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There is recognition that teams act as a locus for the sensemaking activity that underpins social workers' judgement. Research has highlighted that teams also provide emotional support for practitioners. Although sensemaking involves emotional and social processes, there has been limited examination of how emotional support in teams interacts with sensemaking. This article uses the Team as Secure Base (TASB) model as a framework for presenting findings from an ethnographic study of four social work teams in England. Data comprise interviews with social workers and supervisors (n = 22) and fieldnotes from observations (n = 23). Teams exhibited behaviour consistent with the domains of TASB, creating a space for safe exploration of social workers' thoughts and feelings. However, while a strong sense of team membership contributed to participants' sense of safety and self-efficacy, this impacted on sensemaking in other ways, such as giving less weight to the views of those who were not team members. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The criminalization of young women in care remains an important practice and policy issue in England despite 2018 national guidance and the subsequent development of local authority protocols to reduce the criminalization of care‐experienced young people. This paper contributes to the emerging research on young women whose behaviour challenges professionals, through secondary analysis of case file data and narrative interviews with 24 care‐experienced young women from a national project on care and offending. Analysis focused on young women's pathways through the care, justice and education systems and identified five domains within young women's lives where available risk or resilience factors were significant in directing young women towards prosocial opportunities, to new types of victimization or to criminalization and offending. These domains consisted of placements and caregiver relationships; partner relationships; pregnancy and motherhood; participation in education; and the transition to adulthood through leaving care. The paper concludes with implications for practice for professionals working with young women, in particular emphasizing that how the care, justice and education systems respond to young women can contribute to negative pathways or transform them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Spatial neglect is a common and severe cognitive consequence of stroke, yet there is currently no effective rehabilitation tool. Virtual Reality (VR) telerehabilitation tools have the potential to provide multisensory and enjoyable therapies and remotely monitor adherence without the presence of a therapist at all times. Researchers and industry need to better understand end-user perspectives about these technologies to ensure these are acceptable and, ultimately, optimize adherence and efficacy. This study aims to explore end-user perspectives on the use of self-administered VR for spatial neglect in a university environment to identify barriers and facilitators prior to extending its use remotely as a telerehabilitation tool. We used a mixed-method design including focus groups, self-administered questionnaires and interviews with stroke survivors (N = 7), their carers (N = 3) and stroke clinicians (N = 6). End-user perspectives identified clarity of instructions, equipment (cost, available resources) and for some, level of experience with technology as barriers of use. Perceived facilitators were performance feedback, engagement and enjoyment, and psychological benefits associated with self-administered VR telerehabilitation. Overall, end-users were positive and interested in using VR telerehabilitation for spatial neglect. These perspectives enabled us to produce practical recommendations to inform development, enhance engagement and uptake of VR telerehabilitation and inform future studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: Social work teams can provide a secure base for social workers, supporting them to manage the emotional demands of child and family social work (Biggart et al., 2017). As the COVID-19 pandemic has necessitated increased remote working, social workers have needed to maximise their use of virtual networks and navigate new ways of connecting with colleagues. This study aims to examine the extent to which social work teams can function as a secure base in the context of remote working. Design/methodology/approach: Between 19th March and 13th June, the authors undertook 31 in-depth, qualitative interviews with child and family social workers across 9 local authorities in England. this research captured social workers' perspectives on remote working and team support throughout lockdown in England. Findings: In this study, the authors report findings in three key areas: how social workers experienced the sudden shift to increased remote working; how social work teams provided a secure base for remote working; and the challenges for sustaining the team as a secure base when working remotely. Originality/value: These findings will be of interest to social workers, managers and local authorities as they adapt to the challenges of increased remote working in child and family social work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article reports on the uses of police-led restorative justice (RJ) for female offenders by one constabulary in England from 2007 to 2012. The study consisted of (1) quantitative analysis of administrative police data on 17,486 participants, including 2,586 female offenders, and (2) qualitative analysis of twelve narrative interviews with female offenders sampled from the database. Quantitative data demonstrated that the majority of female offenders committed low-level offences and that the majority of participants experienced street RJ. Female offenders reported mixed experiences with RJ in qualitative interviews. On the whole, women did not understand what RJ was, leading to complications as many felt their victims were mutually culpable. Some felt that the police forced them to apologise and treated them like criminals while others felt the police gave them a second chance. The study raises questions about what the police can bring to RJ in relation to vulnerable women. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Although the evidence for the associations among self-efficacy, secondary traumatic stress (STS) and secondary posttraumatic growth (SPTG) is mounting, there is a lack of the experimental evidence for the influence of self-efficacy on positive and negative mental health outcomes among professionals indirectly exposed to trauma. Purpose: This study investigated the effects of an internet-based self-efficacy intervention (the experimental condition), compared to an education (the active control condition) on STS and SPTG among workers exposed to traumatic events indirectly, through their clients. We hypothesized that the group assignment (experimental vs. control) would affect STS and SPTG indirectly, with a mediating role of self-efficacy beliefs. Methods: Participants were 168 health and human services professionals (78% women), exposed indirectly to a traumatic event at work. They were randomly assigned to either a 4-session internet-based self-efficacy intervention (n = 87) or an education control group (n = 81) which received information about coping resources and consequences of stressors at work or at home. STS, SPTG, and self-efficacy were measured at the baseline (Time 1), 1-month follow-up (Time 2) and 2-month follow-up (Time 3). Results: Analysis of covariance showed that the group assignment had a significant effect on STS (Time 2) and self-efficacy (Time 2), with lower STS and higher self-efficacy reported by the self-efficacy intervention participants. Compared to the experimental group, the active control (education) group participants reported higher SPTG at Time 2. Mediation analyses indicated that the group assignment had indirect effects on STS and SPTG at Time 3. Workers who experienced increases in self-efficacy (Time 2) through the intervention were more likely to report lower STS and higher SPTG at Time 3. Conclusion: Elucidating the mediating processes that explain why an intervention for secondary trauma works is essential in order to develop more effective support systems that promote improved mental health outcomes among health and human services professionals. Prevention programs for workers exposed indirectly to traumatic events may target self-efficacy enhancement and education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study is a collaboration between social work and psychology academics, using a quasi-experimental technique to explore the effect of experience, along with moderating cognitive, emotive and demographic factors, on risk judgements by social workers, compared with judgements made by social work students. Participants (forty social workers from two authorities; 105 students from two universities) assessed vignettes of cases where child maltreatment was suspected or likely, and their evaluations were measured using four risk scales. Qualified social workers rated risks lower overall than did students and those with more experience rated risk lower than those with less experience. The largest variation in risk judgements between practitioners and students was for emotional aspects of risk, where student scores were significantly higher. For practising social workers, though, the perceived likelihood of being blamed was significantly positively correlated with risk judgements: the greater chance of blame, the higher the risk rating. No such correlation was found for students. This provides some experimental support for widely held concerns about the influence of the 'blame culture' on practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the literature on work-family balance, role and boundary issues are commonly discussed in relation to parents who work outside of the home. Work and family are considered as two different spheres of activity, with different role identities and cultural meanings. For foster carers, however, in very significant ways, their family is their work and their work is their family - so roles are not so clearly separated and boundaries are not so clearly defined. This paper reviews theoretical approaches to the work-family interface and draws on qualitative data from 40 interviews with long-term foster carers. It provides an analysis of their accounts of their roles as professional carers and/or committed parents to explore how they manage different and potentially contradictory role identities. The study found that foster carers primarily identified as carers or as parents, but that some foster carers could move flexibly between these roles while others could not. For foster carers who could be flexible, the two roles enriched each other rather than causing stress and role conflict. Implications for supporting professional foster carers who can also meet the parenting needs of long-term foster children are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents exploratory qualitative data from a pragmatic sample ( n== 11) of vulnerable young people (aged 13-18 years) in contact with youth services. Data were gathered during a substance-use services needs assessment project undertaken in a rural county in the United Kingdom. Semi-structured qualitative interviews explored engagement with services and narratives of episodes of substance-use information-seeking. A range of different information sources were reported, but consensus was expressed regarding source credibility. Parents, particularly mothers, and older siblings were perceived as the most credible. The range of information sources utilized by young people is discussed in terms of furthering research understanding of credibility of sources of information. Implications for services and for future research are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper