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The capability approach has recently been recognised as a potential explanatory theory in disability research. However, to strengthen its explanatory power, it is argued that it should be grounded in a critical realist research paradigm. While critical realism is increasingly adopted in social inquiry, to date there remains little research that elaborates how a critical realist methodology is applied in capability and disability research, especially in the context of disasters. To bridge this gap, this study provides an empirical example of how a critical realist methodology can be used to explain the capabilities of people with disabilities to deal with disasters.

Internationally, COVID-19 has forced educational reform and disrupted already strained social work field education systems. This inquiry began pre-pandemic, responding to placement scarcity, which was only exacerbated by the pandemic as agencies migrated to online service delivery and universities responded to sudden placement cancellations. Educators found themselves navigating two interlinked global trends: 1) workplace learning that was changing radically; and 2) the immediate need to identify and develop placement opportunities. This article presents themes from a co-operative inquiry that interrogated four innovative international placement scenarios from Australia, Canada, Ireland, and New Zealand, highlighting enablers, markers, and aspects of quality learning. The four exemplars evidence the pedagogical challenges and opportunities presented by placement innovation and online learning. These placements reveal how tensions regarding placement scarcity, rapid placement innovation, and the concurrent need to mitigate risk while preserving placement quality were managed. The authors propose that creativity and innovation guided by well-articulated educational principles, learning outcomes, and pedagogical practices, promote the construction of quality placements that transcend potential risks. The challenge moving forward is upholding contemporary approaches to placement teaching and learning that ensure social work students' acquisition of professional knowledge, values and skills that are necessary for practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 2020, social workers across the world responded to the global COVID-19 pandemic and the consequent strict lockdown procedures over several months. In many countries, including Australia and New Zealand, this virtual shutdown period necessitated a reframing of social work practice to incorporate factors including delivery of services via virtual means and more limited access for vulnerable clients. This article draws on the integration of two methods designed to address the research question: 'How has social work practice in Australia and New Zealand been affected by COVID-19?' These include (i) a narrative review of papers published during 2020 on social work practice and the COVID-19 pandemic and (ii) an online survey, undertaken from October to December 2020, of Australian and New Zealand social workers. The questionnaire data were analysed using Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) and thematic analysis. The findings of this article details include the significant impacts of COVID-19 on practice, the increased needs of clients, including a rise in health issues, violence, homelessness and financial concerns, and the resulting critical changes to social work workloads. Social workers also reported greater use of technologies to deliver services and fears for their families and themselves if exposed to COVID-19. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this study was to understand the extent, range and nature of social work research activity after natural disasters and to identify the implications for future research and practice. A Scoping review methodology framework was used search of three databases: Web of Science, ProQuest and Informit was conducted to identify relevant studies between 2000 and 2018. Selection of studies was based on empirical research about social work and natural disasters and/or authored by social workers. Study selection found a total of 38 relevant articles. Charting the data was conducted and the following areas of focus were summarised: (1) interventions relating to psychosocial care, aid work and community work; (2) the effects of disasters on people and mediators of these effects; (3) social work education and challenges in disaster relief; and (4) measuring mental health outcomes of people who have experienced a disaster event. This scoping review has established that there is a range of social work literature focused on natural disasters that primarily examines social work interventions, the effects of disasters and social work education. Future social work research and practice needs to focus on the types and timing of interventions that promote positive recovery following natural disasters. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Amartya Sen's capability approach is often used in disability research as a normative framework for describing and evaluating the well-being of people with disabilities. Nevertheless, recently, the possibility of going beyond description to the use of the capability approach as an explanatory tool has been raised. However, to allow the use of the capability approach in this way requires grounding it in an appropriate research paradigm. In this paper, critical realism is adopted for this purpose. It is argued that critical realism can provide the ontology needed to justify finding explanations for the way that people with disabilities achieve their valued capabilities. The assumption here is that there are real, emergent structures and mechanisms that underlie empirical capabilities; and that these structures and mechanisms are related to people's agency, as described by critical realism's conception of the relationship between structure and agency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article uses data from a doctoral thesis concerning service users' views on what works for them in relation to their mental health wellness following a suicidal ideation/attempt in Aotearoa New Zealand. In particular, it focuses on the experiences of service users regarding mental health crisis team responses and what they wanted from their crisis teams specifically. Participants indicated that what they wanted was to feel heard, respected and not judged, consistent with the core conditions of therapeutic alliance within such professions as social work, counselling and psychology. Social work has a valuable role to play in emphasising and advocating for social, contextual and non-medical responses within crisis teams and service delivery. