Paul Dugmore

Legal, Social and Attitudinal Changes: An Exploration of Lesbian and Gay Issues in a Training Programme for Social Workers in Fostering and Adoption

Within a widely evolving political, social and legal climate, significant changes have taken place in the last 10 years in relation to lesbians and gay men. This has presented social workers and social work teams with new challenges in ensuring their practice adheres to recent legislation, government policy and guidance. In order to address these issues a local authority approached the authors to commission a training programme to increase awareness of lesbian and gay issues in a fostering and adoption context for social work practitioners and managers. This paper presents an outline of this one‐day training programme and considers how effective one‐day training courses can be in bringing about changes in attitudes and skills in relation to this complex area of practice.

Youth justice and social work.

Structured around the National Occupational Standards and GSCC Code of Practice, this book takes a practical approach to youth justice within social work programmes focusing on social work in a multi-agency, multi-disciplinary youth offending team. Using case studies and research, this text helps readers to develop skills that support youth justice, as well as to understand debates in youth justice policy and practice, including the competing issues of welfare and justice. It is suitable for those on the social work degree as well as criminology and criminal justice students hoping to understand social work practice in a youth justice context.

Working together, or keeping apart? A critical discourse analysis of the revised working together guidance (2013)

This article gives an account of a discourse analysis in which a section of revised Government policy, Working Together to Safeguard and Promote the Welfare of Children, was subjected to critical discourse analysis (CDA). Setting out the context in which the policy was published, this article outlines the recent policy context and articulates the chosen method of CDA to undertake a small-scale study in relation to the revised Working Together and discusses the findings of the analysis. It offers an insight into how the issue of child protection is understood, managed and made tolerable, through the policys discourse. It concludes that the revised documentation, a result of Munros review of child protection (2011), fails to adequately acknowledge the complexity involved in protecting and safeguarding children.

Systemic supervision in statutory social work in the UK: systemic rucksacks and bells that ring

ABSTRACT This paper provides a perspective on contemporary supervision outlining an innovative model of live systemic supervision implemented across a local authority children’s social work service. Following the Reclaiming Social Work model and the Munro Review of Child Protection, systemic approaches have become popular in English statutory social work. This intervention is distinct in that its focus was on developing and embedding systemic supervision through live mentoring. This approach enables different theoretical perspectives to sit alongside each other and inform practice. The paper explores four constructions of supervision as organisational development, as practice-based research, as ‘training to transgress’ and as adult learning. Using Proctor’s model, which allocates roles, a structure and a reflecting process within team supervision, the programme sought to embed change through the supervision and live mentoring of supervisors. The programme aimed to promote team resilience, reflexivity and relationship-based practice alongside a robust stance on risk. The paper describes the model of supervision and its application before discussing the issues raised in its implementation. We consider its relevance in other settings across professional boundaries.