This research considers the hypothesis that eugenic ideology still influences social work practice in contemporary Britain. Exploring the issues through a feminist perspective by utilizing a narrative approach with individuals with learning disabilities. For many people with learning disabilities access to 'Human Rights' is rather elusive and this work seeks to examine this through the lens of eugenic ideology and a Bourdieusian approach to social work. The purpose being to ascertain if eugenic ideology is still present, if only through the Bourdieusian concept of "doxa", if so how does this affect the life choices and human rights of the people in the research. Based on the 'lived experiences' of a number of individuals with learning disabilities, all of whom were members of a self-advocacy group in England. All participants had previously been involved as service users in the selection of Social Work students for a London university and were contributors to the programme in this capacity over a period of several years. Involvement of participants in the research with the self-advocacy group was by open invitation to the group members, and individual 'life stories ' were documented through recorded interviews by the researcher over a period of several months. Utilizing a narrative approach to the life stories from a feminist perspective the experiences were examined against the historical backdrop of eugenics, articles of the Human Rights Act and Bourdieu's theory of practice. The findings show oppression, inequality and a lack of 'Human Rights' experienced by the participants, this against a policy background of 'Valuing People' and 'Personalisation' which both set out to promote strategies of social inclusion and real opportunities for people with learning disabilities. The 'caring ' professions including social work are implicated in the continuing and ongoing oppression and symbolic violence of people with learning disabilities. Whilst the terminology of 'eugenics' is no longer an acceptable topic of conversation, the impact of the ideology continues to permeate the ‘collective unconsciousness' (doxa) of many including those who are involved in the decision making processes of individuals identified as learning disabled. The implications for practice is that awareness of the pernicious effects of the eugenic movement need to be taught as part of the history of social work and included in the curriculum, if we are to avoid repeating the horrors of the history of the eugenic movement. By utilizing Bourdieu's concepts of habitus, capital and field, together with doxa and hysteresis it is possible to arrive at a new model of Social Work practice to address discrimination and to promote anti oppressive practice. The "Hysteresis Wheel', is a model developed as a result of this research.

The research study focuses on how social work Approved Mental Health Professionals (AMHPs) use the law in practice. AMHPs in England and Wales have statutory powers under the Mental Health Act 1983 (MHA) to detain people in hospital for assessment and/or treatment. The stakes in this area of law and social work are high: practitioners deal with important issues concerning individual liberty that have profound implications in relation to the power of the state to intervene in the lives of citizens, where notions of autonomy, protection, coercion and care sit in tension. The study explores the relationship between law and social work practice by interpreting meanings contained in case stories told by social work AMHPs about recent Mental Health Act assessments that they undertook. Eleven social work AMHPs, purposively selected from three different local authorities in England, participated in the study, which used qualitative in-depth interviews to collect data about using the law in circumstances where compulsory admission to hospital was a possibility. The use of case stories encouraged participants to provide a rich description of events as they unfolded over time. The data were analysed using Framework analysis (Ritchie and Spencer 1994). Computer Assisted Qualitative Data Analysis in the form of NVIVO was utilized to manage the data, and to support data analysis. Five themes are presented in the findings chapter: understanding the referral situation; understanding the individual; understanding the situation causing concern; community versus containment, and relationships and resources. The study contributes to knowledge by illuminating how the use of law in practice is an inherently socio-relational undertaking, involving embodied practice. Bourdieu's (1977) concept of habitus is used to make sense of participants' accounts of the action that unfolds when they use the law. A further contribution is made to knowledge on legal literacy in social work, where there is little empirical research focusing on how social workers use the law, and still less on how mental health social workers use the law to consider compulsory powers under mental health legislation. The organisational factors impacting on how participants relate to the law are outlined and discussed drawing on legal consciousness theory (Ewick and Sibley 1998; Sibley 2005), together with an account of how participants adapt to this, drawing on street level bureaucracy (Lipsky 1990). The thesis explores the distinction in practice between medical and social perspectives occupied by AMHPs when they use the law in circumstances where compulsory admission to psychiatric hospital is a possibility. The study findings suggest that AMHPs' perspectives are holistic and social and can be understood as occupying a socio-medical-juridical perspective. The most important factor in the decision to use compulsory powers in mental health law to detain a person involves the AMHP taking a wide perspective in terms of their understanding of the individual that is relational to the understanding of others, and understanding the person in their environment in relation to how they relate to others. The thesis outlines that the social and family situation of the person assessed, combined with views of others, and particularly the impact of risk on others, is the most influential factor in the decision to detain. This leads to the further argument that notwithstanding a holistic and social perspective, this does not necessarily lead to less coercive interventions. Medical and social perspectives thus often lead to the same conclusions in relation to decisions to use the law to detain.

