In the first issue of this year, we wrote that it has been put together in turbulent times as
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, the global pandemic has exposed the importance of rigorous scientific research. This was also noticeable in the growing number of submissions that our journal received in the past year. Never have so many authors submitted their scientific work to be published with us, and never have we managed to keep the time from submission to the first decision as low as this year. We will continue to work on this in the coming years and thank the many authors and reviewers for their contributions, but for now, we are especially pleased to present in this latest issue of 2021 a collection of papers that bear witness to strong scientific research in the field of social work. The papers are divided into two major clusters.
The first cluster covers a wide range of what can be described as social-cultural work. In the first contribution of the cluster, Hanne Dewinter and her colleagues from Belgium discuss the pedagogical role of participatory arts practices in cities in transformation. They underline the necessity to reaffirm the core social pedagogical project of participatory arts practices in critically positioning these practices in the face of current urban challenges by demystifying the claims being made on their behalf. The second paper was written by Amalia Morales-Villena and colleagues from Spain. They argue that, ultimately, participation through community networks is helping to reverse social exclusion and the injustice that it reflects. Rait Kuuse and colleagues from Estonia continue by delineating the principal arguments and interests shaping the differing processes of deinstitutionalisation to be found in Estonia and Hungary, including stakeholder perceptions. They argue that policymakers and other stakeholders have much to learn from such comparisons as the one they made, especially for adopting a more inclusive vision of deinstitutionalization.
In the fourth paper of this issue, Diana Valero and her colleagues, also from Spain, discuss the Roma community as the largest ethnic minority in Europe. They identify and analyse three practices related to social work that contribute to the improvement of the Roma community situation and discuss the elements that characterise each practice. In the next contribution, Joe Hanley and his colleagues from the United Kingdom discuss the release of A Blueprint for Children’s Social Care in England. Drawing on the work of Mark Fisher, they show that the Blueprint can be considered part of a wider project of implementing neoliberal policies and market solutions to children’s social care in England, a process that is increasingly being led by large, profit-driven global consultancy firms. Alice Gojová from the Czech Republic then again investigates the variables influencing the performance of community social work in a context of the socio-spatial excluded neighbourhoods in the Czech Republic. Their results confirm that successful implementation of community work is based primarily on creating an effective social network in conjunction with the openness and transparency of the local group in relation to community members, and the use of internal community resources. The sixth and last paper of this cluster was written by Dassin Postan-Aizik from Israel and addressed the issue of social exclusion in a post-industrial context. The paper builds on data from a qualitative study in a post-industrial city in Israel and confirms the progressive deterioration of the communities by identifying three main mechanisms: service erosion, spatial deterioration, and political disempowerment.
The second cluster of this issue includes papers that mainly contribute to the debate on the professionalisation of social work . We start this cluster with two papers on resilience and burnout in social work. Mahloma Hebert Molakeng and his colleagues from South Africa performed a scoping review on the resilience of child protection social workers. They conclude that there is a lack of research on the resilience of these professionals in low-income countries, while there is at the same time a high need for effective services in these countries. Paula Frieiro Padín and her colleagues from Spain then again, performed a systematic review, following the PRISMA standards, on burn-out in social work. They found the following determinants and common points on burnout: the influence of the work setting, increased job turnover, relationship with physical and mental well-being, the importance of coping skills training, and the influence of sociodemographic variables, specifically gender.
In the third paper of this cluster, Daniel Gredig and colleagues from Switzerland aimed to capture the complexity of collaborative projects. Their findings suggest that collaboration is influenced by the specific social welfare regime, cultural issues, as well as the configuration of and dynamics between them in the projects. The following contribution is from Mariël van Pelt and her colleagues from the Netherlands and Belgium. They explored the relevance of Practice Development for fostering practice improvement and the external recognition of social work. Using a Delphi method, they reached a consensus on the core components that constitute Practice Development in the context of social work. The fifth and last paper in this cluster was written by Yohai Hakak and Simona Anton from the United Kingdom. They examined the experiences of social workers trained in Romania and then immigrated to England. Interviewees express greater life satisfaction following their migration but also encounter obstacles, including the differences regarding the place of the individual in relation to the family, wider society and the State, the status of social work and definitions of politeness and impoliteness.
With this final paper, we set aside an exciting year of work. 2021 was, without doubt, a special year in which our journal took another step forward in becoming an academic platform for discussions on social work. We would also like to explicitly thank our board members and, in particular, our colleague Elizabeth Frost, who will be leaving our journal at the end of this year.
We wish you lots of reading pleasure and a happy end of the year.