For many years, the European Journal of Social Work has been a stronghold in the field of academic social work. It is one of the few journals publishing a broad diversity of topics covering different fields of the social professions, coming from a diversity of authors and offering a critical perspective on society and social work research and practice. As editors, we highly value this perspective that is engrained in the history and practice of the journal. It allows the journal to be a channel for academic publications on the one hand and a forum for discussion on social work with international colleagues on the other hand.
This perspective is also reflected in our fourth issue of this year. The issue opens with a first cluster of three papers that, in different ways, address the vulnerability of children and adults in our contemporary society. The first paper of Emma Palmer from England opens with an in-depth review of twenty multi-national European Commission funded projects about child trafficking. She concludes that contemporary systems do not have the capacity to manage the consequences of globalization and that being a European citizen did not necessarily result in any guarantees of protection. Kjetil Frøyland from Norway continues by addressing the vital tasks and roles of frontline workers facilitating job inclusion of vulnerable youth as these frontline workers are often identified as key actors for giving support to vulnerable youth. His cross-case analyses of sixteen Norwegian pilot project suggests that there are four different support roles that need to be taken into account when supporting vulnerable youth in finding a job. Finally, it is the turn of gender oppression to receive attention, with a contribution from Kateřina Glumbíková and colleagues in the Czech Republic. They critically reflect on the reintegration process through the lens of gender oppression in the case of mothers living in shelters. They thoroughly discuss the impact of the construct of motherhood on the process of reintegration of single mothers from shelters and conclude by presenting a two-level model that can assist mothers in their reintegration process.
The second cluster of papers explores the theme of evidence-based methods and the search for efficiency in social work practice and research. Here, Åsa Källström and Karin Grip from Sweden address the issue of Swedish social workers’ experiences in testing the Kids’ Club evidence-based method for helping child and mother victims of intimate partner violence. They point out that a successful implementation of American evidence-based methods co-depends on issues of cultural adaptation. Viviene Cree and her colleagues in England further walk this line by discussing the dilemmas that occur in social work practice when evaluating effectiveness. They explore the challenge of measuring effectiveness in social work by examining two small-scale evaluations of services in Scotland and suggest that an alternative, critical paradigm in evaluation offers a positive way forward. Finally, Tor-Johan Ekeland and his colleagues in Norway addressed a similar issue from a practitioner’s perspective by focusing on the perceptions and attitudes among Norwegian social workers regarding evidence-based practice in social work. In their contribution, they endeavour to clarify the concept evidence-based practice and present results from a survey among 2060 social workers from Norway. They show that many practitioners have heard of the concept of evidence-based practice, but that few have precise knowledge about what it means.
Our third cluster of papers is a small collection of two contributions, focusing on e-development in social work. Yolanda Maria De la Fuente Robles and Maria del Carmen Martín Cano from Spain start with a paper on technology and robotics in social interventions with elderly people. They explore the possibility of pushing new technologies forward towards groups of elderly people in order to increase social cohesion. From Sweden, Charlotta Åkerlind and colleagues publish an empirical-based paper on the perceptions of care managers of eHomecare, an electronic tool to assist elderly people in healthcare. They uncovered that eHomecare was perceived to improve the quality of everyday life for elderly people, but that it was also perceived as a challenging task for care managers and a complex mission to implement eHomecare.
The fourth cluster of papers entails four papers addressing the challenges social work is confronted with when working in difficult circumstance. Li Wang and SiJiu Qin from China start with an analysis of hospitals that established a social work department under a fuzzy environment. A second paper by Tone Alm Andreassen from Norway draws lessons from the Norwegian Labour and Welfare Service on measures of accountability and delegated discretion in activation work. Based on her research, she concludes that because activation tasks in the Norwegian frontline service imply professional discretion more than administrative discretion, structural measures aimed at restricting the discretionary space of frontline workers seem to have only limited impact. From the Netherlands, Margo Trappenburg and Gercoline van Beek explore how social workers experience the development towards de-professionalization. They found that many practitioners feel that their profession is being degraded, but that they are unable to resist this development, because resistance might get them sacked. The last of our four papers on working in difficult circumstances continues on the path of empirical studies. Eva Olsson and Mona Sundh from Sweden study the perception of time in relation to work and private life among Swedish social workers. They state that many professionals experience a lack of time and that they develop several strategies to recuperate, such as creating recovery arenas that allow them micropauses such as eating an apple or having a cup of coffee.
We conclude this issue with two papers on social work education. The first one, from Nicole Byrne in Australia, addresses social work students’ professional and personal exposure to social work, hereby highlighting that every interaction social workers have with the community provides valuable information about the profession and gives insight into social work as a career. The last article of this cluster – and this issue – by Paul Bukuluki from Uganda, Staffan Höjer and Birgitta Jansson draws upon data from 149 students, focusing on their motives and career choices. In their paper, the authors show that therapy and counselling, education and research, and health social work were ranked high, while social work with the elderly, with abused and with poor people and social assistance are ranked rather low.
We hope you enjoy this issue as it includes a wide variety of thought-provoking topics with high relevance for social work research and practice.