This year we mark the journal’s 20th birthday, leaving behind our teenage years to become a fully fledged grown-up member of the social work journal family. It seems very little time ago that, during a conference in New York, I sat with Jo Campling and Walter Lorenz, two of the moving forces behind the launch, and witnessed their excitement about the vision for a European social work journal that would reflect the diversities and the commonalities of the work of the social professions across Europe, at the same time as reaching far beyond. It was a vision that took shape under the careful guardianship of the journal’s founding editors, Walter Lorenz and Hans-Uwe Otto, and one that has been enriched by the work of many others along the way.
Our journal has grown, both in size and in standing, over these years. Initially publishing three issues a year, it incorporated its companion journal Social Work in Europe in 2004, moving to four issues a year the following year. In 2012, with volume 14 came the move to five issues, and finally in 2016 volume 19 became the first to contain six issues a year. My own involvement started with volume 6 in 2003, and my thanks and recognition go to the colleagues who have held editorial roles since that time – Michael Preston-Shoot as Editor in Chief between 2003 and 2008, Jacob Kornbeck as reviews editor since 2003, Staffan Höjer as Deputy Editor between 2008 and 2014, Karen Lyons as co-editor between 2004 and 2008, and also Greta Bradley, Bogdan Lesnik, Abye Tassé and Malgorzata Laskowska. The editorial board has expanded over the years too, bringing new talents to the table, and giving us a broad spread of representation from a wide range of countries. Three associate editors – Liz Frost, Rudi Roose and Siniša Zrinščak – now share the editorial work on submitted papers, and of course none of us could bring you content of the quality we do without the imagination and creativity of our authors, the sterling peer review work of our reviewers and the tireless efficiency of publisher colleagues.
Our consistent growth has enabled us to include a steady stream of themed issues alongside our regular issues, allowing us to reach in depth into issues of contemporary concern through the perspectives and passions of our guest editors. As a generic journal with a broad reach across research, policy and practice, it is important that we are able to take occasional deeper dives into selected topics, bringing together papers that, taken together, provide an integrated overview of debates in the given field. Among these are themed issues from the annual conferences of the European Social Work Research Association, arising from a much-valued collaboration between the journal and the association that enables us to showcase work at the cutting edge of social work research.
We started the year with a themed issue containing a set of papers that reflected the truly international character of our work. Here, we continue in no less international vein. Our opening paper, by Judith Metz and colleagues in the Netherlands, addresses a fundamental question in the context of developments in welfare provision – are services experienced any differently when they are provided by unpaid family and community volunteer sources rather than by paid employees. This opens up a series of challenges about the nature of social work itself, which are explored in the five papers that follow. Richard Pfeilstetter, writing from Spain, explores the nature of the discipline of social work itself, using as comparator the discipline of anthropology and arguing for more collaboration between the two fields. Herma Tigchelaar and colleagues from the Netherlands explore the work of Dutch social work pioneer Marie Muller-Lulofs, who draws on religion and spirituality as inspiration in her arguments for social work as a secular profession. Cristine Isaksson and Stefan Sjöstrom bring a perspective from Sweden to the question of how social work operates within the dominant educational logic of schools, finding a robust reliance on social work theory that can position social workers in opposition to oppressive institutional environments. Àngela Janer and Xavier Úcar from Spain turn their attention to a related field, reporting on research that attempts to construct a comprehensive and rigorous analysis of how social pedagogy is shaped and transformed in the international context. Last in the cluster of papers exploring the nature of the work of the social professions, Katarina Andersson and Hildur Kalman from Sweden scrutinise the interactional routines of intimate care, exploring how careworkers and care recipients manage the transgression of personal boundaries.
Two papers then feature different elements of children’s services. Hanna Linell, writing from Sweden, considers the extent and nature of the violence to which children whose cases are the subject of court action have been exposed, concluding that issues of gender, power and control are central in understanding those experiences. Then Hannele Forsberg and Aino Ritala-Koskinen explore the causes and nature of children’s residential changes, concluding that the lifelong continuum of a child’s housing history and their relationships to place holds great promise as a means of mapping the geography of their well-being.
The final cluster of papers in this issue focuses on the theme of professional education and development. M. Àngels Balsells and colleagues from Spain explore the acquisition and consolidation of core professional competences for running socio-educational groups with foster families, using a participatory action research approach. Their use of a pre-test/post-test design reminds us of the importance and value of quantifying the changes that professional development produces. Tetyana Semigina and colleagues from Ukraine provide an account of piloting the first social work PhD programme in Ukraine, demonstrating the balance to be sought between international standards and local conditions in the academisation of social work. Christos Panagiotopoulos and colleagues demonstrate how the evolution of the social work education and welfare system in Cyprus is inextricably linked to the country’s recent turbulent history, and explore ways forward towards the development of a more indigenous social work character. Michael Shepperd and Marian Charles, writing from England, provide the closure of this cluster of papers, considering the question of personality in those entering professional education and discussing the significance of gendered characteristics that emerged in a study conducted in two universities.
Finally, we provide as ever a grouping of book reviews bringing to your attention both the high-profile texts and the hidden gems from the world of book publishing.
Ten years ago, when Michael Preston-Shoot penned the editorial for the journal’s 10th birthday, he likened journals to dreams that develop and evolve as they unfold, providing windows on our world, casting light on matters at the heart of social work. That dream now enables us to celebrate the contribution of a full 20 years as an inclusive and strong forum for debate on the work of the social professions. That those professions, and those in whose interests they work, face such an uncertain and challenging future requires us to continue that journey with renewed commitment and energy. The editorial board would welcome ideas from you, our readers and contributors, about the pathway that lies ahead in social work research, policy and practice, and your thoughts (and dreams) on how a journal such as ours can continue to develop and fulfil its role over the coming years with integrity and purpose.