This thesis provides a description and analysis of contemporary policy and practice in kinship care within three local authorities in England. The aim is to examine the extent to which government policy principles and available research evidence have translated into professional practice on the ground in different agency settings and to consider the implications of these findings for future management planning in this field. This is approached through considering UK research on kinship and examining the relationship between the statutory principles driving policies and the way the three local authorities have responded. This is with a view to questioning how kinship locally has influenced social work practice at a case level and compares local policies and practice against wider research evidence. Proposals are made about the modelling of a more effective approach to social work practice and management in kinship care planning. This study of different authorities and their approaches to kinship explores some of the challenges by which policy principles and research findings get translated into social work practice in a field of practice and theory that is itself contested. The study was undertaken in four stages: 1. A review of the extent to which local authority policies are compliant and consistent with statutory rules and contemporary research findings on kinship care. 2. A comparative analysis of the similarities and differences between policies and their formation in three studied authorities. 3. An analysis of the extent to which local management and social work practice, as reported, is consistent with policy and research. 4. The modelling of a Kinship care Definition and Policy Model could be proposed that is compliant with the principles of the Children Act 1989 and responsive to the research findings. The challenge set out in this research is to bridge academic research, policy formulation and operational practice. This research does not seek to evidence best practice in its own right but to recognise the variance of kinship in practice and approach and, from knowledge gained, set out a proposed model of good practice, one that is responsive to the findings and could be adopted within local authorities in England.

This thesis explores Greek social work students' perceptions of the development of their professional values and ethics in the workplace during their professional practice placement. To accomplish its goals, the thesis includes a literature review and employs a qualitative exploratory research design with descriptive elements positioned within the constructivist paradigm. This research design allows the researcher to explore and describe a topic - social work values and ethics - that is generally under-researched in the existing literature, as well as being complex in nature and difficult to study. Data were collected using the critical incident technique (CIT). This method took the form of a written questionnaire (the CIT questionnaire) completed by 32 students between 11th and 25th October, 2010. The data were inductively analysed using both qualitative and quantitative approaches. SPSS and SPAD software packages were also used to analyse the numerical and textual data respectively. The study findings underline the vital role of the workplace as a social space for students to learn and develop their professional social work values and ethics. They also highlight the complexity of implementing social work values and ethics in the different workplace environments that students, as trainees, are placed for their professional practice due to their situation-specific nature. Further, the study reveals a number of factors that, from the students' point of view, are important in applying and upholding professional ethical standards in social work practice. These factors are associated with: a) the need to practice social work values and ethics in the workplace on a daily basis in order to keep them alive and active; b) the students' own contribution to upholding ethical standards; c) the role practice instructors/supervisors play in the transmission of social work values to students during their placements; d) the importance of ethical collaboration inside and outside the workplace to achieve the best practices for clients; e) the client's behaviour as a determinant of the ethical practice of social workers in the workplace; and f) the importance of the ethics of management (including the political affiliation of the heads of organisations) in creating and sustaining an ethical work/learning environment. The study suggests that all the factors mentioned above-to a greater or lesser degree- should be considered important elements to take into account in the planning and development of values-based social work education programmes. Special attention should be paid to workplace conditions that can hinder or support the development of values-based social work practice. As the study clearly shows, daily ethical practice in social work, students as individuals, the role of practice instructors, ethical workplace collaboration, client behaviour, and the ethics of management are crucial components for building upon the ethical skills taught in the classroom and developing ethically informed professional identities in real-life workplace situations. The thesis concludes that the critical incidents experienced by students are a valuable source of knowledge and understanding of the development of social work values and ethics in professional practice. In this study, indeed, students gained valuable insights into their ethics development process in practice contexts, from both positive and negative critical incidents alike.

