Uschi Bay

Doing Anti-Oppressive Practice: Building Transformative Politicized Social Work

into mainstream society. I would have liked to see some discussion on the impact of technology on young people, but also how this can benefit social workers in working with young people. Technology has made significant changes in the styles of communication, and the way young people relate to others. The importance of mobile phones and social networking websites are key mechanisms to communicate with young people. To have an understanding of this, and the impact on young people is important. As a practitioner I would often text young people to remind them of appointments, or check out why they hadn’t been at classes on a particular day. Colleagues at a TAFE college would regularly send out texts to all students as a way to ensure regular contact, and this strategy was seen to be less intrusive than a phone call. The benefits of texting, in my opinion, are that it gives the young person some control in whether they reply. Smith focuses on a user or client centred approach to working with young people. The young person remains at the centre of Smith’s focus. He confronts practitioners with a number of challenges and ethical dilemmas in carrying out effective practice; noting in particular that practitioners can get caught up in the process and legal obligations of their role, and sometimes fail to do the work needed with young people. He also argues that social workers and the organisations they work for need to acknowledge that there is not just one response for any clients, and that the development of a new approach does not automatically render the previous idea pointless. Young people who have come to the notice of social workers, particularly those in care, all too often have a series of workers, and little consistency in their lives. Worker client relationships can have a significant impact on children and young people, particularly those in care, who have often experienced many comings and goings. I believe the challenge that the book leaves us with is how as practitioners we can work effectively with young people, and to look at effective practice. This text would be of particular benefit to new workers stepping into the field of social work with young people. For experienced practitioners it may also offer a useful framework to reflect on practice, or use in educating staff. One of the highlights of the book is the scenarios, which are used throughout. These scenarios would enable the book to be used in social work and youth work education, as a way to integrate policy and practice with the specific developmental challenges of working with this population.

Teaching Critical Reflection: A Tool for Transformative Learning in Social Work?

In an Australian Bachelor of Social Work degree, critical reflection is a process explicitly taught in a fourth year subject to students who have returned from their first field placement experience in agencies delivering social work programmes. The purpose of teaching critical reflection is to enable social work students to become autonomous and critical thinkers who can reflect on society, the role of social work and social work practices. The way critical reflection is taught in this fourth year social work unit relates closely to the aims of transformative learning. Transformative learning aims to assist students to become autonomous thinkers. Specifically, the critical reflection process taught in this subject aims to assist students to recognise their own and other peoples frames of reference, to identify the dominant discourses circulating in making sense of their experience, to problematise their taken-for -granted ‘lived experience’, to reconceptualise identity categories, disrupt assumed causal relations and to reflect on how power relations are operating. Critical reflection often draws on many theoretical frameworks to enable the recognition of current modes of thinking and doing. In this paper, we will draw primarily on how post-structural theories, specifically Foucaults theorising, disrupt several taken-for-granted concepts in social work.

Unpacking neo-liberal technologies of government in Australian higher education social work departments

• Summary: This article analyses how neo-liberal and managerialist policies, over the last two decades in Australia, have positioned university staff as self-managing individuals. Social work academics are positioned as ‘free agents . . .empowered to act on their own behalf while ‘‘steered from a distance’’ by ‘‘policy norms and rules of the game’’ (Marginson, 1997, p. 63, italics added). Using governmentality theories as developed by Bacchi (2009), Burchell, Gordon, and Miller (1991), Dean (1996, 1999a, 1999b), Foucault (1983, 1986, 1988, 1990, 1991), Hindess (1997, 2003), Miller (1992), Barry, Osborne, and Rose (1996) and Rose (1999) and an analysis of how staff are positioned in higher education settings is explored. • Findings: This article identifies the ways neo-liberal policy and managerialism operates to enable power relations that both individualize and totalize academic staff, including social work academics. Efforts to transform power relations require an understanding of how particular situations are problematized and the identification of the governmental technologies employed to constitute the political identities of social work academics. • Applications: Identifying how neo-liberal technologies of government affect social work academics could stimulate a renewed struggle for change and reinvigorate political action in social work university departments and social work settings more broadly.

