Editorial

Coming to the task of drafting this editorial, I am prompted to reflect on a series of tragic events affecting communities in major cities of the UK in recent times. Of course, our sympathies must go out to all those affected, directly and indirectly. For social work, though, this kind of event would seem to prompt an urgent need for the skills and resources (and values) the profession manifests so effectively in other contexts. Indeed, there is widespread international recognition of the contribution social workers are able to make in response to crises and disasters. The National Association of Social Workers in the US, for example, states that ‘social work is uniquely suited to interpret the disaster context, to advocate for effective services, and to provide leadership in essential collaborations among institutions and organisations’ (NASW 2003). As well as providing immediate support, of course, social work is concerned with the medium and longer term social consequences of tragic events, and has a key role to play in supporting people through the experience of trauma and major disruptions in their lives. Dominelli (2015, 659), among others, has called for this role to be more widely recognised: ‘the United Nations should include social workers more centrally within its humanitarian remit because social workers are professionally responsible for enhancing human well-being holistically’. And, Nikku (2015, 601) has observed that: ‘Undoubtedly, social work has a long history of responding to the needs of vulnerable populations, including those who experience natural or human-made disasters’. He also quotes an earlier source, however (Newburn 1993) who fears that social workers’ inclination and capacity to provide help may be partially hindered by the relatively narrow ways in which their work is typically conceptualised (within and beyond the profession). Indeed, this may be a persistent challenge for social work, but one which needs to be addressed directly if we are to offer the full range of resources which we are capable of providing, and which is of potential value to those affected, both immediately and over the course of time.

One article in this issue (Ichihara et al.) discusses an example of the social work contribution in the shape of the services offered by a Japanese community organisation working with members of that community affected by the bombings at the Boston Marathon in 2013. Although this is a relatively limited case, it does provide the authors a chance to explore the scope and potential offered by agencies which are able to offer a range of interventions, grounded in the skills and values associated with social work.

Our second article (Kullberg and Skillmark) also focuses on problems associated with violence, although in this instance, the discussion concentrates on the social work response to a relatively hidden issue, that of young men as victims of violence. Here, social workers are found to grapple with their own assumptions about masculinity and agency in the attempt to frame an appropriate basis for responding to unacknowledged effects of victimisation.

Our third article in this issue (James et al.) has already generated considerable interest in its online version, and it is of potential value, not just because of its subject matter (the Mental Capacity Act Call for Action), but also because of its analytical approach, which seeks to understand the development of ‘networked’ (Smith 2013) communities of practice.

The final substantive article here is another from Sweden (Afzelius et al.), although the theme and conclusions are familiar across national borders, and these are to do with the under-recognition of the challenges of parental mental health issues when the central focus of one’s intervention is the children of the family. The paper’s concluding call for better inter-professional collaboration will no doubt strike a chord with many.

This promises to be a stimulating and timely issue of Practice, but I’d like to conclude this editorial by offering an acknowledgement and recognition of the life and work of Bill McKitterick, our colleague on the journal’s editorial board who sadly died recently. I will conclude with a quotation from Ray Jones, a former friend and colleague of his, celebrating Bill’s role as ‘a champion for social work and social workers, contributing insights and wisdom with strong foundations of concern and respect for frontline practitioners’.