The thesis focused on the field of service user and carer involvement in the assessments of social work students. It examined the positioning of service users and carers in relation to other stakeholders involved in student assessments. Participants' views on what should count as service users and carers' feedback evidence at Continuing Professional Development (CPD) level were also explored. The rationale for the study centred on the relatively limited research studies focusing on service user and carer involvements in students' assessment, in comparison to their involvement in other areas of social work education. Further, the limited studies available appeared to be under theorised. The study is situated in the qualitative research tradition and drew from narrative research methods. It was influenced by the practitioner-doctorate research paradigm (Drake and Heath 2011). The study drew from the theoretical insights of Foucault's (1972; 1980) notion of discourse and power/knowledge theory; and Bourdieu's (1990) concepts of field, capital and habitus, to analyse the dynamic power relations between those involved in the assessments of students. Following ethical clearance from the University of Sussex, a semi-structured individual interview was carried out with 21 people. The sample consisted of service users, carers, social work students, social work employers and social work educators. The voice-centred relational method of data analysis, developed by Gilligan (1982), was used to analyse the research participants' narratives about how they have experienced their involvements in social work students' assessments. Participants' narratives revealed that the field of service user and carer involvement in social work students' assessment is characterised by a complex mix of relationships, different power dynamics and power struggles. On the question of what should count as service user and carer evidence, in relation to what students are expected to demonstrate to service users and carers at CPD level, the research participants reported on qualities such as:  Professionalism, good time-keeping, reliability and honesty  Effective communication skills, such as listening, empathy and kindness  Ability to support service users and carers  Intelligence, ‘structured empathy', mastery of practice and development of practice wisdom. Although important, progressive difference in expectation at CPD level was not acknowledged. The study makes five contributions to knowledge in the field of service user and carer involvement in social work students' assessments, as follows: (1) It adds to the body of research studies looking at service user and carer involvement in social work students' assessments. (2) It sheds some light on what stakeholders involved in social work practice and education thought about the ASYE in 2010 before its implementation in 2012. (3) It contributes to knowledge on what participants feel service users and carers should comment on when assessing social work students at CPD level. (4) It offers theoretical insight into the different power relations, struggles, and power dynamic between stakeholders involved in social work students' assessments from Bourdieusian and Foucauldian perspectives. (5) Feedback of the interim findings was provided to Skills for Care to support the Assessed and Supported Year in Employment (ASYE) assessment in 2011. The study concludes by arguing the case for social work and service user organisations to support service users and carers in their role as assessors of social work students.

Social work / M.A. (Social Work)

Social work / M.A. (Social Work)

A death in research exacerbates the lack of knowledge and information in respect of the needs and life view of the aged. Two studies were conducted in this population group with specific reference to the 'once-off interview'. Information was gathered using interview schedules focusing on therapeutic skills of social workers working within the system which cares for the aged. Results of a pilot study and an expanded study were compared in order to establish the inter-relationship between the. needs of the elderly, their elemental experiences in line with Bloom's theory (1984), and the role of the social worker. Findings revealed that the majority of "discontinuances" after the first interview were because the needs of the elderly clients had in fact been met. The need for day care services, transport and the expansion of the 'home help' facility was highlighted to enable the elderly to retain their independence in the community / Social Science / M.A. (Social Science: Mental Health)

