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This article examines practitioner perspectives on agency social work in Local Authority Children’s Services Departments in England. There have been ongoing concerns about the use of agency workers, relating to cost, quality and impact on services, despite a recognition that temporary staff may be needed for a range of reasons. However, recent labour shortages and the escalating costs of agency staffing are fuelling calls for some form of regulation of agency workers. The article reviews literature on agency workers from the UK and elsewhere. It presents demographic survey data about agency workers drawn from a five-year longitudinal study on the recruitment and retention of child and family social workers and reports qualitative data from forty semi-structured interviews with social workers in Year 4 (Johnson et al., 2022) of the project about their experience of agency social work and agency social workers. The findings indicate several reasons for choosing agency work, pay being the most significant but by no means the only one. The advantages and disadvantages of agency work for workers, employers and service users are considered, and suggestions are offered about further research to assist in understanding how employers can identify and address recruitment and retention factors to reduce dependence on agency staff.

This article is focused on the concern about the retention of child and family social workers in England. Retention of workers is seen as a major issue for the delivery of quality services for service users, stability of workforces and development of social work. The article reviews international studies in relation to retention identifying a gap in relation to studies that have followed up those who indicated they were going to leave child and family social work but were unable to say whether they acted on this intention or not. This study focuses on forty semi-structured interviews with child and family social workers in year 2 of a five-year longitudinal study half of whom had indicated they would remain or leave social work practice and followed them up to as whether they did so or not. The findings indicated that there were major similarities between those who left and those who stayed. However, the importance of the interaction of organisational, job role and individual factors provides organisations with opportunities to mitigate such challenging aspects of children and families social work so that their workers feel supported, and able to respond to these challenges positively.

This article identifies some of the key challenges hindering effective social work education and practice in African nations. These problems include an orientation that is remedial or curative, involvement of non-social work graduates in social work posts, lack of a regulating or coordinating body, and an overall dependency on extrapolated curricula and Western methods among others. Most African nations although with huge wealth are wallowing in abject poverty resulting in various social maladies such as kidnapping, child abuse, substance misuse, corruption, lack of organised social welfare institutions, unsustainable development, human trafficking, unemployment, lack of leadership and social injustice, as resultant effects of exploitative colonialists and/or imperialists. These call for holistic practice interventions to solve these social ills. This paper strongly advocates that social work in the African continent should be given legal backing to ensure professional social work education and practice. The social work education curriculum should be developed to reflect African social contexts and its approaches to social work practice and not just be restricted to Western approaches alone. On this premise, this paper proposes ‘cultural humility’ and ‘transaction between individuals and environment (TIE)’ frameworks that would enhance social work education and practice in Africa.

Social work education in Nigeria is largely dominated by Eurocentric knowledge, theories and beliefs. This has led to a one-sided narrative where Eurocentric ideologies are advanced and indigenous knowledge often sidelined in academic curricula. This non-inclusive teaching and learning methodology acts as a continuous (re)colonization process where knowledge from Europe is imported and planted in the African academy. To contribute to the discussion for indigenous knowledge, this study researched the need for indigenous knowledge in social work education in Nigeria using 18 semi-structured interviews. Participants for the study were made up of 4 social work educators, 10 social work students and 4 social work practitioners. Major findings affirmed that social work education and practice in Nigeria was anchored by Western ideologies rather than indigenous knowledge. It was evident from research findings that indigenous knowledge need to be made more transparent in social work curriculum in Nigeria. Overall, indigenous and Western knowledge need to be blended in the present social work curriculum in Nigeria to ensure the best of both and to off avoid the ‘danger of a single story’.

We are researchers and activists working in the field of service user involvement for many years in the UK and internationally who are concerned that, during the COVID-19 pandemic, years of progress in service user involvement have been unravelled by service users being left on the outside of key decisions and matters affecting their lives. Instead, we argue, they have become an afterthought. As authors, we combine both academic and service user experience and have been involved in advancing practice, understanding and guidance about the significant contribution that service users bring to knowledge production. This article examines the issues by focusing on the journey of service user involvement before and during the pandemic, as well as on what should come after. Turning to the experiences of disabled people as a case study example, we argue that going back to ‘normal’ would be fundamentally flawed, as evidenced by the marginalised way in which service users have been treated during this period of societal crisis. Our article concludes by urging a reflexive stance to ensure service user involvement re-establishes its pivotal position in public policy and practice.

Social work education in Nigeria is largely dominated by Eurocentric knowledge, theories and beliefs. This has led to a one-sided narrative where Eurocentric ideologies are advanced and indigenous knowledge often sidelined in academic curricula. This non-inclusive teaching and learning methodology acts as a continuous (re)colonization process where knowledge from Europe is imported and planted in the African academy. To contribute to the discussion for indigenous knowledge, this study researched the need for indigenous knowledge in social work education in Nigeria using 18 semi-structured interviews. Participants for the study were made up of 4 social work educators, 10 social work students and 4 social work practitioners. Major findings affirmed that social work education and practice in Nigeria was anchored by Western ideologies rather than indigenous knowledge. It was evident from research findings that indigenous knowledge need to be made more transparent in social work curriculum in Nigeria. Overall, indigenous and Western knowledge need to be blended in the present social work curriculum in Nigeria to ensure the best of both and to off avoid the ‘danger of a single story’.

Urban diversity poses significant challenges for social work education in Europe’s major cities. These challenges manifest themselves in an accumulation of conflicts, inequalities, and fracture lines between individuals, networks, cultures, but also different groups and their institutional and political environments. This current challenge for the education of the next generation of social workers is also related to the rapidly changing environmental conditions and complexity of the urban diversity. Urban society is increasingly fragmented and diverse requiring new knowledges and tools to support future social work practice. The aim of the paper is to analyze the potential of Community Service Learning (CSL) as an approach that can be effectively applied in complex urban settings. CSL is an experiential learning format that integrates academic and experiential learning within a community service context. The participative training model identifies three basic principles: civic engagement, cooperative and multiple learning, and the importance of critical reflexive learning. This paper builds on existing CSL literature and represents ongoing discussions in an Erasmus+ project, exploring social work education in complex urban settings.

In 2018, the Department for Education (DfE) commissioned a consortium led by IFF Research, working with social work academics at Manchester Metropolitan University and the University of Salford, to conduct a longitudinal study tracking the careers of local authority child and family social workers in England. This landmark study aimed to collect robust evidence on recruitment, retention and progression in child and family social work by tracking individuals over a five-year period. In Wave 3, new questions were added about the impacts of Covid-19 on child and family social workers’ workplace wellbeing, access to learning and development, flexible working, relationships with colleagues, and relationships with children, families and carers.

This chapter examines the language we use in constructing our notions of service users within the context of current social work, neo-liberalism and austerity