionals. This thesis first investigates a structural model of social inclusion and its association with hope and negative self-beliefs for healthy young people (n= 387). Then the processes by which young service users' self-beliefs, therapeutic relationships and professionals' beliefs influence social inclusion are explored using directed path models (n= 51). Directed path models then test how professional characteristics, focusing on attachment styles and job attitudes, facilitate therapeutic relationships (n= 61). Finally, the contributions of self-beliefs, therapeutic relationships, professional beliefs and social inclusion in predicting vocational outcomes are explored (n= 51). Current findings support the relative importance of hopefulness over negative selfbeliefs in social inclusion for young people with and without psychosis. Hope appears particularly important for adolescents compared to young adults. Positive relationships with optimistic professionals predict service users' hopefulness, social inclusion and vocational activity. Findings suggest that professionals' own attachment style and job attitudes may aid in positive therapeutic relationship formation. These findings encourage a greater focus on therapeutic relationships and service users' hopefulness in youth psychosis service provision. Professional training should encourage greater awareness of professionals' own attachment style and job attitudes, and how these factors impact on positive therapeutic relationship development.

This is a small scale, qualitative research study, based on focus group and interview data from eight participants across two workplaces. The participants are workers involved in supporting those young people who are unable to live with their families during their transition to adulthood: they are drawn from two services within the same local authority, leaving care and a specialist adolescent support service which provides housing and support for homeless 16 and 17 year olds. A review of the literature in this field identifies a gap in the research, with few studies focussed on the voices of workers engaged in this specific area of work. I have used three analytical frameworks (thematic, narrative and voice-centred relational) to explore the data from different perspectives. Positioning the data in this three-dimensional framework has enabled me to produce an in-depth analysis, considering more than simply the content of participants' responses. My findings are presented as a reflexive account, exploring how the respondents talk about their work. The data suggests that the talk falls into two broad areas: workers positioning themselves within a framework of organisation(s) and workers positioning themselves in relation to individual young people. A picture emerges from the data of two quite different workplaces. The relative structure and clarity of the leaving care personal adviser's job role appears to unite this group of workers around a more coherent script for talking about the work they do. In contrast, the workers from the specialist adolescent service openly acknowledge that there are differences of approach within their organisation, and appear to lack a shared way of articulating their role. The way in which the workers position themselves within the organisation also differs between the two groups: the leaving care workers talk passionately about the division between ‘us' (workers) and ‘them' (management). The specialist adolescent workers barely mention their managers, and there is little talk of a group identity (an ‘us'). These workers talk about the relationship they develop with individual young people as an intervention in itself. This relationship is conceptualised in various ways, with the clearest construct being parent-child. There appears to be a difference between the two organisations in the way in which this parent role is enacted: leaving care workers talk of an organisational corporate parenting responsibility, whilst workers from the specialist adolescent service talk more freely of thinking and acting as a good parent. In relation to their direct 1:1 work, the majority of participants describe using conversation to facilitate the development of problem solving skills, encouraging reflective thinking through the process of co-creating narrative. These emotional and cognitive skills are talked about as more valuable than specific practical independent living skills. The data suggests that emotional labour is acknowledged and managed very differently in these two workplaces. The leaving care group found it difficult to talk about the emotional aspects of their role, and this plays out in different ways in the interviews. Some participants describe struggling to manage the emotional impact of their work, otherwise struggle to articulate the emotional content of the work. As a group, they retreat from talk of emotional involvement with young people, distancing themselves by stating that it is beyond what is possible within their role. In contrast, the workers from the specialist adolescent service talk more comfortably about their emotional responses to the work: they appear to feel safer using themselves in their work, and seem better able to contain this emotional labour within the overall professional boundaries of their role. Workers talk of ‘making a tiny impact' - acknowledging the potential for their support to make a positive difference in young people's lives, whilst also highlighting the limitations of their role.

