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This paper critically discusses the limitations of theorising social work from psychological and sociological perspectives and argues that phenomenology offers more opportunity to understand the embodied experiences of service users and social workers themselves. The paper argues that psychology and sociology have a limited analysis of being-in-the-world, which ought to be social work's primary consideration. The paper offers an overview of the sociology of risk before embarking on an extensive description and discussion of Heidegger's and Merleau-Ponty's phenomenology applied to the lived experience of child protection social workers working within risk society. The argument is put that phenomenology is a useful tool for understanding the lived experience of social work practitioners. Findings: The authors conclude that embodied social work practice containing fear and anxiety can be thought of as akin to taking part in extreme risk sports and that this is an unhealthy experience that is likely to skew decision-making and adversely affect the lives of social workers and service users. Applications: The authors argue that phenomenology can enhance understanding of practice and decision-making and offers insights into the lived experience of social workers. Phenomenology is useful for helping social workers negotiate risk-saturated environments, through a focus on meaning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary This paper examines both the epistemological and practical limitations and challenges of data collection by reflecting on the experiences of a team of both junior and senior researchers engaged in such a longitudinal study. Findings This paper argues that longitudinal research with street youth challenges the boundaries and limits of the formal constructs of research and ethics that typically guide qualitative research by grappling with field issues such as navigating reciprocity, risk and authenticity within relationships with a vulnerable group. Application This paper calls for an explicit acknowledgement of the challenges researching populations such as street youth over time in our research ethics guidelines and encourages researchers to engage in dialogue leading to more reflective, transparent and accountable framing of how we collect data in the field with vulnerable youth populations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary: The sustaining argument advanced in this paper is that postconventional analysis offers a constructive theoretical lens to contemplate identity in child protection and welfare assessment. Critical application of abridged postconventionalism considers how identity and biodiversity in children and young people, operating across lines of racial, disability, gender and other identity markers, can be understood during informed assessment of needs. Findings: In the context of transformative postmodern influences, the intention is to provide an aid to students and practitioners who are increasingly impelled to think about traditionally biological-based identity categories, across more abstract lines of social, lingual and cultural construction. Four themes for professional development are presented. First, the complex origins of identity must be appreciated. Second, criticality and openness to the meaning of identity is preferable. Third, progress lies in courteous, sensitive and inclusive practice. Fourth, practitioners should acquire knowledge competency in identity categories. Applications: Overall, acceptance of the somewhat fluid and socially contingent nature of identity, without marked rejection of its embodied aspects, can promote more sensitive and inclusive ways of working with children and young people. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Summary: This paper reviews the existing literature that seeks to conceptualize the operation of power, from modernist ideas of power as a `thing' that may be possessed, to a range of critical alternatives, including structuralist, Foucauldian and feminist psychological perspectives. This review provides the foundations on which to construct a framework by which social workers may be able to map out and work with issues of power and powerlessness more effectively in their everyday practice. • Findings: Current frameworks, such as anti-oppressive practice, may be insufficient in being able to identify the range and complexity of power relations that may be enacted within a social situation. In order to provide a more comprehensive understanding, the article presents a discussion of the application of a framework for analysing the operation of different forms of power — one that acknowledges the potential of power to be both damaging and productive. • Applications: Through a discussion of how the concepts within this framework may be applied to a practice scenario, and to issues around the use of power and authority by social workers, there is an exploration of how the framework may provide a useful tool for underpinning emancipatory social work practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary: In the helping professions, professional burnout is widely acknowledged to play a key role in work retention and turnover. However, although the literature on fieldwork education in social work engages with the importance of continuity and commitment regarding the role of fieldwork supervisor, the effects of job burnout are under-researched. Furthermore, there is also a gap in the literature with respect to the internal factors that contextualize burnout and retention among fieldwork supervisors. Against this background, the objective of the present study was to examine the factors that predict professional burnout among fieldwork supervisors in Israel. Questionnaires measuring burnout, as well as several internal explanatory factors for burnout—career identity, work significance, and personality traits—were used. Findings: The findings of the study indicated that career identity, together with the personality