Case management, a coordinating process designed to align service provision more closely to the identified needs of people requiring assistance in the context of complex care systems, is an example of those policies and practices that cross the borders of different national welfare systems, ostensibly to resolve the same or similar problems in the adopting country. Developed in the USA, case management was re-named 'care management' upon adoption in the UK as part of the community care reforms of the early 1990s, reforms which have framed my professional life in English local authority adult social care services ever since. In 2007, a temporary research fellowship (TH Marshall Fellowship, London School of Economics) enabled me to spend four months in Berlin studying a citywide case management service for older people in the context of German long-term care policy and legislation. This experience sits at the core of this thesis which addresses the extent to which the study of a specific case management service for older people in Berlin can illuminate how case management translates across differing national welfare contexts, taking into account the particular methodological challenges of cross-national research. Drawing on both cross-national social policy and translation studies literatures and adopting a multi-method case study approach, the central problems of determining similarity and difference, equivalence and translation form the core of the thesis. Informed by a realist understanding of the social world, the study took a naturalistic turn in situ that fore-grounded the more ethnographic elements in the mix of documentary research, semi-participant observation and meetings with key informants that formed my data sources and were recorded in extensive field notes. The data were analysed to trace how case management was constructed locally in relation to both state and federal level policy and legislation, and then comparatively re-examined in the context of the key methodological problems identified above in relation to understandings of care management in England as reported in the literature, in order to further explore the question of comparability of case management across different welfare contexts. The research clearly demonstrates how institutional context both shaped and constrained the adoption of case management in Berlin, and highlights a need in comparative research for close contextual examination of the apparently similar, with a focus on functionally equivalent mechanisms, to determine the extent to which case management can be said to be similar or different in different contexts, particularly where English words and expressions are directly absorbed into the local language. Relating the case study to findings from earlier studies of care management in England highlights the extent to which care management in England is itself a locally shaped and contextualised variant of case management as developed in the USA that matches poorly to the variant in Berlin. Indeed problems discovered in the research site constructing definitional boundaries for case management in practice mirror issues in the wider literature and raise questions about the specificity of the original concept itself. Nonetheless, the study shows that, despite the multiple asymmetries of equivalence and difficulties of translation, there are sufficient points of similarity for cautious potential lessons to be drawn from Berlin, particularly with regards to policy changes on the horizon in England, but also in the other direction with regards to how case management in Berlin may also be re-shaped following recent reforms to German long-term care legislation.

Through the theoretical lens of Foucault's archaeological method, this thesis undertakes a discourse analysis to examine how old age and ageing are strategically positioned as forms of governmentality in New Labour social care policy documents. It is argued that these discourses are not directed purely at the older generation, but at everyone, at all stages of life, encompassing all aspects of everyday living. Old age thus becomes a strategy of governing the population through individual everyday lives. This hints at the way ageing is prefigured, anticipated and lived in advance. An analytical method is developed by weaving together Foucault's notions of archaeology and governmentality; the latter is utilised both as an analytical perspective and to provide an understanding of how people primarily act and interact in contemporary Western societies. This analytical perspective is initially applied to an exploration of how the form and function of social policy enable ordinary practices of life to become targets of political government, making both possible and desirable the government of everyday living: governing how we ought to live in every aspect of life from work and finances to health, to personal relationships and leisure activities. The thesis progresses to explore this in more detail through a practical application of governmentality and focused discourse analysis of eight New Labour social care policy texts. The aim of the analysis is to explore what subjectivities and forms of life are possible within these discourses and therefore what these policies actually do, as distinguished from what they claim to be doing. It is argued that the discourses that emerge in these policies act to limit and subjectify, by attempting to contain and stabilise the multitude of possibilities for practices of living. By ostensibly aiming to create social inclusion the policies make possible vast areas of exclusion that become prime spaces of government. Thus many ways of living, ageing, and being old become untenable due to their inherent contradiction with the social values and rationalities upon which these discourses are based. Whilst governmentality analyses have been brought to many other policy areas, this thesis makes an original contribution by: developing a governmental analysis of social policy as a form of biopolitics; by applying this analysis to the social care field; and by using policy discourses of old age and ageing to draw out significant aspects of a governmental society. In particular it explores the dispersion of many traditional boundaries, leading to the rearrangement of relations, responsibilities and subjectivities.