This thesis seeks to interrogate the experiences and outcomes of anti-racist social work education and evaluate the pedagogic relevance and practice utility of teaching social work students about ‘race', racism and anti-racism. A mixed methods research strategy is drawn upon to explore how professional social work training prepares students to work with ‘cultural diversity' and ‘cultural difference' and to evaluate the outcomes of teaching and learning which focuses on anti-racism. The methodological position drawn upon in this thesis is a pragmatic one (Williams, 2006), which recognises the role of both nomothetic and idiographic approaches to enabling us to describe and understand how social work students and tutors experience and make sense of anti-racist social work education and the pedagogic challenges and barriers they face to engaging with this discrete area of professional education. Anti-racism is the theoretical and conceptual focus of this thesis and it encompasses a broad coalition of different perspectives and academic interests concerned with actively identifying and resisting racism. It has been characterised as a set of disparate polycentric overlapping practices and discourses (Anthias & Lloyd, 2002), whilst exhibiting a politically committed form of practice (Bhatti-Sinclair, 2011). It has also been described as a radical and oppositional project which emphasises the need to actively identify and resist racism (Bonnett & Carrington, 1996; Tomlinson, 2002). Historically it has been associated with the politics of resistance and social movements in support of decolonialisation, anti fascism and equal rights for immigrant workers (Dominelli, 2008). Frequently, it has been characterised as reflecting a radical dualism between ‘white racism versus Black resistance' (Gillborn & Ladson-Billings, 2004). Within social work education, anti-racism despite its retrenchment and appropriation into a broad ‘anti oppressive' practice model (Williams, 1999), continues to be regarded as a progressive educational strategy which has a transformative role. It is viewed as an effective approach to challenging the attitudes and values of individual students (Heron, 2008). It can also lead to ‘perspective transformation' (Mezirow, 1981), and ‘critical consciousness' through the process of conscientization (Freire, 1970). Anti-racism is therefore considered to have a valuable pedagogic role in raising awareness of racial inequalities and the processes associated with racial exclusion, whilst also providing a wider critique of the state, its culture, its institutions, ideology, legislation and policy frameworks (Singh, 2006a). The qualitative and quantitative data presented in this thesis suggests that it is possible to discover the situated experiences of teaching and learning on anti-racism and measure how these pedagogic interventions can affect and lead to knowledge, skills and attitudinal change (Carpenter, 2005; 2011). The empirical evidence drawn upon in this thesis identifies important group differences, related to age, ‘race' and experience of working with a BME service user, which are important for understanding how anti-racist social work education is experienced differently by learners, and how it leaves a complex set footprints which enable us to appreciate how this educational intervention works in different ways for different types of students. Sometimes these differences are subtle, but at other times they are more evident and suggestive of group experiences which go beyond the individual. The empirical evidence also suggests that social work educators experience anti-racist social work education as a challenging and emotionally supercharged area of the curriculum and that their levels of engagement, preparedness and commitment is often dependent upon where they are positioned socially, culturally and politically. This thesis is important because regionally and nationally there have been very few attempts to empirically capture how professional social work training programmes accommodate and evidence ‘race' equality and cultural diversity issues (Williams et al., 2009; Williams & Parrott, 2013).

My research takes a psychosocial approach to exploring parents' experiences of professional intervention in the aftermath of sudden, unexpected child death. In the UK all deaths of this nature are immediately subject to a Rapid Response, which includes forensic investigation, followed by a series of subsequent meetings and the obligation on professionals is to treat parents as guilty whilst also maintaining their innocence. These requirements were part of a number of recommendations arising from the Report, ‘Sudden, Unexpected Death in Childhood' (2004) known colloquially as the Kennedy Report, which was a response to the release on Appeal of three mothers, all wrongfully imprisoned for killing their children. One of the explicit purposes of the Kennedy Report is to avoid similar cases and it therefore attempts to address the complexity of balancing every parent's right to have their child's death properly investigated with the requirement to protect children who may be at risk. As a part of achieving this, the Report identifies a need for appropriate training to assist professionals in becoming sensitised to emotions being experienced by parents, in order that culpability or otherwise may be easier to discern. Despite this, the Working Party for the Kennedy Report did not include parents and this lack of direct access to their experiences is reflected in the wider field. Parents are not allowed to participate in any of the multidisciplinary meetings which follow sudden, unexpected, child death and their narratives are largely absent from literature and training material. This makes achieving the form of emotional understanding between parents and professionals advocated by the Kennedy Report difficult and thereby increases the risk of potential errors of professional judgement. This study aims to restore the voices of parents to the field of sudden unexpected child death, by engaging directly with the emotional complexity and trauma of the experience and thereby improving practice. The research is based on eight in-depth interviews with parents who have experienced the sudden, unexpected death of their child, together with investigation, but no accompanying charges. The research was prompted both by my previous role as a social worker, but primarily by my experience of investigation following the sudden unexpected death of my son Joe. My account of his death and the experiences which led me to undertake this research are offered within Chapter One and thereafter run as a thread throughout. Drawing on Hollway (2009) I have used a psychosocial approach within this thesis, to combine both the workings of the psyche and the social without diminishing or conflating either. This has enabled me to locate my experience and that of the parents within the thesis, as part of a wider exploration of how parents may be positioned and perceived following a sudden, unexpected child death. The research uses a narrative, interpretive methodology which draws from the Biographic Narrative Interpretive Method (Wengraf, 2011) and the Listening Guide (Doucet & Mauthner, 2008). Data analysis panels were used as part of the interpretive process and they are discussed and critiqued. The unexpected results produced by the panels forms a significant contribution to knowledge which is also identified. The thesis concludes that current cultural debates around ‘good death', together with heightened anxieties about safeguarding children, may lead to the construction of sudden unexpected child death as dangerous knowledge (Cooper & Lousada, 2005). Returning to the emotional understanding advocated by the Kennedy Report, I make a number of recommendations including changing the language of investigation and developing opportunities for open dialogue between professionals and parents. I also identify several original contributions made by this work, both methodologically and more substantively, which are partly evidenced by the attention it has already received within academic and wider audiences. Amongst these, the research has formed the basis of a number of Conferences presentations, a journal paper, national newspaper article and a guest appearance on BBC Radio 4. As a conclusion to the thesis I identify a need for additional in-depth research in this area, together with a re-visiting of the recommendations arising from the Kennedy Report, aimed at further policy change and improving the experiences of all those involved with sudden, unexpected child deaths.