characteristics of agreeableness and consciousness predict burnout negatively, while neuroticism positively predicts burnout. Applications: The article discusses these findings in light of resource conservation and existential theories of burnout, as well as the potential implications for practice and policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary It is commonly understood that enrolment in higher education means inevitable financial strain. In an online national survey in 2015, a sample of 2320 current students from 29 Australian social work programs reported on their experiences of juggling life, study and work. Findings This article details preliminary findings regarding the impact of low levels of income on the lives and study success of an Australian student cohort, and offers a considered comparison to relevant available data. Students in this study reported regularly going without necessities, and identified that a lack of finances and long hours in employment were adversely affecting their study experience. These problems became acute during compulsory field placements. Applications The purpose of this study was to illuminate social work students' complex study realities in order to inform future education, policy and practice. The findings identify that for these students adverse outcomes including poverty and disruption to studies may be increasingly difficult to avoid. This situation may not be confined to this cohort or the Australian experience. There appears to be an urgent need for national bodies, universities and students to join together in advocating for increased support for tertiary social work students. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary The aim of this study is to examine various strategies of social work students for resolving conflicts between their personal and professional values in the atmosphere of rising conservatism in neoliberal Turkey. Grounded theory was chosen to reflect the feelings and thoughts of 34 students attending a creative drama-based group on critical value education designed by the researchers. Purposeful sampling was employed to identify the participants. Notes and memos, reflective diaries, in-group discussions and a semi-structured focus-group discussion were used to collect data. The data on the conflict resolving strategies of the students are discussed in detail within anti-oppressive perspective in social work practice, theory and education in a neoliberal and neoconservative Turkish context. Findings The study reveals three main categories of conflict resolution strategies: (1) "Suppression": An uncomfortable way to neutralize personal values, (2) Stretching boundaries via "sanctification", and (3) "Fatalism" and pussyfooting around the status-quo. Uncomfortable feelings and fears are the basic triggers of these strategies when personal and professional values are in conflict. Applications The study gives us insight about the necessity to be more emotionally reflective and powerful practitioners while challenging the uncomfortable feelings and fear triggered when personal and professional values are in conflict. We argue that we need to adopt anti-oppressive perspective in professional practice, theory and education to overcome conflicts between personal and professional values in a neoliberal context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Summary: English policy and practice guidance recommends local authorities offer personal budgets to all adults eligible for social care support using transparent and equitable allocation systems which maximise choice and control for users. This includes family and other unpaid carers as carers in England are entitled to their own personal budget. The Care Act 2014 strengthens carers' rights and places duties on authorities to assess and meet carers eligible support needs. However, little is known about how authorities assess and allocate resources to carers. This article explores this information gap drawing on data from a survey of English local authorities in two regions completed by carers lead officers and complemented by follow-up telephone interviews with a sub-sample of these officers. • Findings: Survey and interview results demonstrate wide practice variations around how social workers assess, calculate and distribute resources to carers. There is little uniformity across authorities. Carer eligibility criteria are used but thresholds vary and are often unclear. Most grants/personal budgets are allocated as single annual payments but how the level of these grant/personal budgets are calculated varies with little standardisation. • Applications: The article develops the evidence base surrounding resource allocation to carers through carer grants/personal budgets. Findings are timely as the Care Act 2014 will strengthen carers'rights alongside the continuing personalisation of adult social care. Discussing local authority policy and practice around key objectives of equity, transparency and carer choice, implications for future social work practice and its development are considered in light of the Care Act 2014. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary Many decisions in the child welfare arena revolve around the concept of ‘children’s best interests’, but determining what they actually consist of is contestable and subject to conflicting criteria. This article describes the content of ‘children’s best interests’ discourses used by social workers and parents as part of decision-making rationales. Findings This study found that the construction of children’s ‘best interests’ was underpinned by concepts related to children’s needs. Needs were framed as emotional needs best met by family relationships, and theorised primarily using attachment theory. This resulted in decisions that tended to favour stability over change, as children’s distress on separation, indiscriminate affection, and difficult behaviours were interpreted as evidence of attachment problems that should lead to decisions to retain stable caregiving arrangements. The use of