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Background: Services for adults with intellectual disabilities in Hong Kong have a hierarchical staffing structure. Professional social workers, who performed as mid‐level employees, work with frontline support workers to deliver services to clients. Methods: This qualitative study explored social workers' experiences of working with support workers through in‐depth interviews with 13 participants. Findings: The study revealed that social workers perceived a significant variation between themselves and support workers in terms of working motivation, values and attitudes towards clients with intellectual disabilities. Despite the hierarchical relationships, social workers and support workers share the power of service decision‐making. Social workers used firm and gentle approaches to facilitate changes in practices to uphold service values. These findings were compared with Western literature on this topic, indicating similarities and differences. Conclusion: The organisations need to facilitate an effective collaboration between social workers and support workers to enhance the quality of services for adults with intellectual disabilities in Hong Kong. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Supporting the families of people with disabilities has become a crucial aim of disability services. In disability services, where people with disabilities are usually positioned at the centre of service provision, family‐oriented practice implies practice directions to work with clients' families in service delivery. The study aims at exploring how social workers in intellectual disability services and mental health services deliver a family‐oriented practice in Hong Kong. We performed a qualitative analysis, using in‐depth interview data collected from two broader studies about social workers' experiences in the fields of intellectual disability and mental illness respectively. Thirteen participants in intellectual disability settings and another 13 participants in mental health settings shared their understanding of and concern with family‐oriented practice. Four themes were identified in the participants' accounts regarding the importance of family connectedness, family members' constructions of clients' identity, the scope of activities and the intervention space between individual and family. These findings reflect that family‐oriented practice was jointly shaped by clients' family systems and disability service system, and shed light on the strategies for future service development at the broader systematic level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Institutional support for social work case management in services for adults with intellectual disabilities has attracted limited literature attention globally. This study aims to explore how social workers in services for adults with intellectual disability make sense of institutional support in the domain of case management. Through purposive sampling, 13 social workers employed in this service setting were invited to attend in-depth interviews to share their views on institutional support for case management. Five themes were developed through qualitative data analysis: ' A big dinner without a main course ', '" Tip Si " but not explicit ', ' Towards inclusion ', ' Fulfilling the requirement ' and ' Surviving the " unfair " salary system '. These findings indicate that the current institutional surrounding is not well-suited to the case management practice, and social workers also passively participate in institutional design. Furthermore, this study implies a coordination between institutions and social workers could enhance case management practice in services for adults with intellectual disabilities. The future academic attention could be paid to the more in-depth context of institution–practice relation in case management and how the service environment shapes social workers' case management practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]