Transition Town Initiatives Promoting Transformational Community Change In Tackling Peak Oil And Climate Change Challenges

Abstract The transition town movement started in the United Kingdom in 2005, with the aim of addressing peak oil and climate change through self-organising community groups. A “transition model” was proposed to guide individual transition town initiatives in their governance processes. More than 40 community groups in Australia have since become recognised as official transition town initiatives by the Transition Network in the United Kingdom. This study explored the adoption of the transition model by community members in one small rural Australian town. The qualitative study used semistructured interviews with 10 active members of this transition town initiative to gather information on its governance processes, aims, gender relations, and carbon reduction strategies. Preliminary findings have indicated that the transition town model offers guidance to facilitate the self-organising required to enable community groups with skilled communicators to promote changes in lifestyle practices of local people in ways that may reduce carbon emissions.

Social Work Enabling Sustainable Ecological Living

Nature and the environment have a new impetus and energy within social work. There have been rapid changes in recent decades heralding a greater understanding of the relevance of environmental issues in social work theory and practice, and a concomitant departure from the purely sociocultural lens that informed modernist social work constructions of environmental issues (Coates, 2003). Health, wellbeing, and the living environment all go hand in hand, a symbiosis that was well recognised in early forms of social work such as that practiced by Jane Addams in 1880 90 in the United States of America. Although these connections fell out of favour in social work for most of the 20th century, growing awareness of the impact of climate change and other environmental imperatives is making its mark on social work education, theory, and practice. The social work professional role that we advocate includes attention to environmental factors in all forms of social work practice. Indeed, there is emergent literature and research that includes nature as a major therapeutic resource for direct practice, particularly in relation to mental health, but also in areas like rehabilitation of young offenders or substance abusers through land revegetation and outdoor adventures (Ungar, 2004). For children, contact with nature is considered vital for their wellbeing and social workers in conjunction with many grassroots groups may engage in facilitating changes in social practices, especially at this point in time when human beings are spending an increasingly smaller amount of time in contact with the natural world. For the first time in human history, more than half of the people on this planet live in cities. Urban locations have become the site for community transformation through an increasing focus on sustainability and for reducing the impact of modern living on the environment (Bay, 2013). Community building through community gardens has also been demonstrated to increase residents’ sense of belonging and general wellbeing. Increasingly, arguments are being made to incorporate nature into direct social work practice and into institutional settings like hospitals, prisons, aged care facilities, and schools (Heinsch, 2012). Further, there are roles for social work in urban planning of green spaces for people as natural setting are associated with increased psychological, emotional, and overall wellbeing. Besthorn (2013) pointed out that urban agriculture is a growing consideration for social work in the light of current food security crises in many countries. The relationship between human beings and nature has been variously defined and contested, and caution is advised in solely considering nature as a resource and of

Neoliberalism as an art of governance: reflecting on techniques for securing life through direct social work practice

ABSTRACT Neoliberalism is a diffuse and contested term; however, as an art of government, drawing on Foucault’s theorising, it posits personal responsibility as the basis of an ethical society. Neoliberalism mostly governs individuals through their freedom, where the concept of freedom presupposes a rational self that is motivated to improve and secure their life now and in the future. For those who are unable or unwilling to participate in securing a decent lifestyle within the norms of society, systematic modifications including social welfare policies that are punitive and freedom-depriving are used to attempt to modify individuals’ behaviour. Direct social work practice with individuals also relies on individual autonomy as one of its central technologies guiding individuals towards choices that will improve their lives. Social work practitioners are seen to be part of an enabling network that assists individuals who are considered self-excluded due to their irresponsible choices to work on themselves to form an ‘entrepreneurial self’. Social workers engage in the neoliberal art of governance through the ‘conduct of conduct’ of self and others in their direct practice with people. If individuals are understood as constituted through networks of power relations, then direct social work using a pastoral relationship can be a node of power where understanding of whom they are ‘made to be’ can enable engaging in individual and collective resistance to some of the perversions of neoliberal governance. Through pastoral care, resistance as both ‘conduct of conduct’ and ‘counter conduct’ is possible and necessary.