Mark Furlong

Promoting “Critical Awareness” and Critiquing “Cultural Competence”: Towards Disrupting Received Professional Knowledges

Abstract There is a compelling argument that universities should be committed to advancing the Indigenous agenda. With respect to social work, as well as to nursing, psychology, and allied health, this commitment is often translated into a single goal: that graduates should be “culturally competent”. While acknowledging that there can be tactical advantages in pursuing this goal the current paper develops a practical critique of the expectation that cultural competence is an unproblematic “add on” to professional education. Using a single case study as an example—how the subject “individual development” is transmitted as a monocultural and unproblematic formation—we argue that it is impossible to learn to work cross-culturally without developing a capacity for reflective self-scrutiny. Less likely to be a flag of convenience than “cultural competence”, an allegiance to “critical awareness” prompts the interrogation of received knowledge, for example how human development and personhood is understood, as well stimulating an engagement in the lifelong process of reflecting on ones own ideological and cultural location.

A Rationale for the use of Empowerment as a Goal in Casework

This article develops a contextual rationale for the use of empowerment as a goal in direct service practice by examining the pre-interview, engagement, and termination sub-processes of casework.

Constraints on Family-sensitive Mental Health Practices

Research reports and current policy settings across all fields of clinical practice have encouraged clinicians to support and work well with the relatives of their primary clients. Yet, clinicians often continue to find this difficult to achieve. In order to better understand why partnerships with families have been difficult for clinicians to establish and maintain, a review of the mental-health field as a particular case study was undertaken. This review focused on the available research literature investigating family-clinician relationships. The results of this review were taken as “foreground” data and this material was analysed with respect to a “background” derived from organisational, social, and cultural theory. This analysis has identified seven implicit factors that are argued here to have contributed to an understanding of why clinicians have found it difficult to work well with families, despite an intention to be sensitive. These factors are discussed and it is concluded that while the presence and influence of these factors tends to be opaque, they are both important and enduring.

Laundering good ideas?: Social Work's Relationship With Family Therapy

Abstract This paper examines the relationship between social work and family therapy. To establish reference points for this examination, traditions and ideas about ‘family work’ in social work are outlined. These notions are compared with the assumptions, predominant form of practice and knowledge base of family therapy. The authors conclude from this analysis that it seems likely social work has made a considerable contribution to family therapy and that this possibility has been inadequately investigated. This absence of investigation can be related to the negative community perception of the social work profession. The probability that a poor community image of social work has become part of the subjective experience of many social workers is examined. Presuming this negative internalisation has occurred, a range of likely consequences is outlined. It is suggested that these consequences are more general than those simply pertaining to social works relationship to family therapy.

The Multiple Relationships Between the Discipline of Social Work and the Contributions of Michael White

Abstract Michael White, the Australian narrative practitioner, died in April this year. Given White trained in social work and has had a large impact on many social workers, it is timely to investigate the opaque relationships linking White and his work with his discipline-of-origin. The present examination proceeds in three steps. First, a schematic outline of Whites intellectual influences and achievements is set out; second, the alignments, as well as tensions, between Whites work and his discipline-of-origin are considered; and, third, it is argued that White was informed by, and went on to produce a body of work that further informed, the contesting spirit that is the wellspring of the discipline of social work. This conclusion is reached mindful of the fact that White remained antagonistic to the role played by the professions in general and that he did not identify with the title ‘social worker’ in particular.

Being neither Pollyanna nor Henny Penny: Responding to McDonald and Jones

AMILERI (1 999) recently observed that social C work has consistently experienced itself as being in a state of crisis and, presumably in reaction to this, has been searching ‘unrelentingly’ for a coherent theory base. More recently, this state of perceived crisis is being increasingly discussed in terms of economic and market-share considerations. For example, in a sure-footed and lively analysis McDonald and Jones (2000) point to the worrying consequences for the profession of The development of quasi-markets and the adoption of market mechanisms in funding arrangements, outsourcing, commercialization and corporatization of state run activities, output-based models of funding in all service production sectors, and expansion of the field for legitimate service providers (McDonald and Jones 2000) These authors also bring to our attention two other foci of concern (the reconstruction of the state and the model of governance, and the challenge of post-modernity to social work) and these themes are both researched and discussed with temfic clarity. McDonald and Jones’ contribution is notable for several clear reasons. Not least of these is its compression of expression and the evenness of tone: there is not a spare word in their manuscript, nor is there that teetering, high anxiety that seems so often to accompany reviews of our position and prospects. The authors argue that: ‘the strategy of professionalisation as traditionally conceived, may now no longer be viable’, and ‘the ways in which practice theory has been formulated, as part of the strategy of professionalisation, may no longer be sufficient to sustain the profession in the emerging context.’ While I am sure that this is a vital point, I am not sure that it is a new point. It seems the argument could be made that at least since Flexner made his (in)famous finding in 1929 that social work was not a real profession, like law and medicine, we have been perennially on the margin. Moreover, it has

Observing different faiths, learning about ourselves : practice with inter-married muslims and christians.

Abstract The present article offers practitioners initial ideas for work with clients in mixed-faith relationships. Based on local, empirical research that investigated Muslim–Christian marriages, six patterns of adaptation to a mixed-faith marriage are outlined. In addition, from a practice-oriented review of the data, four questions are identified that can be used by practitioners to clarify their thinking and practice focus. Increasingly technical, these reference questions are: (i) how is the public–private divide being understood and managed; (ii) how is identity and selfhood being practiced; (iii) how may practitioners position themselves with respect to asymmetries related to gender; and (iv) should religious differences be reframed? Rather than practitioners seeking to be experts on the other, the belief animating the current contribution is that work with diverse clients offers workers a mirror upon which we practitioners can better observe our own outlines. In contrast with the pursuit of imperial generalisations, the authors of the present study commend the benefits of reflectively denaturalising our own positions.

Styles of Practice: An Adult Learning Approach to Professional Development in Social Work

Early in their careers social workers evolve patterns for dealing with the demands of practice. These patterns can be seen as ‘styles of practice’ and eight particular styles are identified and examined. These styles of practice evolve over time, are often invisible to the workers concerned and may not be congruent with the values or models espoused by these workers. In order to understand the adoption and maintenance of these styles a second set of constructs relevant to the choice of practice style are suggested. These constructs are detailed as six ‘presuppositions’ underlying the selection of practice styles and include the workers preferred theory of change and preferred use of self. The examination of styles of practice and their underlying presuppositions is seen as part of adult learning in social work. The authors believe that this examination can be an important step in the development of context-responsive practice skills.