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The Office for Standards in Education, Children's Services and Skills (Ofsted) is responsible for inspecting services that care for children and young people in England and Wales. This paper presents findings from an independent study of Ofsted inspections into children's social care in England, covering reports under three inspection frameworks during the period 2009 to 2016. The research aimed to identify the main themes of recommendations made in Ofsted reports and to explore similarities and differences between frameworks and between local authorities. The methodological approach was document analysis. A stratified sample of 60 reports was prepared on the basis of inspection framework and local authority characteristics such as local deprivation, Ofsted rating, and urban/rural category. A thematic analysis was conducted of the recommendations in each report, with emerging themes subjected to an iterative process of coding and categorization. The findings identified nine categories of themes, the most common of which were performance management, casework, oversight of practice, and multiagency working. Overall, the recommendations were strongly oriented towards process issues and compliance with standards. Recommendations were found to differ somewhat between inspection frameworks but remained largely consistent between local authorities with different characteristics. The paper concludes by examining the implications of findings for the current regulatory framework in children's social care. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research used a collaborative approach to gain a comprehensive, quantitative understanding of the breadth and depth of the social work role in health care. Data was collected from individual interviews with all employed hospital social workers (N = 120) across five Melbourne, Australia health networks about their most recently completed case. This data was coded using a revised version of the Karls and Wandrei (1994) Person-in-Environment (PIE) tool to retrospectively analyze the reasons for social work involvement over the course of the case. The findings demonstrate that the hospital social work role is multidimensional across a number of domains but centers predominantly on assisting clients and their significant others with issues of altered social roles and functioning; particularly in relation to role responsibility, dependency, and managing associated role-change losses. The findings of this study will assist hospital social workers, managers, and academics to better describe and effectively undertake this complex work. These findings will also assist in the development of professional training and education to up-skill social workers who operate within this complex setting. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article describes the development of a proposed unifying theoretical framework for the concept of adjustment as understood by health social workers. This arose from an exploratory study (Nilsson, 2002) aimed at elucidating social workers' understanding of Adjustment to Health Condition and Adjustment to Hospitalisation as Indicators for Intervention. The findings of that study demonstrated that adjustment was conceptualised as a complex, multi-dimensional process including the key inter-related themes of coping, emotion, subjective meaning, integration, adaptation, support, family focus, and process orientation. Participants were, however, unable to identify a unifying meta-theory to explain the described critical inter-relationships between these concepts. The proposed explanatory framework is based substantially on Folkman's (1997) revision of Lazarus and Folkman's (1984) theory of coping as a mediator of emotion and also incorporates important aspects of family systems theory as described by McCubbin and McCubbin (1996). This framework has the potential to assist social workers to better understand and assess the crucial contributory aspects of adjustment-related issues and thus improve client-focused clinical practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article describes an exploratory study aimed at elucidating social workers' understandings of the concepts of Adjustment to Health Condition and Adjustment to Hospitalisation as Indicators for Intervention. Thematic analysis was utilised on data from in-depth semi-structured interviews and focus groups with 18 experienced health care social workers. The findings demonstrated that adjustment was conceptualised as a complex, multi-dimensional process including the key inter-related themes of coping, emotion, subjective meaning, adaptation, support, family-focus, and process orientation. The findings can assist social workers in conceptualising their practice and articulating their role with clients and with other health professionals in relation to crucial adjustment issues identified in health care settings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social workers in health care have been urged to identify the nature of their expertise and to articulate profession specific roles (Peckuconis et al., 2003). This paper reports on the use of a theory of professional expertise (Fook, Ryan, & Hawkins, 2000) in management and clinical practice within two Australian hospital social work settings. This theory, directly applicable to social work, was applied within these hospitals to differentiate levels in social work industrial awards, in staff selection, in supervision and continuing professional development. Specific and broader implications for application of this theory are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents an overview of outcomes from the Mount Sinai Leadership Enhancement Program as identified by previous program participants from Melbourne, Australia. These are categorised into: (1) Personal/professional, (2) Intra-organisational, (3) Inter-organisational, and (4) International outcomes. Two illustrative examples are provided of international outcomes demonstrating how the ongoing commitment of Professor Epstein has extended and embedded the principles of practice-based research in Melbourne, and how the over-riding principles of the program have been applied by participants in establishing collaborative relationships with colleagues in our neighbouring South-East Asian region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]