As a journal, the European Journal of Social Work provides a forum for the social professions in all parts of Europe and beyond which critically analyse international developments in social work, social policy and social services. This diversity is reflected in our second issue of 2020 with contributions to contemporary theoretical debates and empirical studies.
We start this issue with four papers addressing social policy issues. The first one is from Marcin Boryczko, writing from Poland. He contributes to the debate on power relations in social work practice and the impact of neoliberal governmentality on the professional conduct of social workers. The second paper of Idit-Weiss Gal and colleagues from Israel further walks along the road of social policy by exploring the policy-related activities of Israeli social workers. In doing so, the authors have analysed a sample of 621 social workers, concluding that social workers are mostly committed to policy advocacy.
The third paper is from the Netherlands and was written by Susan van Hees and her colleagues. They argue that, in the context of the transformation of welfare states into participatory societies, professionals are assigned new roles. Through a qualitative study, the authors investigated how social policy is being translated into social work practice, hereby adding an extra dimension to the debate on the relation between social policy and social work practice. The fourth and last paper on social policy is written by Joris Decorte and Rudi Roose. Both conclude that social work should consider the entire policy process as an open-ended and democratic practice in which professionals might intervene to realise social justice.
The second cluster addresses the tension of discrimination and recognition of the LGBTQ community. Susan Götz and Mathias Blanz from Germany, for instance, performed a survey study including more than 200 homosexual persons working at Catholic and Protestant Churches and their Charities. They found that the less the participants outed themselves at work, the more they were afraid of becoming a target of workplace discrimination. From Sweden, Jenny Löf and Anna Olaison, then again, focused on how older Swedish LGBTQ adults reason about openness in an elder care context concerning their future needs for services. They adopted Nancy Fraser’s theoretical framework of recognition and concluded by emphasising the importance of social work practices that recognise different preferences by having an accepting approach.
The third cluster of this issue refers to the contemporary debates on knowledge-creation. It includes four papers, two from Sweden and two from Italy. Mikael Skillmark and Lars Oscarsson, writing from Sweden, report findings from a case study on the practical application of a standardisation tool. They uncover a fair amount of scepticism towards the tool as a result of both the absence of significant implementation conditions and a lack of compatibility between the tool’s construction and users’ needs and expectations. The second paper, also from Sweden, was written by Katarina Jacobsson and Anna Meeuwisse. Both authors identified four strategies that key actors within the Swedish Evidence Based Practice movement used to contest, redefine and constrain the academic knowledge base of social work. The fourth paper within this cluster is from Italy. It is written by Sara Serbati who theoretically reflects on the implementation of Child and Family Social Work programmes and interventions, hereby focusing on the relationship ways for producing knowledge through evaluation. The fourth and last paper was also writing from Italy by Marilena Dellavalle and Valentina Rocca. It is titled ‘experimenting with professional innovation through practice learning’ and presents the results of a qualitative study on the value of experimental practice learning as a way of creating social work knowledge.
The fourth cluster of papers refers to widespread concepts such as resilience, vulnerability and risk. Cristóbal Ruiz-Román and his colleagues from Spain explain how resilience is a very dynamic and constantly evolving notion. They present an extensive analysis of how the notion of resilience has evolved over time. Their paper nicely aligns with the contribution of Elina Virokannas and colleagues from Finland as they provide a literature review on how vulnerability has been used and defined in academic, peer-reviewed articles published in international social science journals between 2000 and 2016.
Dermot Hurley and Gloria Kirwan from Canada continue this debate by exploring the resilience of practitioners in Ireland and Canada. Their study looks at a practitioners’ perspective on resilience and explores the idea of relational resilience and a buffer against burnout and compassion fatigue. The last paper of this cluster and this issue is from Elena Cabiati, Maria Luisa Raineri and Fabio Folgheraiter from Italy. They present findings of a quantitative study conducted in the context of Italian child welfare and protection. In their study, they identified positive and negative factors that could assist social work managers, educators and professionals to manage professional troubles more effectively and avoid the paradoxical risk of forgetting their own wellbeing.
We hope that in this issue, you will find much of interest, to inform and stimulate ongoing debate.