We are happy to present the first issue of the European Journal of Social Work of 2021, of which the editorial was written in turbulent times. The global COVID-19 pandemic is still raging, and we can only begin to phantom the horrible consequences for our societies. Where attention is rightfully been given to health issues and economic issues, the current crisis also challenges the robustness of our welfare systems in dealing with the social inequalities which became even more apparent during the last year.
At the same time, we were also informed that our beloved colleague Prof. Dr. Hans-Uwe Otto passed away on 27 October 2020. In his memory, we start this issue with a ‘in memoriam’ by Walter Lorenz and Franz Hamburger. As you will read, Hans-Uwe Otto was a force to be reckoned with in European social work and he leaves an impressive legacy. Of course, together with Walter Lorenz he was one of the founding fathers of the European journal of Social Work. More personally, we considered Hans-Uwe a friend. We worked close together with him in research projects, as well as in the context of The international Social Work and Society Academy (TiSSA), of which Rudi Roose took over the chair from him in 2016. We got to know Hans-Uwe not only as an intellectual powerhouse, but also as a relentless networker. He seemed not to be able to get tired, as many of us will recall late nights with morning after breakfast sessions filled with ideas and plans to be discussed. It is soothing to see so many reactions to his demise came in, all full of warmth and respect, for the academic as well as for the friend he was. As someone replied brilliantly:
Hans-Uwe was a master of political calculation, a brilliant motivator for collaborations, and giant of intellectual ideas for social work. Over a few whiskies, he once convinced me to write about something I had absolutely no interest in. More than anything he understood the power of inter-disciplinary scholarship. His vision of a progressive theoretically informed social work inspired many generations of students. His legacy for critical social work runs deep and is enduring. Hans-Uwe also knew how to party like its 1999!
In light if the inter-disciplinary approach Hans-Uwe favoured so much, we are happy to share a new variety of interesting articles in this newest issue.
The first bundle of articles reflects research in the area of child welfare and protection. The first paper of Colletta Dalikeni from Ireland reports on the findings of a broad qualitative study which explored the interactions of Black African asylum-seeking families with White child protection/welfare social workers in Ireland. The second one from Michael Tärnfalk and Charlotte Alm from Sweden draws on retrospective interviews with professional service services offers who work in the Swedish juvenile justice system. They found that all in all, the task of protecting the child vis-à-vis protecting society becomes a major challenge in an institution where there is no clear line of demarcation between punishment and care and rehabilitation efforts. The third paper on how care is made possible in social work with vulnerable children and their families in Danish child welfare and protection services was written by Mie Engen and her colleagues from Denmark. By examining caring practices in situations marked by potentially conflicting values, interests and needs in this particular social and political context, they contribute to illuminating how changes in the relations between the state, family and child on a macro level, are reflected in the way care is practised on a micro level. The fourth and last paper of this bundle was written by Marta Garcia-Molsaso and her colleagues from Spain. They discuss the role of mentoring within the complex network of institutions and stakeholders involved in the schooling of children in residential care and found that mentors play a supplemental role towards the academic achievement of children in residential care.
The second bundle of articles addresses issues of social work as a profession and education. We begin this bundle with a paper from Italy. Alessandro Sicora and his colleague Giulio Citroni focus on features of contemporary professional debates and reactions of social workers to social policy reforms in five European countries (Italy, Spain, Turkey, Portugal, United Kingdom) and in the five so-called BRICS countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa). According to them, some of the BRICS countries have only recently started to define a specific role for social workers in the implementation of social policies while the other five countries have a stronger tradition of social work. We continue the issue of social work as a profession with an article from Steven Brandt and his colleagues from Belgium. The findings of their research point out that the ways in which social workers make sense of professional practice is complex and multi-layered and that social workers do not shift en masse to the side of workfare logics. In a third paper, Jay Miller from the United States and his colleagues from Poland address the issue of individuals employed as social workers in Poland. Their findings revealed significant differences in self-care by education level and self-reported health status, respectively. Peter Barck-Holst and his colleagues from Sweden complete this bundle of articles by arguing that reduced workings hours lowered emotional exhaustion and situational reactivity by increasing free-time recovery opportunities and decreasing total daily exposure to work stress amongst social work professionals.
We continue this issue with a third bundle of articles, on (mental) health. Also, here four articles address this topical theme. The first paper from Germany was written by Thomas Heidenreich and his colleagues. They performed a randomised controlled trial to investigate the effects of a resource-oriented clinical social work intervention on social functioning in a population of mothers diagnosed with depression. They concluded that the results showed significantly stronger improvements in psychosocial functioning, psychopathological symptoms, and self-efficacy in the clinical social work group compared to the treatment-as-usual group. Our second paper was written by Paul Wong and his colleagues from Hong Kong. They studied ethnic minority mental health in Hong Kong by exploring culturally relevant factors that may promote or adversely affect this well-being. The next paper continues the path of mental health issues by using the work of Bourdieu to study Family Group Conferences in coercive psychiatry. Ellen Meijer and her colleagues from The Netherlands used the analytical strategy of ‘thinking with theory’ so participants could discuss, decide and negotiate relational dynamics in the field. We end this bundle of articles with a research paper from Sweden on ADHD. With their paper, Patrik Karlsson and Tommy Lundström alert social work researchers and practitioners to the importance of engaging in research and debate about how to approach and understand ADHD among children in general and locked-after children in care in particular. They argue that research on ADHD in the child welfare systems should be a top priority in social work and outline some important questions that need to be addressed by both researchers and social workers.
We end this issue with a paper from Belgium in which Shana Sabbe and her colleagues address the theme of community sport. They focus on community sport as a particular practice due to its unique structural potential in combatting social inequality and highlight the need for developing holistic approaches to structural work within sport-based social interventions in general and in the practice of community sport in particular.
We wish you a happy reading and all the best for 2021.