Margaret Williams

The Nature of Foster Care International Trends

The nature of foster care is changing around the world. Based on their forthcoming book on the same theme, Matthew Colton and Margaret Williams review developments in the purpose, definition and practice of foster care in countries as different as Argentina, Hungary, Finland, Italy, Zimbabwe and the UK. With respect to purpose, they argue that the growing emphasis on family support, reunification, and normalisation has implications for the way that foster care might be defined. With regard to practice, they point to a trend towards diversification of foster care programmes so that increasing numbers of children with different and more challenging needs can all be served. The authors conclude by suggesting a new definition of foster care, aimed at encompassing the breadth and diversity of service needed to accommodate the changing needs of children everywhere.

Current Challenges in Social Work Distance Education: Responses from the Elluminati

One of the first tasks of the Social Work Distance Education Network at the Faculty of Social Work at the University of Calgary was to review the literature and address three research questions to inform policy making and planning relating to distance social work education programming. This paper is intended to disseminate responses to these questions from a small group of dedicated and experienced distance educators who have adopted the moniker Elluminati. (The Elluminati adapted their name from a popular online audio-conferencing program.) These questions include: (1) What is the optimal class size for a distance delivery offering? (2) What supports does an online course require for development and effective delivery? (3) What types of courses are suitable/unsuitable for online learning?

Child Welfare AND Stigma Principles into Practice

This article draws on an empirical study of stigma and child welfare in the Netherlands, the United Kingdom and Spain; it shows how stigma continues to be a part of the experience of using and delivering child welfare services, despite the positive determination of policies in all three countries that this should not be so. More optimistically, however, it is also evident that the experience of stigma and exclusion can be reduced, and the article concludes by outlining those factors which would appear to be most significant in combatting stigma.

Team Teaching in Social Work: Sharing Power with Bachelor of Social Work Students.

Team teaching in social work education usually involves sequential lectures delivered by different instructors—relay or tag-team teaching. Truly collaborative or collegial team teaching involves a committed group of diverse instructors interacting together as equals in the classroom. Having more than one teacher in the classroom confounds traditional student strategies of meeting expectations of a single authority or expert; they are forced to think for themselves. This article explores the literature on team teaching from social work and related disciplines, concluding with a close examination of recent collegial team-teaching experiences in social work at the University of Calgary.

The origins and contexts of contemporary child welfare

To understand the forces that drive child welfare today, it is necessary to look at the forces that have shaped it in the past. You may groan at the thought of beginning your study of child welfare with a history lesson. You may secretly believe that it doesn’t matter what the Victorians did: the world has changed so much that the issues of the nineteenth century are totally irrelevant to us today. In some fields, you may be right, but in the field of child welfare the same issues reoccur generation after generation because they are not matters of fact to be discovered and resolved but matters of judgement, perspective and belief. What rights should a child have, for example? (answer: none, if you regard a child as property.) What rights should a parent have? What rights should society have? Whose rights take precedence in the case of conflict? Who decides whose rights take precedence? Through what process? Based on what criteria?

Child development theory

It is essential for anyone undertaking work with a child to understand how children develop. Such knowledge enables the social worker to understand how the child has reached his or her current stage of development. Just as importantly, it provides an understanding of which factors, among many in the child’s social environment, are most likely to influence how the child develops in the future. This then provides a focus for intervention as the worker will want to target those factors that are most significant. Like most things in social work, this is easier said than done. Four centuries of thinking about how children develop have not yielded easy answers, but have rather revealed the complexity of various influences on children’s lives.

Skills in working with children and families

In teaching and training it is customary to divide the requirements needed to undertake a particular kind of work into knowledge requirements, skills requirements and value (or attitude) requirements. This chapter deals with skills requirements. Knowledge is a matter of what a person needs to know in order to do the work; values or attitudes refer to how the person needs to feel; skills are what the person needs to do. It is very difficult to learn how to do something by reading a book – practice skills can only come with time and experience – but a book can tell you what types of skills are necessary to be able to undertake effective work. When you have read this chapter, you will not be a skilled practitioner, but you will have an idea of what skills need to be mastered and how you might begin to acquire these skills.

Prevention and family support

In Chapter 3, we looked at the skills needed to work with children and families. In this chapter, we will discuss prevention and family support.

Anti-discriminatory and anti-oppressive practice with children and families

After reading this chapter you should have a clearer understanding of the difference between anti-discriminatory practice and anti-oppressive practice as they apply to work with children and families. You will be introduced to a number of factors that may select certain children and young people for social disadvantage (for example, race, disability, use of drugs, HIV status, homelessness, sexual orientation). These will then be considered in relation to looked-after children, before a discussion of the issue of children’s rights.

Working with Children in Need Under the Children Act 1989

This chapter opens by tracing the historical antecedents of the Children Act (1989). The immediate origins of the Act, its principles and its provisions in relation to children in need are then outlined. This is followed by an account, based on research, of the progress made in implementing the legislation. The factors which have impeded progress are then examined as a prelude to a discussion of possible ways by which to move towards needs-led services.