China
Africa
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The benefits of action learning
Published in John Edmonstone, Action Learning in Health, Social and Community Care, 2017
While health care has been one of the major proving grounds of action learning, its spread into social care has been slower, despite some early pioneers in the 1990s (24–27). This is somewhat surprising, as it has been noted that action learning has strong links with social work problem solving. There are high levels of risk, uncertainty and change in the public sector generally, and in particular within social work, that require an approach that questions perspectives and assumptions and allows people to feel challenged in a supportive environment as ‘comrades in adversity’. It has been suggested that action learning can support the development of ethical and critical social work practitioners who can support one another in the relative safety of an action learning set (28). In the social work setting, action learning can also support practitioner development, including emotional intelligence, anti-oppressive practice and critical reflection, all of which are desirable for individuals, teams and organisations seeking to keep up with the pace of external change. It is also especially relevant in multi-agency settings where it can help to break down barriers between departments and professions and to foster innovation and inventiveness in practice. Social work also has a person-centred ethos and action learning also adheres to this underlying principle to support each other in times of adversity (28).
Crisis or Opportunity: A Healthcare Social Work Director's Response to Change
Published in Gary Rosenberg, Andrew Weissman, Social Work Leadership in Healthcare: Directors' Perspectives, 2013
From this point of view, the most critical social work director skill is the ability to sustain a departmental culture that values high quality patient care above all else. Sustaining this culture requires the ability to maintain the morale and energy among the staff needed to support intensive patient advocacy and quality outcomes; and, to maintain supportive structures within the department which encourage professional growth and which allow individuals to identify and work through personal and professional issues in a constructive manner such that overall team morale is not compromised and to do this in a time when fiscal resources are shrinking.
A call for a new perspective in social work and health care: the developmental-clinical social work perspective. COVID-19 pandemic through the human rights perspective
Published in Social Work in Health Care, 2022
Robert Kudakwashe Chigangaidze
Deeply rooted in the ideology of developmental social casework (Van Breda, 2018), this paper calls for social workers in both the clinical and developmental social work specialties in the health care to critically reflect on how the vicissitudes, reciprocations, and projections in the spectrum of macrocosms–microcosms exacerbate the morbus burden from a human rights point of view. It calls for the application of forensic social work theory and practice from a human rights perspective in addressing the root cause of the burden of morbus. The developmental approach utilizes pecuniary projections in the form of cost–benefit analysis in its advocacy. It integrates the prescriptions of critical social work as it emphasizes on human emancipation from socio-structural oppression and poverty. If human rights are truly indispensible, invincible, and universal, the philosophy of ubuntu (humanness) should take precedence in building a more resilient world in the face of a crisis and more importantly in the prevention of one. The fact that 82% of the world’s income in 2017 went to 1% of the world’s population should be addressed if human rights are to be universalized and realized. If this is adequately addressed, then extreme poverty [which is depriving people of their human rights] would vanish from this global community seven-fold (Oxfam, 2018). Hence, it is only through equitable distribution of wealth that human rights can only be attained for the enhancement of health.
Heidi’s legacy: community palliative care at work in regional Australia
Published in Social Work in Health Care, 2021
Social workers are often positioned at the interface of organizations and populations disproportionately affected by serious and life limiting illness (Department of Health, 2019). Critical social work seeks to uphold socially just and meaningful ways of working with people through recognizing power dynamics and inequality, and privileging self-determined, collaborative engagement (Sumser et al., 2019). A critical social work approach meets individuals and families in the context of their lives, considering intersecting bio-psycho-social-cultural and economic factors that impact on their lived experience, while analyzing embedded power dynamics and oppressive systems that perpetuate social positioning and privilege (Fook, 2016; Gehlert & Browne, 2019). This perspective prioritizes person and family-centered care, responding to service users based on their holistic needs, and includes public health policy development, advocacy and social action (Morley et al., 2019).
Working with Homeless Populations to Increase Access to Services: A Social Service Providers’ Perspective Through the Lens of Stereotyping and Stigma
Published in Journal of Progressive Human Services, 2018
There is a need to know more about how social workers’ knowledge about cultural stereotypes, prejudice, and discrimination influence the ways in which the workers engage with, build capacities for, and advocate for their clients and engage in anti-oppressive social work. To understand provider prejudice, this article uses the lens of critical social work. Although a single definition of critical social work is difficult to articulate, it is generally characterized by its focus on discovering causes of social justice and oppression and then transforming this awareness into social action (Reisch & Andrews, 2001). In particular, this paradigm was selected for its emphasis on building capacity for acknowledging difference and diversity to inform and guide professional interaction and dialogue and for its capacity for embracing multiple subjectivities (Fook & Pease, 1999). By examining social workers’ awareness of oppression and discrimination, as expressed through awareness of cultural stereotypes about people experiencing homelessness, a better understanding of how critical consciousness is present and operationalized among the participants can occur. Additionally, support for broadening the inclusion of critical theory and the development of a critical consciousness into social work training curricula is also relevant.