This article draws on findings of an international study of social workers’ ethical challenges during COVID-19, based on 607 responses to a qualitative survey. Ethical challenges included the ...following: maintaining trust, privacy, dignity and service user autonomy in remote relationships; allocating limited resources; balancing rights and needs of different parties; deciding whether to break or bend policies in the interests of service users; and handling emotions and ensuring care of self and colleagues. The article considers regional contrasts, the ‘ethical logistics’ of complex decision-making, the impact of societal inequities, and lessons for social workers and professional practice around the globe.
Abstract
After more than a year living with COVID-19 restrictions, the UK Governments have now published their ‘recovery strategies’ in which social care has been considered as key to plans for ...post-COVID-19 recovery in England and the devolved nations. Emerging literature has already explored the ethical and practical challenges facing social workers during COVID-19 and how social work practice has been re-created to embrace hybrid ways of working. To add to this discussion, a secondary qualitative data analysis was performed on a subset of data (280 responses submitted by 176 social workers) collected from the British Association of Social Workers’ (BASW) survey on social work during COVID-19, to explore how social workers’ sensual bodies had been responding to challenges arising from the pandemic. Drawing on sociology of senses and social work literature on tacit knowing and practice wisdom, we will present how social workers’ sensual bodies have been suspended, displaced and re-constituted during the first UK national lockdown, leading to sensual compensation and sensual overload that impacted on social workers’ practice. In striving towards a ‘better normal’, we offer key insights to implement hybrid social work practice and protect against the shortfalls that it might bring to the profession.
Social workers play a critical role in assisting Mental Health Tribunal panels to decide whether or not people detained as psychiatric inpatients could be discharged from their detention. The ...required structure and content of tribunal reports is laid down in Practice Directions, the most recent of which was published in October 2013 by the Courts and Tribunals Judiciary. The study aims were to audit the quality of social circumstances reports prepared for service users at a secure psychiatric hospital before and after the introduction of this Practice Direction and to see if a new report-writing template improved report quality. Eighty reports were audited in 2013 and a further 80 in 2014 against 28 key items derived from the Practice Direction. Reports prepared in 2013 contained on average 13.1 of 28 key items increasing to 19.1 in 2014. The template was used for 60% of reports in 2014 and resulted in better quality reports. In the repeat audit, more reports contained recommendations, mostly advising the service user's continued detention, though a few recommended discharge to a less restrictive placement. Such professional judgements take place at the juxtaposition of the Mental Health Act (1983) and the Human Rights Act (1998), in which risk management and risk-taking are key to decision-making.
'Risk' has become a central concept for social work practice in countries with more developed social welfare systems. As argued by Hazel Kemshall and colleagues, 'risk' has often replaced 'need' as ...the main driver for social work interventions as societies seek to avoid harm to citizens. This shift of focus raises a tension between care (support for the individual or family in their own right) and control (seeking to prevent harm to themselves, each other or other citizens). This article considers some of the key developments in the 25 years since the above article, including the development of risk communication; the growing familiarity with both likelihood and severity concepts of risk; the assessment of risk as part of organisational arrangements to manage risk; and theoretical developments linking social work assessment, 'working with risk' and decision-making. In the first part of the article, we explore the care versus control boundary through focussing, in turn, on child and family social work, adult care services, mental health social work and criminal justice social work, and their respective developments. We then further extend two key foci regarding assessment and care planning as well as the use of professional knowledge at the care and control boundary. Our analysis of these developments points towards more nuanced approaches to managing risk and making decisions at these sometimes contentious boundaries.
This article draws on a series of international research-focused webinars with social workers in 2022. They were designed to examine the rethinking of professional values during the pandemic in the ...context of other global crises, particularly the climate emergency. Participants readily shared ethical issues relating to self-care, digital working and reduced bureaucracy during the pandemic and implications for future practice. The need for holistic, community-based approaches integrating social, health and economic aspects of people’s lives arose, and the importance of seeing humans as part of the natural world (eco-social approaches). Awareness of newer post-anthropocentric and posthuman philosophies was less evident.
Peer support workers Shears, Jane; Ramon, Shula
Socialno Delo,
01/2012, Volume:
51, Issue:
1-3
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Peer support in mental health services - the reciprocal sharing of the experience of mental health distress - is an innovative new way of working which, through an emerging evidence base, is becoming ...gradually embedded into health and social care services in the UK. The article focuses on the genesis of peer support in mental health services, demonstrating a different pathway from examples given in general health services. It describes the modalities and delivery of peer support reflecting the different situational contexts in which the activity takes place. The emphasis on the need for training peer supporters to carry out this function is explored together with the existing, yet insufficient, evidence base in both intervention and cost effective terms. The article concludes with a discussion on the interrelationship between the unique and ambiguous components that the concept of peer support raises. Reprinted by permission of the publisher
Peer support in mental health services -- the reciprocal sharing of the experience of mental health distress -- is an innovative new way of working which, through an emerging evidence base, is ...becoming gradually embedded into health and social care services in the UK. The article focuses on the genesis of peer support in mental health services, demonstrating a different pathway from examples given in general health services. It describes the modalities and delivery of peer support reflecting the different situational contexts in which the activity takes place. The emphasis on the need for training peer supporters to carry out this function is explored together with the existing, yet insufficient, evidence base in both intervention and cost effective terms. The article concludes with a discussion on the interrelationship between the unique and ambiguous components that the concept of peer support raises. Adapted from the source document.
Peer support in mental health services - the reciprocal sharing of the experience of mental health distress - is an innovative new way of working which, through an emerging evidence base, is becoming ...gradually embedded into health and social care services in the UK The article focuses on the genesis of peer support in mental health services, demonstrating a different pathway from examples given in general health services. It describes the modalities and delivery of peer support reflecting the different situational contexts in which the activity takes place. The emphasis on the need for training peer supporters to carry out this function is explored together with the existing, yet insufficient, evidence base in both intervention and cost effective terms. The article concludes with a discussion on the interrelationship between the unique and ambiguous components that the concept of peer support raises. PUBLICATION ABSTRACT
On the international stage, delegates to the international policy conference in 2004 helped raise recognition of the voices of users as an integral element in the shaping of mental health policy.
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