Trish Hafford-Letchfield

Leadership and management in social care

This core textbook provides an authoritative overview of the leadership and management of learning in social care education and practice. Written in response to recent policy and continuing professional development frameworks, the book provides the underpinning knowledge for candidates following post-qualifying awards for social work in leadership, management and practice education.

‘Arts and Extremely Dangerous’: Critical Commentary on the Arts in Social Work Education

Social work education has attempted to cross many boundaries as it strives to respond to incessant new demands confronting the profession. These are often in response to changing political socio-economic conditions, new organisational contexts and how to prepare professionals to respond creatively to any new challenges that evolve. Leadership of change in social work education might equally come from a range of unexpected sources if those involved in learning and teaching can be inspired to look outwards and beyond what is normally available. A body of evidence has been developing in social work which shows that crossing boundaries between the social sciences with the arts and humanities can help to communicate service users’ and carers’ experiences more powerfully. As many of the papers in this special edition illustrate, active use of the arts within the process of learning offers the potential to free up those more traditional categories and lenses through which we tend to view service users and carers and their ‘problems’ or ‘issues’. Achieving more genuine and transformative insights and understandings, which depart from more habitual schemas for describing and thinking about social problems, requires an embracing of the diversity of human behaviour, personality and relationships, emotions and feelings, life events and culture, to mention but a few. Foucault’ s (1993) reference to the ‘authoritative gaze’, that objectifies the user of public services and reinforces the power relationship, is a reminder of the ongoing themes and debates about the nature of social work practice and the positive contribution that the arts might make.

A Drama Project about Older People's Intimacy and Sexuality

This paper describes an intergenerational project developed in partnership between a social work degree program and an Older Peoples Theatre group. Bringing together a small group of students, older actors, and film makers, methods from drama and the arts were utilised to explore the topic of intimacy and sexuality in later life. The project produced digital stimulus learning materials. Formal evaluation identified beneficial outcomes for participants highlighting the advantages of older peoples leadership in social work education and the transformative potential of the dramatic learning methods used. Such pedagogical approaches are essential to achieve genuine quality personalized outcomes for older people in contact with care services.

Rethinking anti-discriminatory and anti-oppressive theories for social work practice

The concepts of anti-discriminatory and anti-oppressive practice have long been embedded in social work, but whereas once these may have offered an alternative critique of individual and societal relations, they have long since become part of mainstream thinking and have lost their political edge. This book kick-starts an overdue debate by rethinking how social work understands the complexity of human interactions and experiences. In so doing, it provides an opportunity for readers to engage with fundamental concepts such as diversity, equality and social justice. It uses the ideas of Foucault in which to examine a range of concepts associated with these. The book begins by evaluating the contribution which anti-discriminatory and anti-oppressive theories have made before going on to examine how social work can build on its historical commitment to working with marginalised groups and move forward in its thinking. Chapters cover a wide range of practice contexts, including disability, families, and asylum seekers, and are supplemented by an engaging ‘key ideas for practice’ feature to highlight the connections between theory and practice. This book provides fresh new perspectives for students, drawn from critical social theory and on the work of practitioners and researchers who want to proactively engage with issues of justice and equality in social work.

Getting to know you: social work students’ experiences of direct work with children in education settings

This article examines a practice learning initiative placing social work students in primary and secondary schools. Consideration is given to how far this contemporary model of learning offers an optimum and emancipatory framework, which takes account of the well‐being and holistic needs of individual children. There is a pressing need to offer more accessible services to socially excluded children. Social workers in training offer an opportunity to engage in practice contemporary with organisational changes being implemented through the governments policy of social inclusion and programme of legislation. This paper identifies some of the practical and innovative responses from students during their practice learning placements in school environments, which highlights their success in developing initial communication skills with children as an essential foundation for future interventions. Resources that students bring to such placements can increase the capacity of inter‐professional collaboration to improve outcomes for troubled children, and build trust in the social work profession subsequently. On a personal level, in order to improve their relationships with children, students worked through their own feelings to gain insight into a childs individual needs. This provided students with an appreciation of issues, problems and strategies required to be effective within the education environment.

Inclusive leadership in social work and social care

Social work and social care continue to face an unprecedented period of challenge and uncertainty, requiring the development of leadership capabilities at every level of the workforce as well as in the community. This critical and reflexive book looks closely at the pivotal but demanding role that leadership and management play in promoting social work and social care. It focuses particularly on the value that is potentially created when the human relationships between people delivering and people using public services are effective, and the conditions are present to nourish confidence, inspire self-esteem, unlock potential and erode inequality. Aimed at new, aspiring and experienced managers, and senior practitioners, it draws on a range of disciplines not typically found in social work and social care and encourages readers to broaden their examination of leadership in areas such as the design of organisations, the role of service users in leadership practice and the phenomena of dignity within the context of organisational culture and dignity.

Funny things happen at the Grange : Introducing comedy activities in day services to older people with dementia – innovative practice

This paper shares outcomes from the evaluation of a community project where comedy activities were introduced into a day centre for older people with dementia as a result of a partnership between the day centre, a local university and a specialist comedy provider. Four workshops were provided using improvisatory activities and comedy, as a medium to engage older people in reflecting on aspects of their care environment. The main output resulted in a 30 minute ‘mockumentary’ of the ‘Her Majesty the Queen’ visiting the day centre, in the form of a digital reusable learning object to be used by social work and mental health professionals. The evaluation demonstrated some additional outcomes for those involved and highlighted the benefits of laughter and fun in promoting a positive climate.

The impact of the arts in social work education: a systematic review

Evidence on the effectiveness of arts-based approaches in professional education has been gathering momentum in the last decade embracing disciplines such as medicine, the allied professions, social work and social care. Key texts have emerged promoting the use of the arts in professional education and there have been some attempts to capture empirical evidence on its value. This paper reports on a systematic review of the current body of knowledge on the impact of the arts in social work education. We introduce the rationale for undertaking a systematic review and the methodology and approach used. We then discuss the three significant themes from our synthesis of the evidence reviewed. These were positioning social work practice through linking micro and macro thinking, the cultivation of leadership beyond verbal reasoning and art as pedagogy. The findings are discussed in the context of what the arts can offer challenges in social work education.

Critical educational gerontology: what has it got to offer social work with older people?

Critical educational gerontology argues for a moral goal of learning in later life to develop alternative visions for democratic social change whereby older people are empowered to resist and overcome various forms of discrimination. If the development of critical consciousness within the older peoples social movement is an important precursor to critical action where the self is a key site of politicisation, different approaches will need to be developed and fostered within social work with older people. Adopting a learning and educational approach within practice could facilitate a more liberating approach to achieving sustainable support and emphasise self-directed support. Embedding older peoples experiences within a critical paradigm recognises the political nature of educational interventions in later life. This paper argues that learning offers a collective and negotiated enterprise with which empowerment could be promoted and older people given more control over their lives in accordance with the core aims of social work. It examines the potential contribution of critical educational gerontology to social work with older people with reference to practice examples and aims to stimulate debate about what is needed to further embed this approach within different models of practice.

Interprofessional social work : effective collaborative approaches

All Social Work students are required to undertake specific learning and assessment in partnership working and information sharing across professional disciplines and agencies. Increasingly, social workers are also finding that they need to deal with a wide range of other professions as part of their daily work. It is essential therefore that social workers can work effectively and collaboratively with these professions while retaining their own values and identity. This updated second edition will prepare social work students to work with a wide variety of professions including youth workers, the police, teachers and educators, the legal profession and health professionals.