Part of the remit of Practice: Social Work in Action journal is to encourage and facilitate newer academic writers to publish. It is fitting that we start the first edition of 2024 with four articles of our five journal articles first authored by first time, or newer, academic journal authors.
In our first article of 2024 Tonimarie Benaton presents the findings of a small-scale qualitative study on the views of social workers in England regarding care experienced young people’s participation. While the principle of young people’s participation has been long-entrenched in UK social work practice, there is plenty of evidence that a number of young people in the care system still do not feel well heard by their social workers and others in their lives. The findings explore what social workers thought the barriers and enablers of their own facilitation of care experienced young people’s participation were.
Our second article is a literature review on the use of Family Group Conferences (FGCs) with racially minoritised families by newly qualified social worker, Omar Mohamed. The review finds evidence that FGCs can offer a method of working which supports culturally attuned, family led, responses within social work practice. However, it also suggests that their ability to do so will depend on a range of factors, including FGC co-ordinators’ skills, approaches and practice as well as the way that the FGC method is conceived and applied.
Next is Clare Brown’s article exploring how literature on phenomenology might inform social work practice. Phenomenology is best known as a philosophical approach focused on the exploration of lived individual experience and consciousness. As such, it is strongly associated with qualitative research methods. This article, by contrast, applies the approach to thinking about how to teach students about empathy in their practice. It argues that a phenomenological approach offers language which can describe embodied, ethical relationships in social work interactions.
In our fourth article Emma Smith, writing with established academic authors Mary Baginsky and Jill Manthorpe, introduces a study on the Care Act 2014 ‘easements’. These were controversially introduced in England in early 2020 on the premise of supporting local authorities to manage the impact of COVID-19 on adult social care. However, they were only applied by a small number of local authorities. The current article reports on interviews undertaken with practitioners in both ‘easement using’ and ‘non-easement’ local authorities. The central finding confirmed there was a large degree of practitioner confusion about the ‘easements’ along with concern that they their application would undermine people’s entitlements to care and support. Reflections on what is required to make the adult care system more robust when responding to future crises are discussed.
Our final substantive article of the issue comes from Stewart Collins, an ‘old hand’ so to speak! Stewart is a retired academic and a member of Practice’s editorial board. He was, in 2008, the author of one of the most read articles in the journal’s history – a publication entitled ‘Social workers, resilience, positive emotions and optimism’. Stewart’s present article turns to the concept of love and its application to social work practice – something which has become vogue in recent years. The article critically reviews these developments, noting how the application of love to social work can, at one level, be seen to take the profession back to some of its positive foundational roots – care, sensitivity and responsiveness. However its application also raises some complex issues, which the article explores.
This issue finishes with a book review written by social work academic Lisa O’Hehir of Introducing Social Work (2nd edition) by Jonathan Parker. The review posits the book as relevant to all social work practitioners, although pitched at students and early career social workers. The review explains how the contents are helpfully aligned with the Professional Capabilities Framework for social workers while containing chapters by an array of authors on social work theory, law, and a range of contemporary and perennial themes, issues and challenges and promoting critical engagement with these, in keeping with a key theme running through this edition.
Co-editor
University of Edinburgh
[email protected]
Christian Kerr
Resource Reviews Editor
Leeds Beckett University