attachment theory was not straightforward, and illustrates the uneasy juxtapositions of conflicting discourses impacting on child welfare decision-making, particularly the influence of policy orientation. Applications These conflicts highlight the contested child welfare domain, and the contextualised interpretations required of attachment theories in decision-making contexts in order to make sound decisions for specific children. Implications for practice and education are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary In the United States and the United Kingdom supervisory neglect of children is premised on a construction of childhood which characterises children as essentially vulnerable and in need of constant care and protection by parents. This Western conception has been transmitted to the countries of the sub-Sahara via the Convention on the Rights of the Child. However, the socio-economic and cultural context of African countries differs significantly from those of the United Kingdom and the United States. The incorporation of a Western hegemonic idea of childhood into the national laws of African countries creates fundamental contradictions in the application of criteria for adjudging the adequacy of parental supervision in the sub-Sahara. Drawing on secondary data, this article explores these contradictions and proposes alternative considerations in the conceptualisation and assessment of supervisory neglect. Finding The combined effects on households in the sub-Sahara of economic conditions, ascribed gender roles and the reciprocal duties held by children to assist their families, contest established indicators and thresholds for supervisory neglect. The concept of societal neglect together with the application of the Haddon Matrix provides a more apposite framework for reducing the risk of significant harm to children. Application All African countries, excepting Somalia, have introduced the Convention on the Rights of the Child through domestic legislation. The findings of this study are pertinent to policy-makers and social workers in the sub-Sahara. They also invite Western scholars to critically engage with dominant notions of supervisory neglect and re-appraise its applicability in cross-national contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary This article details how social work with older people is disappearing whilst also being supplanted by seemingly more cost-effective forms of intervention in the UK. This has included the use of higher numbers of unqualified staff in roles once completed by qualified social workers, alongside highly rationed interventions that utilise fewer staff or associate welfare professionals, including those drawn from health care. Findings Such reforms represent important changes embedded within neo-liberal inspired professional discursive practices. These include the biomedicalisation of ageing and associate narrow gaze interpretations of social care needs that privilege pathology and risk. For social work there has also been an ongoing retreat from older adults within communities: from care-managed and personalised support to the extension of ‘risk averse’ safeguarding and promotion of personal autonomy for users and informal care. Rather than represent a break with the past, such socially constructed and politically motivated reforms remain part of longer held societal and ideological trends. Importantly, these include assumptions that older users remain a peripheral concern in contrast to other social groups or needs. Applications The article concludes that the social work profession needs to articulate its distinct role with regard to its capability to provide substantive support to an ageing population, alongside its capacity to look beyond a narrow and unsustainable focus on rationing or the endorsement of self-support, treating illness and controlling risk. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a study which examines whether social work increases resilience in professionals and students during training and practice profession. The study included university students and professional from Malaga, Spain. Results showed that social work students statistically significant within subjects differences in the components of resilience.

The article presents a qualitative study which examines the experiences and perspectives of adult siblings, who have a sister or brother with autism and learning disability. The study uses semi-structured interviews. The study shows that personalisation as suggested by siblings' experience is at risk of turning into an uneasy compromise.

The article presents a study on the link of students to appropriate interventions based on typological concept of general strain theory (GST). It states that a latent class analysis has identified four patterns of vicarious and anticipated strain among adolescents that varied by sample members' gender-race combinations. It also presents an evidence-based practices suggesting that students experience different combinations of strain and specific applications for social work practice.

Summary: Japanese gender roles are usually constructed according to tradition, and men are assumed to possess a traditional masculine identity. This article examines the aspects of gender role identity and the socio-demographic factors that predict help-seeking attitudes among Japanese men. Data on 265 Japanese males were measured using the GRCS and ATSPPH-S scales. Findings: In general, the participants showed a moderate level adherence to traditional gender roles. They were sceptical about the efficacy of professional help and did not actively seek or welcome professional assistance. The findings support the argument that men's orientation towards success, power and competition, and their restricted emotionality have a significant impact on their likelihood to seek professional help. Application: The implications of these findings on psychological and counselling practices in Japanese society are also discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]