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Summary : Social work has long history with practice in diverse places. Indigenous social work traditions have long been grounded in place and land. There has been little attention to the role of place in Western and Northern social work practices. Place-based theories attend to the fundamental role of place in social work practice and provide principles that social workers can use to recognize place in their practice. There has been little practical guidance on how social workers can apply these principles to identify and modify place-based levers for improving practice and outcomes within Western contexts. To address these gaps and advance the use of place in practice, principles of place-based power dynamics are described here in relation to the micro, mezzo, and macro levels of the key areas of social work practice: assessment, intervention, and evaluation. Findings : Place-based principles of form, function, location, time, threshold, and relations, provide a framework that social workers can incorporate into social work practices at all levels and throughout social work practice phases. Application : Social workers can use these principles to examine how social work practice can better assess, intervene, and evaluate the role of place in the social environment and in the daily lives of the participants and populations they serve. Incorporating place-based principles can illuminate malleable place-based levers to fit the needs of service users. Attending to place in social work practice can also heighten practitioners' awareness of power and decision-making to identify and intervene at the root causes of social problems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary : While scholars have examined how neoliberal ideas and policies manifest at the front lines of the welfare state, far less is known about how the neoliberal approach prevalent in such states shapes decisions that senior state actors make about social welfare policy. The current study advances the literature by examining the processes and motivations behind the decision to withdraw from enacting a law designed to secure the social rights of all Israeli citizens. The study is rooted in a critical research paradigm, combining both inductive and deductive analyses of in-depth interviews with 15 senior officials and legislators in the field of social services. Findings : Despite their purported support for equality in the provision of social services, their acknowledgment of the shortcomings of current legislation in this respect, and their active role in promoting an alternative thereto, participants were persuaded to act in such a way as to support free-market measures. These findings illustrate an arena of policymaking wherein some state actors "purchase" other actors' cooperation and compliance with the neoliberal approach. Applications : The "behind-the-scenes" account of the legislative process, set against the backdrop of neoliberal welfare governance, provides insights useful to all those who seek to promote parity-enhancing legislation aimed at supporting marginalized social service recipients, in Israel and beyond. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary: Working with abused children can have positive and negative implications for social workers. Some of these implications have been conceptualized as secondary traumatic stress and vicarious post-traumatic growth. The current study examined the question of whether these two phenomena share similar contributing factors. Based on the social-ecological theory and previous studies on secondary traumatic stress, we examined the contribution of personal factors and level of exposure to trauma (i.e. years of work experience, professional exposure to child abuse, mastery) and environmental factors (i.e. social support, supervision, and role stress) to the explained variance of secondary traumatic stress and post-traumatic growth, with the goal of understanding these two potential outcomes. This cross-sectional study comprised 255 social workers who worked with abused children. Findings: The results showed that despite the correlation between the two outcomes—post-traumatic growth and secondary traumatic stress—they shared only one common predictive factor: the extent of social workers' exposure to abused children. Role stress was correlated positively, and mastery was correlated negatively, with secondary traumatic stress only. Years of work experience was correlated positively with post-traumatic growth only. Applications: The current study shows the importance of continuing efforts to identify the factors that contribute to post-traumatic growth. At the same time, efforts should be made to foster certain personal and environmental factors to reduce secondary traumatic stress levels. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary: Worker experiences of workload is a poorly understood component of health and safety practice in the social services sector. Job Demands-Resources theory is applied to explore how workload contributes to health and safety, workplace violence, and violence prevention. Data from qualitative interviews (n = 81) of workers in publicly administered social services in Western Canada were analyzed using analytic induction and constant comparison methods. Findings: Qualitative themes highlight the role of Workload Management, Equal Distribution of Workload, Stress Management, and Flexibility on worker experiences with workplace violence prevention. These themes are further elaborated on and contextualized within a Job Demands-Resources framework. Finally, a conceptual model of workload management and health and safety is presented. Applications: Findings highlight areas of workload development and innovation as a component of violence prevention interventions within social service workplaces. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a study on the meta-analyses of case management (CM) models and its impact in order to understand its present role and suggest how it could be reorganized. It states that the intensive and non-intensive case management could be provided depending on the use of hospital resources when the model of case management used is congruent with clinical practice. It says that the CM models could be reconfigured by delivering an intensive form of care based on the needs of patients.