Deena Mandell

POWER, CARE AND VULNERABILITY: CONSIDERING USE OF SELF IN CHILD WELFARE WORK

The construct of ‘use of self’ in social work has fallen out of favour due to its focus on the individual and its roots in the original countertransference literature, where issues of power were largely neglected. On the other hand, structural, anti‐oppression and critical social work have tended to disregard the individual workers personhood except for social identity as they focus on issues of power. This division leaves a gap in our understanding of how personal and social selves interact in social work encounters. Working with children and families in the context of child protection/child welfare can call forth every aspect of a workers personhood. Where authority and care are closely intertwined in responding to vulnerability, personal, social and professional dimensions cannot be separated. This chapter argues that attention to both dimensions — authority and care — is required in all social work interactions, focusing in particular on the field of child welfare, where an imbalance of power and vulnerability in the social work relationship is underscored and where care can be compromised as a result. Suggestions for fostering critical reflection in the child welfare context are offered.

Confirmatory Factor Analysis of the Maslach Burnout Inventory

Abstract Although the Maslach Burnout Inventory (MBI) is widely used to assess burnout in human service workers, doubt has been cast on the usefulness of the conceptualization on which it is based and the independence of its subscales. A confirmatory factor analysis using the methodology employed in a previous study of child welfare workers revealed that the final model had only a minimally adequate fit and the constructs of emotional exhaustion and depersonalization were not separate and unique. The findings suggest that research in child welfare settings should avoid continued reliance on the MBI for the assessment of burnout. Scales that are balanced in terms of positive and negative items and where each dimension represents a distinct construct need to be developed.

Writing for Publication: Assessment of a Course for Social Work Doctoral Students

The authors describe a for-credit course for Social Work PhD students called Writing for Publication and report on a study evaluating its success in supporting students to develop and submit a paper for publication in a refereed journal. The literature-informed course design, taught in collaboration with the university’s Writing Centre, includes didactic elements and a peer editing component. Seventeen of the 22 students who had taken the course completed an anonymous online survey asking whether they had submitted the paper and the outcome, whether the course had been helpful, in what ways, and in which other areas of the PhD program they were most helpful. The quantitative and qualitative data indicate that the course has been successful. A majority of students submitted an article to a peer-reviewed journal, and a majority found the course helpful in this regard as well as in other areas of the PhD program. Based on findings regarding the contributions of the course and student suggestions for improvement, we discuss considerations for strengthening the program in future.

Boundaries and relationships between service users and service providers in community mental health services

ABSTRACT In this article, we discuss a qualitative research project aimed at understanding the various ways in which community mental health case managers and those receiving mental health services describe and envision their helping relationships, with a particular focus on awareness and navigation of boundaries. Boundaries are seen as particularly challenging to navigate in community practice, where relationships are necessarily informal and relatively unstructured. Twenty-six mental health services users and 19 service providers were interviewed. Participants describe their preference for a relationship that is supportive, flexible, and respectful. They highlight the importance of boundaries for increasing safety in the helping relationship, and the dangers created when conversations about boundaries are neglected or inadequate. We focus on the importance of these findings for education, training, and supervision.