Children in foster care are at high risk of experiencing mental health problems and tackling this issue is a key priority. Previous research suggests that the transition from primary to secondary school can be particularly challenging, as well-being declines and mental health problems increase in early adolescence. However, there is insufficient understanding of variations in the well-being and mental health of this group of children, and particularly the role played by their social interactions, relationships, and psychological attributes. This thesis includes three papers reporting on a programme of empirical research conducted to address this gap in knowledge and better understand the risk and protective factors, particularly in the peer context, for changes in mental health and well-being. The first paper focuses on current provision and reports the findings from a national survey of Virtual Schools that support the education of children in care. The second paper presents the findings of a longitudinal study with children not in care (aged 10-13 years), to test our conceptual model in the general population. This demonstrated that peer factors predict changes in mental health problems and well-being over and above parental and other adult support. The third paper presents findings from a longitudinal study of children in foster care (aged 10-14 years), to test these key pathways in our focus population. This revealed a pattern of differentiated links from peer and adult support to mental health and well-being, and identified self-efficacy as a key longitudinal predictor of change, especially when moderated by peer relationship quality. The thesis demonstrates the importance of supportive relationships with both adults and peers for the mental health and well-being of children in care. This has important implications for future work where social activities and relationship quality with peers should be considered as potential protective factors, especially in school settings.

This thesis is the result of research that investigated the views of residential care workers (RCWs) working with people with dementia about their perceptions of training for their dementia care role with older people. Using a constructivist ontology and an interpretivist epistemology, the research investigates how care workers perceive their training and how they feel it can be applied to their working environment. RCWs were asked what they saw as the specific needs of residents with dementia, what training they had received, how useful they perceived the training to be, and what training they felt was still needed. Previous studies had put forward topics for inclusion into dementia care training, but very little research had asked RCWs themselves about their dementia training needs. Nineteen semi-structured interviews were carried out across three care home organisations during the summer of 2013 in the East of England. Findings from thematic analysis showed that the care workers interviewed had very limited or no dementia training or assessment they could remember, and that training had generally been a negative experience. Dementia care trainers were not considered helpful or knowledgeable enough and RCWs identified that their learning needs had not been taken into consideration. The learning environment was viewed as unsuitable, usually a lounge or a bedroom where it was very cramped and RCWs were pulled out of training when there were limited staff numbers. Many challenges specific to caring with people with dementia were also identified: challenging behaviour, lack of time and resources, poor teamwork and communication and lack of organisational support all inhibited the development of person-centred care and training transfer into practice. A conceptual model of the training and learning cycle is proposed as a way forward for dementia training. This model illustrates the training process from course creation through to satisfactory completion. Learning into practice is measured by care workers' knowledge, confidence, and competence. This assessment is a two-way process between the learner and the mentor to ensure RCWs feel fully supported and recognised. Although this conceptual model has not been tested empirically, such a process is seen as a possible next step.