Connection and hope in a post-pandemic world?

Since the last issue, the discovery of a new and highly contagious Omicron variant of COVID-19 has led to renewed concern and frustrated hopes of a return to ‘ordinary’ (or pre-pandemic) life. Indeed, debates are increasingly focusing upon whether a return to a pre-pandemic world is possible and whether COVID will enter into a new phase as an endemic illness that we learn to live with, like flu. The enduring issue is how we manage hope in the vicissitudes of a pandemic that has created, for many people, a sense of pervasive anxiety in the face of ongoing uncertainty.

Our first article of 2022 invites us to think beyond the present Covid-19 situation and into the possibilities of social work renewal in a post-pandemic world. In their article titled ‘Social work and child protection for a post-pandemic world: the re-making of practice during COVID-19 and its renewal beyond it’, the three authors, Harry Ferguson, Laura Kelly and Sarah Pink, present findings from a longitudinal study of social workers, managers and family support workers based across four local authority areas in England. Their study findings reveal many dimensions of practice, including the changes that have occurred as a result of Covid-19 restrictions, social distancing in particular. Their study illustrates examples of the increased bureaucratisation of practice in child protection services and it shines a light on how the Covid-19 crisis, which they refer to as ‘a moment of dramatic disruption’, has amplified the challenges social workers encounter in trying to fulfil regulatory and administrative requirements whilst simultaneously ensuring sufficient direct contact with service users. The study shines a light on the creativity, skills and determination of practitioners and managers to persevere with their work despite the challenges which exist within the current pandemic context.

The second article in this issue, ‘Sharing Lived Experiences Framework (SLEF): a framework for mental health practitioners when making disclosure decisions’ by Brendan J. Dunlop, Bethany Woods, Jonny Lovell, Alison O’Connell, Sally Rawcliffe-Foo and Kerry Hinsby, addresses the issue of self-disclosure by practitioners. The SLEF framework, which the authors set out in this article, highlights the role that supervision and reflective practice can play in helping individual practitioners to make decisions about when and to what extent self-disclosure is useful or appropriate in their work. The framework is designed to assist practitioners in their decision-making about self-disclosure, and it details a range of factors that surround such decisions.

Tom Casey’s article details a practice model which aims to interpret and work with the relational dynamics that can occur within the relationships that surround children in care. The article, titled ‘The evolving use of Mentalization informed thinking with the “Care Team” in the Irish statutory child protection system’, examines the usefulness of this multi-dimensional model for understanding the needs of the child in care and how this model can be used to minimise placement disruption or avoid placement breakdown.

In a different context, but also with a focus on positive communication between children and their carers/parents, Irene Katsama discusses the merits of a group work intervention aimed at promoting positive parenting which was carried out in Greece with a group of parents all working in a professional workplace environment. This article, titled ‘Promoting positive parenting: a group social work intervention in a workplace setting’, examines the factors that were found to help or hinder positive parenting among this group of participants. The article also provides an interesting example of strengths-based groupwork, conducted in this instance in a non-traditional setting.

Caring relationships in the contexts of services for older people is the focus of Maria Söderberg and Ulla Melin Emilsson’s article titled, ‘Older people’s strategies for meaningful social interactions in the context of eldercare services’. Based on research with older residents in cared-for environments in Sweden, the authors illuminate the distinction between ‘social work for’ versus ‘social work with’ older people, arguing in favour of social work with which aims to support older people to develop meaning in their lives, including in their care contexts.

Sophie Namy, Catherine Carlson, Kelsey Morgan, Violet Nkwanzi and Jessica Neese’s article is titled, ‘Healing and Resilience after Trauma (HaRT) Yoga: programming with survivors of human trafficking in Uganda’. The profoundly abusive nature of human trafficking, and the exploitation and coercion which are at its very core, are an affront to humanity and survivors often experience severe emotional pain and distress. This article shares encouraging findings from a pilot psycho-social groupwork approach which aimed to tackle trauma symptoms and increase positive coping mechanisms among the survivors involved in the programme.

The next article is titled ‘Working in complex contexts; mother social workers and the mothers they meet’ by Nicola O’Sullivan and Andrew Cooper. Based on research conducted in the Irish context, this paper presents findings from a study with child protection social workers where the combination of two roles, that of mother and that of child protection social worker, emerged as an important factor in their work for some participants in this study. This article considers the interplay between mothering and social work practice, and how this interplay can influence the interactions between mother social workers and the mothers they encounter as clients.

The final article in this issue is by Rebecca Booth, the winner of the Clare Winnicott Essay Award 2021. Entitled ‘Helping us heal: how creative life story work supports individuals and organisations to recover from trauma’, the article discusses the implementation of a creative life story project within a UK local authority children’s services. Using a model developed by Richard Rose, the project engages in therapeutic life story work with children, co-led by practitioners and professional artists. As well as offering healing for the children involved, the injection of creativity has had the unexpected benefit of providing a healing space for an organisation that has also experienced trauma.

We would like to thank all the authors for their contributions to this issue. Despite the challenges that practitioners around the world face in the current situation, this collection of articles provides grounds for hope and a reminder of the human capacity for creativity and connectedness in the face of adversity.