Jim Campbell

Dilemmas in the Case Manager's Role: Implementing Involuntary Treatment in the Community

Frontline non-medical practitioners in mental health services are frequently working as case managers with involuntary clients in the community who are subject to community treatment orders (CTOs). In this work they often experience tensions between the various legal and organisational expectations of their role, their professional orientation and wider understandings of social justice and consumer rights. This paper reviews literature on the purpose and efficacy of CTOs before discussing the current, limited role of the case manager within the Mental Health Review Board (MHRB) process in Victoria. In the concluding sections, it is argued that a more involved function for the case manager may enhance the decision-making process of mental health review tribunals.

Risk, Recovery and Capacity: Competing or Complementary Approaches to Mental Health Social Work

ABSTRACT Mental health social workers have a central role in providing support to people with mental health problems and in the use of coercion aimed at dealing with risk. Mental health services have traditionally focused on monitoring symptoms and ascertaining the risks people may present to themselves or others. This well-intentioned but negative focus on deficits has contributed to stigma, discrimination, and exclusion experienced by service users. Emerging understandings of risk also suggest that our inability to accurately predict the future makes risk a problematic foundation for compulsory intervention. Therefore it is argued that alternative approaches are needed to make issues of power and inequality transparent. This article focuses on two areas of practice: the use of recovery-based approaches, which promote supported decision-making and inclusion; and the assessment of a persons ability to make decisions, their mental capacity, as a less discriminatory gateway criterion than risk for compulsory intervention.

People with Dementia in a Rural Community Issues of Prevalence and Community Care Policy

This local study, a follow-up to one carried out 10 years earlier, focuses on prevalence rates and living circumstances of 435 people with dementia residing in a rural county in Northern Ireland. The cross-disciplinary, collaborative nature of the research process and the impact of community care policy and variation in place of residence over a decade are discussed. The advantages to be gained by carrying out similar pieces of local research are highlighted.

Mental Health Social Work: Perspectives on Risk, Regulation, and Therapeutic Interventions

As we write this editorial, the Australian Government has launched a major reform of the Australian mental health system. According to Professor Ian Hickie, one of the National Mental Health Commis...

Dealing with the learning needs of child welfare social and health care workers: an interdisciplinary approach to blended learning with part time students

ABSTRACT This paper describes and critically evaluates a new interdisciplinary MSc in Child Welfare and Protection designed in Ireland for national and international post-qualified practitioners. It begins with a review of literature and policy and practice contexts where considerable changes to the delivery of child care services, as well as processes of monitoring need and risk, have occurred in the last decade. The next section of the paper discusses a range of perspectives on the strengths and limitations of blended learning approaches and how they can be used in interdisciplinary professional education. The second half of the paper focuses on the design and delivery of the program that was managed by academics from social work, radiography and nursing. Included in the paper are details of curriculum content, pedagogic methodologies, assessment and program management. The authors discuss opportunities and obstacles in delivering the program, including the careful use of resources and technological support, interdisciplinary debates and institutional commitments. The paper appeals to a form of blended learning that supports student learning, not just through new forms of technology, but by demonstrating that these can be mixed with traditional types of learning and teaching. In doing so it is argued that professionals can develop important, appropriate skills, knowledge and values.

Legal capacity and the mental health social worker role: An international comparison

ABSTRACT New capacity laws have been introduced to many jurisdictions over the last decade. These laws have substantially changed the way in which mental health social workers and other professionals approach decisions about, and for, clients. Most notably, there is now an expectation that mental health social workers engage more in supported decision-making to prevent the need for substitute decision-making. This article describes the legal and policy drivers that have led to these changes in practice, with a particular emphasis on the significance of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (the UNCRPD) and the importance of recovery approaches in mental health services. It then uses selected literature to explore the efficacy of the laws and decision-making in this area. The second part of the article identifies the role that mental health social workers can play in supporting legal capacity, drawing from the authors’ experience and knowledge of mental health social work and law in four jurisdictions: Victoria, Australia; Ontario, Canada; England and Wales; and Northern Ireland. It is concluded that mental health and other social workers need to refine skills, knowledge and values to accommodate this paradigm shift in law, policy and practice.

Social work for critical peace: a comparative approach to understanding social work and political conflict

ABSTRACT This paper uses a case study approach to explore issues of social work policy and practice in three sites of political conflict in Europe: Northern Ireland; Bosnia and Herzegovina; and Cyprus. It begins with a review of the international literature on social work and political conflict and then discusses the strengths and limitations in engaging with comparative case study approaches. The authors explain how they view the writing of the paper as an intellectual encounter that helped establish the beginning stages of their comparative analysis. This starts with an analysis of the existing knowledge base about the three case studies that each share similar patterns of colonial histories, political and community conflict and the social work response. The second part of the paper extends this analysis to a critique of the impact of neo-liberal social and economic policies that often adversely impact upon the role of social workers in resolving conflict and building peace. The paper concludes with an appeal for social work to rediscover its rights-based role in working with victims and survivors of political conflict, what the authors describe as: ‘social work for critical peace’.