Jennifer Boddy

Making Sense of the Waves: Wipeout or Still Riding High?

This article argues for feminism’s enduring importance in light of social workers’ daily experience of women’s abuse and oppression. Although cognizant of the many ways in which feminist theories can be understood, the authors examine the successive waves of feminism and apply Fraser’s theory of recognition and redistribution to examine contemporary feminist movements and point to future directions for feminist social work. They argue that postcolonial feminism, with its awareness of culture and context, is most useful for social work. They see new forms of third-wave feminism, including integrative and postfeminism, as fueling neoliberal consumerist inequality, intensifying the need for feminist social work critique, scholarship, and activism.

Visual ethnography and refugee women: nuanced understandings of lived experiences

Purpose – This paper aims to reinforce the significance of visual ethnography as a tool for mental health promotion.Design/methodology/approach – Visual ethnography has become an established methodology particularly in qualitative studies, to understand specific themes within participants’ everyday realities. Beyond providing a visual element, such methods allow for meaningful and nuanced explorations of sensitive themes, allowing richer sets of data to emerge rather than focussing on conversations alone. The participants in this study evaluated how far they had come by exploring complex circumstances using visual ethnographic means.Findings – Research with single refugee women in Brisbane, Australia, demonstrates how discussing photographs and creating digital movies yielded a sense of achievement, pride and accomplishment, health and wellbeing, and ownership for some women, while for others it was a burden.Originality/value – Studies with single refugee women have been scarce with limited use of visual ...

Mutual Benefits: Developing Relational Service Approaches Within Centrelink

Abstract The machinery of income support can have considerable influence in peoples lives, creating opportunities for social work but also tensions: access to vulnerable people, but not always on their terms. This paper argues that the challenge to social work is about more than holding on to professional discretion. It considers how social workers can influence service delivery approaches to work more relationally, pursuing a more equal involvement of clients, and recognising the complex interactive context of social and community life. The authors trace the development of such an approach within the Australian Government human services delivery agency Centrelink in Logan, Queensland, and briefly consider a parallel innovation in Newcastle, New South Wales. The authors suggest that grounding a large institutional social service agency in the realities of client and community experiences has mutual benefits, creating a more humanising, cooperative space, and displacing inefficient and sometimes tragic cycles of misunderstanding, confrontation, and disconnection.

Social Work Students ‘Juggling’ Field Placement

Abstract Field education is widely acknowledged as a central component of social work education. However, it requires a substantial commitment of time and energy from students which can present challenges to students who have multiple responsibilities. Based on a literature review conducted in preparation for doctoral research into social work student experience of juggling multiple roles and responsibilities with field placement, this article summarises what is known about the challenges they face and what helps them to complete placement. The findings have implications for students, schools of social work and field placement agencies. Further research should provide guidance for professional social work bodies, schools of social work, field educators and students.

Relinquishing or taking control? Community perspectives on barriers and opportunities in advance care planning

OBJECTIVE This paper reports on the experiences and perspectives of community members in relation to advance healthcare directives and enduring power of attorney, including the factors that encourage or discourage engagement in advance care planning (ACP). METHODS; A qualitative methodology was used involving 26 in-depth telephone interviews with community members (mean age 66 years). The aims of the interview question were to gain an understanding of: (1) motivations for engaging in ACP; (2) barriers that prevent people from engaging in ACP; and (3) suggestions for promoting ACP. RESULTS The findings suggest that: (1) community members lack knowledge about ACP; (2) forms appear inaccessible and complex; (3) community members avoid ACP due to fear, mistrust and concerns over control; and (4) there are misperceptions regarding the relevance of ACP based on age and health. CONCLUSIONS There is unnecessary fear, avoidance and mistrust around ACP activities, largely resulting from misinformation. There is an undoubted need for greater education and support to be offered to individuals and their families regarding ACP, its benefits and its limitations.

