While the world is still trying to get a grasp on the COVID-19 pandemic and its tremendous impact, there is also business as usual, and in our case that means another issue packed with great research, conceptual papers and though-provoking statements.
We kick off this issue with three papers that address the issue of poverty in its most broad sense. In the first paper, Anne Grete Tøge and her colleagues from Norway describe how they conducted a baseline survey in a cluster of randomised trials on improving follow-up with low income families in Norway. They show the importance of measuring various social work competences prior to programme implementation. This theme is picked up by Julia Callegari and colleagues from Sweden who add a gender perspective to this discussion. In doing so, they provide an overview of the existing literature related to gender and household debt, in order to enable a development towards gender-aware social work interventions that equally support women and men in creating financially stable lives. Katrien Boone and her colleagues from Belgium then again highlight the challenges of denouncing the socio-economic and political subordination of people in poverty without defining people in poverty by their status. They conclude that reflection on differences that subordinate people in poverty must remain at the heart of social work practice.
In the following cluster, four papers feature different elements of decision-making in social work. In the first paper, Jochen Devlieghere – together with colleagues from Belgium and the UK – wrote a piece on managing the electronic turn in social work. We argue that regarding the use of information systems for decision-making, there seems to be a mock bureaucracy where official rules and procedures are in place, but local managers develop a parallel system of work that better reflects the needs with which they have to work. In the second paper, Barbara Segatto and her colleagues who are based in Italy discuss the issue of discretion in decision-making. Their study highlights certain significant convergences on the social worker’s decision-making criteria and the lack of use of standardised methods. Moreover, they argue there is a strong shift of decision-making toward the individual rather than the institution and a shift toward a focus on experiential-intuitive methods, rather than scientific-analytical ones.
We continue this cluster with a third paper from Thomas Mackrill and Kresta Sørensen from Denmark on routine outcome monitoring. Their study of literature shows a field characterised by a high degree of experimentation. Therefore, both authors argue that research is required with regard to making routine measurement not merely relevant to, but an integral and explicit part of, everyday clinical practice. The fourth and last paper on this topic comes from the Czech Republic. Radek Trnka and colleagues address the issue of social work leaders’ dispositions toward ethical decision-making. They found a positive correlation of authenticity with ethical decision-making which indicates that positive reinforcement of authenticity in leaders could possibly lead to supporting ethical decision-making within an organisation.
Our last cluster of papers includes a variety of discussions and thoughts on social work education. The first paper, by Luca Fazzi from Italy, highlights the strategies that can be used by social workers to counteract the effort of supervising students in the new organisational and work climate and the importance of the problem for the future education of practitioners. The paper forms the bridge to Jonathan Parker’s paper on the future of social work education in the UK post-Brexit. From his UK perspective, Parker strongly argues that the United Kingdom needs to continue to pursue its relationships and links with other European colleagues if social work is not to become parochial and somewhat removed from the international stage. The third paper is a reflection from a European Short Student Mobility Program, written by Silvia Fargion and Orit Nuttman-Shwartz from Italy. The reflection focuses on written feedback from, and focus groups with, students who participated in a short mobility project. Their study shows how self-reflective practice is a necessary pre-condition for successfully transferring experiences of relating to cultural differences to professional skills. The fourth paper of this cluster is from Albania. In this paper Elona Dhembo and her colleagues write about social work education in Albania, drawing on a multi-country study of the social service workforce in southeast Europe. Besides increasing understandings of social work education in Albania, they add to emerging regional and global themes in the development of social work education and practice. The last paper of this cluster – and this issue – on the DNA of social work was written by Caroline Vandekinderen and her colleagues. Through a qualitative analysis of frontline perspectives, complemented with input from diverse stakeholders, the authors identified five building blocks as the DNA of a strong social work focusing on the realisation of a rights approach: (1) politicising work, (2) proximity, (3) process logic, (4) generalist practice, and (5) working in a connecting way.
With this last paper, we come to the end of this issue. We wish you happy reading on all these pertinent themes. In the meantime, take care of yourself and your beloves ones.