Kristel Driessens

Research with social workers to improve their social interventions

From the North to the South of Europe, embedded in local contexts, we can find interesting projects of cooperative knowledge production in social work settings. In this article we present case studies from research projects with social workers in Helsinki, Trento and Antwerp. We describe how the new paradigm of knowledge production (Mode 2) is implemented in this kind of social work research. We look for the specificity of the research process in these projects, the benefits for the researchers and the practitioners, and the necessary conditions to get satisfactory results.

The Meaningful Involvement of Service Users in Social Work Education: Examples from Belgium and The Netherlands

Abstract This article links the development of service user involvement championed in the United Kingdom to two examples in Dutch-speaking qualifying social work programmes: one from Belgium and one from the Netherlands. In both projects, a longer lasting cooperation with more marginalised service users was established. The Belgium project highlights social work lecturers and service users living in poverty, working in tandem to deliver a module to social work and socio-educational care work students. The example from the Netherlands involves young people from a homeless shelter as peer-researchers, working together with social work students. Both projects, one focusing on social work education and on social work research, highlight striking similarities in the positives and challenges of working with service users including how this challenges both groups preconceptions of the other, deepens learning but also creates greater potential for confrontations which need to be managed creatively. The article also identifies the pre-requisites for this to be effective including appropriate resourcing, training, facilitative skills and acknowledges that collaborations can be extremely fragile. However, such projects need further investment, experimentation and implementation on an international scale to share learning and promote creative approaches for the development and learning of social work students.

Two birds of a feather? Collaboration in social work research in Europe

Social work research, what’s in a name? Definitely, it is not as carefree as it might seem at first glance. Questions are being asked on how this research should be conducted and what kind of research social work practice needs. A noteworthy number of writings show that the discussion is still current. Social work research is dominated by tensions and questions on the usability, the implementation and, more generally, the identity of the research. One can say that this is inherent in the emergence of a ‘new’ discipline. However, social work research has its history and is not as new as sometimes imagined (as shown by Ian Shaw’s contribution in this volume). But after decades of looking for a distinct identity, social work research is evolving at rather different rates and forms in different European countries. Nowadays, finding research-based answers for social work issues is still liable to problems of uncertainty as to how practice and research are related. Social work research is not profiled as a distinct academic discipline but departs from an interdisciplinary point of view. Moreover, it holds a characteristic research approach that is oriented towards change and has an egalitarian relationship between the objects and subjects of research (in most cases the practitioners and the researchers) (see Hugh McLaughlin’s contribution in this volume). Defining social work research is no longer a question of listing subjects or themes such as ‘care’ and ‘welfare’ as preferred domains, but increasingly one of how to perform the research. Today, we do not question what the subject of social work research should be, but rather who should be involved in what way. It is acknowledged that a (reciprocal) relationship between practice and research is an important feature. Consequently, more should be learned about the way in which collaboration can support both research and practice and what challenges nowadays are faced in this respect. With this special issue, we focus on collaboration. The issue is the result of a conference on this topic that took place in September 2009 in Antwerp. The initiative for the conference was provided by the newborn Masters in Social Work at the University of Antwerp, Belgium. When establishing this new educational programme, debates arose on the specific nature and identity, on the attainments and goals of that academic degree. Collaboration between academics, practitioners and other actors became a central issue in the exchange of ideas on social work research’s

Taking the measure: a participatory approach to measuring and monitoring psychological empowerment in social work practices

ABSTRACT For years, the professional field has been searching for methods that could be used to chart the effectiveness of social services. Social workers report that their current systems for registration and measurement do not provide an accurate reflection of their practice. The measurement of client empowerment might offer an alternative method that could improve the evaluation of social services. This method links the need for measuring instruments to the paradigm of empowerment, which has shaped contemporary social work. A scale for measuring psychological empowerment was developed in consultation with social workers and people in poverty, based on validated and reliable measurement scales. It was subsequently tested in two Public Centres for Social Welfare in Flanders (Belgium). Results of confirmatory factor analysis indicate that the measurement model provides a good fit for the data and that the various latent factors are reliable and valid. We conclude that the factors emerging from the factor analysis reflect the three dimensions that form the concept of psychological empowerment: the intrapsychic, interpsychic and behavioural components. Results from the post-test survey indicate that this measurement instrument is promising, and that it could offer a response to current needs, although additional efforts are needed in order to improve the instrument’s handling.

Measuring Empowerment: Development and Validation of the Service User Psychological Empowerment Scale

ABSTRACT Current registrations and measurements used in social services are criticized for not providing an accurate reflection of the social work practice. The Service User Psychological Empowerment Scale (SUPES) was developed with input from both service users and social workers in order to provide an alternative measure. The SUPES is a 28-item scale that can be used to measure the intrapersonal, interactional, and behavioral dimensions of psychological empowerment among service users. The SUPES was tested among a sample of 349 service users in the setting of Public Centres for Social Welfare (PCSWs) in two Belgian cities. Through factor analysis, the SUPES was found to be valid and reliable in assessing the different dimensions of psychological empowerment among service users. Future research should evaluate the effects of social work interventions by assessing developments in the psychological empowerment of service users in the course of receiving social assistance.

Social work research as a practice of transparency

Social work research is inherently normative and as such the assumptions about social problems in social work research should be open to scrutiny and contestation. But although researchers often face tussles and huge contradictions, they rarely articulate them. In this article, we report on a small research project in which a collective of social work researchers in Flanders (the Dutch speaking part of Belgium) tried to think critically through some of the questions and complexities they were confronted with in social work research, more specifically in research on poverty. Our research aim implied that we tried to discuss the choices that were made during a diversity of research projects, including making explicit the grounds on which this happened. We learned that the choices made, although they seem to be very obvious ones, often remained implicit during the different research processes. We conclude that social work research requires that researchers attempt to realize a practice of transparency. The pursuit of such a practice of transparency refers to the importance of the creation of reflexive space in research communities to collectively embrace and discuss the complexities of social work research.