Fiona Gardner

Affirming values: using critical reflection to explore meaning and professional practice

How important is being able to express values and meaning at work for professional workers? This article explores how critical reflection can be used by workers to explore how meaning can be expressed as part of professional practice in organizations. The literature suggests that health and human service professionals are increasingly expected to work in uncertain, complex, managerial work environments, which can leave workers feeling unable to act according to their values. The resulting loss of meaning has major implications for the quality of their work, job satisfaction and levels of anxiety. This article focuses on the way critical reflection is used at the Centre for Professional Development at LaTrobe University, Australia. Critical reflection, as defined here, is both a theoretical approach and a two‐stage process for exploring practice. Participants bring a specific experience from their practice to explore in small critical reflection groups. Examples are given of how critical reflection has been used and what participants identify this has meant for them. Overall, the process enabled participants to articulate fundamental values in a way that affirmed the meaning of their practice and increased satisfaction and valuing of their work roles.

Social Work Students and Self-awareness: How does it happen?

Do student social workers develop the capacity to reflect and develop awareness of their own attitudes and values? If they do, what is significant in the process? These are seen as important elements of teaching for social work practice. Writers about teaching and learning suggest that learning is likely to be deeper or more connected to practice when it includes reflection: the ability to connect new information with personal meaning or past experiences [Salmon P. (1988) Psychology for Teachers: An Alternative Approach (Hutchinson); Kolb, D.A., Rubin, I.M. & Osland, J. (1991) Organisational Behavior: An Experiential Approach, 5th edn (Englewood Cliffs, NJ, Prentice Hall)]. I decided to explore these questions with ten graduating students from the social work course in which I teach, most of whom were mature age students with some relevant experience in the field. I used a semi-structured interview with each of them. All of the students felt this was a significant area in the course, nine were able to give examples of increased self-awareness and eight changes in values and attitudes. This had come about in a variety of ways; significant factors being the introduction of new knowledge, interactions with other students both formally and informally, their experience of the student group, the culture of the course, field work and making connections across classes. The use of small group work and exercises, having to articulate their values and modelling by lecturers were also seen as important.

Noticing change: Developing strength-focused tools in a mental health service

Working with clients to notice change is a key issue in working in mental health services. In 2001, St Lukes Recovery Focused Mental Health Team initiated a project to develop strength-focused tools for measuring change for people using mental health recovery programs. A partnership was formed with La Trobe University Bendigos Social Work Department. Consumers, carers and staff were involved in exploring what kinds of change it was helpful to notice and what helped people to notice change. Comments reinforced existing literature about what is important to notice and suggested the importance of having tools that allowed expression of consumer differences. Two tools were developed and trialled. From the feedback, these were refined and a third tool developed. The combination of tools allowed consumers to choose a tool that suited their style of noticing change and provided information for the agency about overall outcomes.

The Education of Children in Out-of-home Care

Abstract In spite of a high investment in out-of-home care services across Australia, the educational attainment of children in care remains an issue of concern. This paper discusses findings from a study designed to identify the factors that promoted educational attainment of children in care based on 18 university-educated women with a care background. The narratives of these women from primary schooling through to graduating from a university were collected and analysed using narrative inquiry. The womens narratives strongly suggested that the educational needs of children in care vary according to individual care circumstances and individual characteristics, and can be identified in five groups: Destined, Decision, Determined, Denied, and Delayed. It was concluded that the promotion of educational attainment for children in care requires carefully tailored support and resources following assessment based on this information.

Shared Action: Stronger communities, safer children

This article explores the effectiveness of an innovative and exciting project called ‘Shared Action’, a community development approach to child protection in Bendigo, Victoria. Shared Action was a three-year project which started in January 1997. It began by encouraging a sense of community ownership. A shared vision was developed with key goals leading to a wide range of community activities. A sense of hope and cooperation grew along with social networks, the capacity to resolve conflict constructively and a shared sense of community responsibility.

Critical Spirituality in Holistic Practice

This paper is based on a keynote presentation given at the Annual Conference of the British Association for the Study of Spirituality in May 2016 which posed the question ‘Can spirituality transform the world?’. Including the spiritual is an increasing expectation for those engaged in human service organisations, partly because of their work with those experiencing trauma and change and partly because of greater individual and community interest. Human service professionals currently wrestle with these expectations, often feeling undertrained and underprepared to undertake such practice. Critical spirituality is a framework influenced by research with health and social care professionals who wanted actively to include the spiritual in their professional practice. Critical spirituality means seeing people holistically, seeking to understand where they are ‘coming from’ and what matters to them at a fundamental level; the level that is part of the everyday but which also transcends it. This framework can be used to argue for the integration of the critical, the reflective and the spiritual into a coherent approach to practice that is holistic, inclusive and addresses issues of social justice. The expectation is to combine post-modern valuing of the diversity of individual and/or community spiritual experiences with a critical perspective that asserts the importance of living harmoniously and respectfully at an individual, family and community level. This framework generates both principles and strategies for transforming practice and, through practice, the world.

Making death, compassion and partnership ‘part of life’ in school communities

Abstract Death can be considered a social taboo, a common source of fear and public avoidance. School communities are not immune to this, as the topic of death is constantly avoided. It is vital to understand how we can socially and culturally cultivate a positive regard for death, dying and bereavement in our school communities. Community members need to discuss these difficult issues and use strategies to enhance compassion, connectedness and support. In this literature review we reason that death is specifically not ‘part of life’ in school communities. Due to the dearth of school community-based literature on this issue and the progressive literature residing in palliative care, we aim to coalesce palliative care and school-based research, evaluate it and highlight compassion and partnership as a way forward for school communities. Essentially, our societal attitudes about death and dying have been profoundly altered and our community ownership of these normal life events has largely disappeared. This is demonstrated for example, by palliative care moving from the social grass roots ‘modern hospice movement’ formed in the 1960s and being reintegrated into the mainstream health care system by the end of the 1990s, resulting in an overall medicalised morphing of death, dying and bereavement issues. Therefore, we recommend that further research be conducted in how to develop compassionate schools to inform us how death may be continually made ‘part of life’ in school communities, for the benefit of students, teachers and families alike.

Links in Casework Practice: Parallels in Working with Families Involved in Divorce or with Children in Care.

This article explores the links between two areas of practice—working with families involved in divorce or with children in care. There are many parallels between such apparently different kinds of work. Children and parents in both situations experience a sense of grief and loss. The children become part of two families: how well they manage this reflects how the adults involved cope. Some strategies can help in both areas such as encouraging shared decision-making, using written agreements and having a neutral person to negotiate with.