critically reviews recent research exploring risk and protective factors for the development of problematic substance use in populations of young people. Specific populations of young people who are most vulnerable to developing problematic patterns of use are identified, and alterations to methods of data collection which would improve the ability of local authorities to monitor these populations and more efficiently target them for early preventative interventions are highlighted. It is argued that social-psychological research techniques and approaches should be used to complement a risk and protection-focused approach in order to improve the design and evaluation of interventions, and provide decision-aids for practitioners when assessing the needs of vulnerable young people. Examples are provided to demonstrate the utility of social psychology in this regard, and the paper concludes with specific recommendations for future research and services. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The COVID-19 pandemic has changed the way of delivering social services in primary care settings all over the world. In March 2020 the lockdowns in every European country forced the population to adjust their lives to the new scenario. Welfare states had to quickly respond to the urgent social and economic needs of the citizens. Therefore, social workers were compelled to modify their standard procedures to overcome the difficulties they faced during the first months after lockdown orders were issued due to COVID-19. The present research analyzes the interviews conducted with twelve Spanish social workers to find out their perceptions and concerns about the consequences of that period. Results showed great changes in the way of delivering social services (simplifying procedures and managing an increasing workload), but also demonstrated different strategies that these professionals implemented to prevent burnout or compassion fatigue (team spirit, efforts to develop interinstitutional coordination, support to civil society in non-profit initiatives). Implications in organizational aspects are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite rapid changes in women’s educational attainment and continuous labor force experience, convergence in the gender gap in wages slowed in the 1990s and stalled in the 2000s. Using CPS data from 1979 to 2009, we show that convergence in the gender gap in hourly pay over these three decades was attenuated by the increasing prevalence of “overwork” (defined as working 50 or more hours per week) and the rising hourly wage returns to overwork. Because a greater proportion of men engage in overwork, these changes raised men’s wages relative to women’s and exacerbated the gender wage gap by an estimated 10 percent of the total wage gap. This overwork effect was sufficiently large to offset the wage-equalizing effects of the narrowing gender gap in educational attainment and other forms of human capital. The overwork effect on trends in the gender gap in wages was most pronounced in professional and managerial occupations, where long work hours are especially common and the norm of overwork is deeply embedded in organizational practices and occupational cultures. These results illustrate how new ways of organizing work can perpetuate old forms of gender inequality. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Several abstracts on adoption and fostering are presented which includes "Making Sense of Siblings: Connections and Severances in Post-Adoption Contact," by Cossar Jeanette and Neil Elsbeth; "Hosting Strangers: Hospitality and Family Practices in Fostering Unaccompanied Refugee Young People," and "Narrative and Structure in Consultation."

The article presents several abstracts on adoption and fostering topics, including connections and severances among siblings in post-adoption contact, reconfiguring adoption design in Emgland, and professional foster carer and committed parent.

Algorithmic tools are increasingly used in child protection decision-making. Fairness considerations of algorithmic tools usually focus on statistical fairness, but there are broader justice implications relating to the data used to construct source databases, and how algorithms are incorporated into complex sociotechnical decision-making contexts. This article explores how data that inform child protection algorithms are produced and relates this production to both traditional notions of statistical fairness and broader justice concepts. Predictive tools have a number of challenging problems in the child protection context, as the data that predictive tools draw on do not represent child abuse incidence across the population and child abuse itself is difficult to define, making key decisions that become data variable and subjective. Algorithms using these data have distorted feedback loops and can contain inequalities and biases. The challenge to justice concepts is that individual and group rights to non-discrimination become threatened as the algorithm itself becomes skewed, leading to inaccurate risk predictions drawing on spurious correlations. The right to be treated as an individual is threatened when statistical risk is based on a group categorisation, and the rights of families to understand and participate in the decisions made about them is difficult when they have not consented to data linkage, and the function of the algorithm is obscured by its complexity. The use of uninterpretable algorithmic tools may create 'moral crumple zones', where practitioners are held responsible for decisions even when they are partially determined by an algorithm. Many of these criticisms can also be levelled at human decision makers in the child protection system, but the reification of these processes within algorithms render their articulation even more difficult, and can diminish other important relational and ethical aims of social work practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]