Transgenderism and Australian Social Work: A Literature Review

Abstract The transgender community represents a highly marginalised portion of the Australian population, frequently experiencing discrimination, social isolation, and harm. This review explores literature informing Australian social work with transgender people. It highlights the importance of generating a transgender-positive discourse within Australian social work to effectively engage with and advocate for individuals with nontraditional gender identities. Key themes emerged from reviewing the literature related to the medical model, the mental health of transgender people, interdisciplinary and alternative transgender literature, minority status of transgender people, existing social work approaches to transgenderism, and Indigenous transgender literature. The views of transgender Australians are largely absent from the literature. However, the Australian transgender communitys emerging voice and political activism highlights the potential for collaboration to play a significant role in the process of building a working knowledge base for social work. Based on the identified gaps in literature, in this paper we call for continued progress in developing a theoretical and practical knowledge base that incorporates the lived experiences of transgender Australians. We argue for the development of an approach to practice that is responsive to gender diversity. Highlighted in the review are the conditions that promote greater engagement with the transgender community.

The Writing Series Project: A Model for Supporting Social Work Clinicians in Health Settings to Disseminate Practice Knowledge

Social work clinicians across health care settings are uniquely positioned to disseminate valuable practice experience, thereby contributing to knowledge development within their field of practice and across disciplines. Unfortunately, practitioners tend to shy away from writing and research, and are often reluctant to publicly disseminate their expertise through peer-reviewed journals and conference presentations. To better support health social workers in scholarly endeavors, we developed and implemented The Writing Series Project in southeast Queensland, Australia. This article reports on the development, programmatic challenges and practitioner feedback that offer insight into the benefits and pitfalls that we encountered.

Challenging Gender Role Stereotypes and Creating Pathways for Goal Achievement A Study of a Group Mentoring Programme for Women from Disadvantaged Communities

This article critically examines the success of the Map Your Future women’s mentoring programme (MYF) in challenging gender role norms with a group of women from four socio-economically disadvantaged communities of a large Australian provincial city. MYF was underpinned by a ‘feminist-strengths’ perspective and used a social intervention research framework to guide programme development, implementation and evaluation. Participants, who were predominantly of Anglo-Celtic ethnicity, came from communities where there was a persistent cultural expectation that women work within the home. Unemployment was significantly higher, one-parent families more common, the median weekly household income lower and completion of secondary education well below the state average in all communities (Australian Bureau of Statistics [ABS], 2006). The findings suggest that group mentoring with women, from cultures where care-giving is valued over education and career opportunities, can assist women to broaden their educational and career interests and enable them to explore their hopes and goals for the future unconstrained by gender role norms.

Athena's Legacy: Preparing Women for a Mentoring Program

ABSTRACT A community-based research study conducted in 2004 identified a number of women from disadvantaged communities who sought mentoring in personal, educational, and vocational aspects of their lives. Informed by this earlier research, a program titled Map Your Future was developed, and a pilot mentoring program commenced in 2005. This article describes the group program that was developed to prepare the women for a mentoring relationship, and the research methodology underpinning its development. It concludes with an exploration of the womens experiences of the program.

Preparing social work graduates for digital practice: ethical pedagogies for effective learning

ABSTRACT Debate has arisen in social work about the value of online education, with proponents providing examples of innovative approaches to online teaching and those against it citing the need for face-to-face interactions to suitably teach and assess social work skills. At the same time, social workers are increasingly making use of social media, websites, online databases, email, and text messaging services for work with clients. Consequently, social workers must be adequately prepared to make use of online technologies in their practice. Drawing on examples of online interactive activities used at two regional universities and informed by Chi’s conceptual framework of cognitive processes of learning, this article argues that learning via information and communications technology (ICT) helps prepare graduates for emerging digital practice and should be an integral part of social work education. Further, ICT enables educators to monitor the levels and quality of student rehearsal of practice skills and knowledge in interactive learning experiences helping promote competent practice, grounded in social work values.