Catherine Forde

Participatory Democracy or Pseudo-Participation? Local Government Reform in Ireland

Since 1996 local government in the Republic of Ireland has undergone extensive reform. One of the central aims of this reform is the enhancement of local and participatory democracy through generating new forms of participation by communities in local authority decision-making processes, and through strengthening the decision-making role of city and county councillors. Drawing on comparisons with current British local government reforms and on key community governance frameworks, this paper questions the validity of this aim, given the ‘top-down’ nature of the reforms, the ongoing weakness of Irish local government vis-à-vis central government, and the increasingly contractual and consumerist approach of the state towards the voluntary and community sector. It argues that the reforms consolidate Irish local government as a system of local administration rather than local democracy, and that they may threaten the development of participatory democracy, rather than facilitate it.

Children’s participation: moving from the performative to the social

The body of work on children’s participation has been valuable in asserting its importance. Nonetheless, participation is a contested concept and key challenges arise relating to its emphasis on age and voice, its focus on socialising the participative responsible citizen, and its failure to sufficiently recognise the range of participatory activities of children in their everyday lives. This article presents findings of a study on children’s experiences of participation in their homes, schools, and communities including the importance of the relational context, how everyday interactions rather than ‘performative’ formal structures for participation are valued by children and how their participation is limited by adult processes based on notions of competence and voice. It concludes with an argument for recognising and facilitating children’s informal and social participation as well as new forms of democratic processes being developed by children to address the possibility of governance and over-responsibilisation of children.

‘Moral distress’ and the beginning practitioner: preparing social work students for ethical and moral challenges in contemporary contexts

ABSTRACT Translating the social justice ideals of social work into practice can pose significant challenges for new social work graduates in contemporary contexts that are characterised by rationalism, individualism and control. This paper contributes to the debate on the place of activism in social work education by addressing the question of how social work education prepares students to manage ‘moral distress’ [Weinberg, M. 2009. “Moral Distress: A Missing but Relevant Concept for Ethics in Social Work.” Canadian Social Work Review 26 (2): 139–151; Fine, M., and E. Teram. 2013. “Overt and Covert Ways of Responding to Moral Injustices in Social Work Practice: Heroes and Mild-Mannered Social Work Bipeds.” British Journal of Social Work 43. doi:10.1093/bjsw/bcs056 ] and respond to social injustices that they may encounter in their work with individuals, families and communities. Drawing on our experiences as social work educators at an Australian and an Irish university, we examine how beginning practitioners negotiate the challenges, risks and moral dilemmas of social change practices across different organisational and policy contexts. We discuss three reoccurring themes as important for students as emerging practitioners: recognising risks, acknowledging moral ‘dissonance’ in a critically reflexive manner and understanding that all social work takes place in a policy context and therefore engaging with policy is a fundamental element of practice. Our analysis concludes that ideas and expositions of activism based on nuanced, flexible and opportunistic social change practices offer significant but realistic possibilities for engaged social work practice.

Social work and community development

At a time of growing social, economic and environmental challenge, this book offers a fresh and engaging perspective on the connections between social work and community development and on how social workers can use a community development approach to practice in critical, creative and sustainable ways.

Social Work within a Community Discourse: Challenges for Teaching

This paper considers the continuing debate about the relationship between social work and community work. We write about our collaboration as educators, one from a social work background and the other from a community work background and discuss the challenge of teaching community work to social work students in a way that is relevant for contemporary practice, and that embraces community work principles and values. Our paper explores Ifes framework of competing discourses of human services and discusses how it has helped us to articulate our thinking and teaching practice in the Irish context. For us, the framework integrates social work and community work within a community discourse that provides a language transcending disciplinary boundaries. This approach represents a means of familiarising students with the community work process and enabling them to take action on issues of social justice. The framework represents four competing models of human service delivery: the managerial, the market, the professional and the community. We discuss how we use this conceptualisation to teach and engage students in a process of critical reflection. The paper discusses methods we use to undertake this process, and the development of our teaching practice over the last two years.

Children and Young People’s Right to Participate: National and Local Youth Councils in Ireland

This article explores the impacts of participation in local and national child and youth councils in the Republic of Ireland. It is based on an original research study for which 300 young people were asked about their experience of participating in youth councils. The research indicates that while youth councils have succeeded in offering children and young people opportunities to acquire skills and to influence decision-making at the local level, the institutional and societal impacts of their participation are less apparent. The research provides evidence that youth participation impacts positively on young people’s active citizenship and on-going engagement with democratic institutions after their participatory experiences have ended. It also indicates a growing awareness and recognition of the role of children and young people in the community. The article concludes that participatory structures such as youth councils should be underpinned by statutory guidelines and legislation so that children and young people’s participation is meaningful and gains from their participation are not lost.

Children and Young People’s Participation in the Community in Ireland: Experiences and Issues

This paper presents the findings of research into children and young people’s experiences of participating in their communities in Ireland. Using a social and relational understanding of participation, the research found that children and young people are engaged in a wide range of activities in their communities. They are however often misunderstood in the community and have limited opportunities for participation in decisions affecting them. Despite these problems, they report positive experiences of participating in youth clubs and organisations, where their participation is supported by adults. The paper discusses the implications of these findings for research, public policy and community.

Book review: Margaret Ledwith Community Development in Action: Putting Freire into practice:

have to use them, the impact of low pay, issues of food consumption, diet and health, and the continuing impact of stigma. The most interesting discussions circulate around the politics of foodbanks addressing the question ‘Is Foodbank Britain here to stay’? The Coalition and Conservative governments struggled for years to deny either the existence of foodbanks, on anything like their real scale, or the causal link between their growth and government welfare policy. In an outrageous and cynical sleight of hand, former UK Prime Minister Cameron stated, in 2015, that the growth of foodbanks was an illusion with numbers seemingly increasing only when Job Centres had been instructed to advertise their existence. The government, as Garthwaite points out, has no plans to monitor their growth nor the numbers of people forced to use foodbanks, preferring to collude with the existence of a parallel welfare ‘state’ run by volunteers and dependent on charitable inclination. Perhaps this captures precisely what Cameron meant when he introduced the concept of the ‘Big Society’, his ‘big idea’ entailing statutory universal services being replaced by volunteer-run, unfunded services not subject to quality assurance or the setting of standards. The current government has shown signs of wanting to neuter the impact of foodbanks given they have become, in some instances, effective and outspoken. One dangerous suggestion was to place state work and pensions officials in them allegedly to provide advice, but no doubt to ensure that benefit claimants are kept under surveillance and to be able to reduce their benefits still further. Related to the meagreness of state benefits, foodbanks are likely to remain for as long as the centuries-long, comparatively harsh, attitudes of the UK population towards the ‘undeserving poor’ persist. Perhaps the political clout they can muster as the movement grows, and the contradictions associate with them, may shift attitudes?