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Supervision is increasingly defined by reflection and traumainformed knowledge and practice. When faced with a disaster, the role and function of supervision is changed by the scale of events, with psychosocial support for traumatic stress often side-lined by, or subsumed within, emergency interventions. Disasters, however, need a longitudinal focus on recovery for many years following; this focus provides the logic for supervision at every stage of a disaster. In this article, the author defines disaster and its phases, and raises issues for supervision within the disaster context. Hypothetical examples are used both from the author’s location in Aotearoa New Zealand and from disasters more internationally familiar. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In contemporary workplaces, many professionals struggle to cope with increasing pressures and aspects of workplace cultures that can have detrimental effects both personally and professionally. Counsellors can play an important role in supporting clients' functioning at work and their effective coping with work-related stressors. Practitioners providing counselling through Employee Assistance Programmes (EAP) and other work-related services regularly encounter clients experiencing stress, loss of confidence, and even burnout. It is also inevitable that counsellors in private practice and other settings have clients whose lives, relationships, and wellbeing are being adversely affected by unhealthy workplaces. Although professionals under stress may seek, or will be encouraged to seek counselling, they may experience challenges in and resistance to doing so. Much depends on the quality of engagement and support a counsellor is able to offer, and this relates not only to the practitioner's skills in establishing relationship, but also to their knowledge and understanding of the nature of contemporary workplaces. This article explores the significance of workplace roles and identities, the influence of contemporary working environments on professionals' identities and functioning, and work-related stress and coping, in order to raise practitioners' awareness of the challenges professionals face. Research into workplace counselling, and the implications for counsellors, are then considered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objectives: A proportion of older people with mild dementia are safe to drive. However, driving cessation is recommended at some point as the disease progresses. Driving cessation can have significant psychological and social consequences on people with dementia and their carers. This paper aims to explore the psychosocial and adjustment issues following driving cessation for people with dementia and their supporters.Method: Participants and their supporters were interviewed within 1 month of driving-cessation advice, and again 6 months later. Issues associated with driving cessation were explored in semi-structured interviews.Results: Seven participants and their supporters were recruited. This has generated a total of 22 transcripts for qualitative analysis including follow-up interviews. For those who could remember the details of driving cessation, most were unhappy with the decision. Carers who were supportive of driving cessation questioned the legality of it. Most participants minimised the impact of their driving cessation on their supporters. Most supporters were negatively affected by the decision.Conclusions: The preliminary findings highlight the need for a more comprehensive process for driving cessation in those with dementia, with closer links to regulatory bodies, and increased support for their families/carers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Yin noted the requirement for social workers to provide ‘supportive, empowering and strengths-based (resilience building) services’ and asked ‘when the workers themselves are burning out … do we provide the same for them?’. Many researchers have since explored this question, seeking explanations as to how some social workers survive and thrive and others are lost to the profession. The authors of this small exploratory study were interested in exploring practitioners’ understanding of resilience. A qualitative approach was employed to explore practitioner views about what contributed to their own resilience, augmented by data gathered in interviews with those providing supervision to students. Findings suggest a conceptual framework incorporating three aspects of resilience: core attributes within the individual, the practice context and a series of mediating factors. Participant accounts suggested a multifaceted and dynamically balanced awareness of resilience that highlighted the relational and contextual characteristics of their experience. This article reports one significant theme emerging from the study; namely that supervision and collegial support are recognised as vital in the nurturing of practitioner resilience. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Many social workers face challenges maintaining professional optimism and personal well-being in their chosen career. The retention of capable practitioners is important to employers and the wider profession. This paper reports on elements of an ongoing study into practitioner resilience in social work in health and non-statutory practice settings. The project aims to explore experienced social workers' understanding of their resilience in the face of workplace demands and stressors. Findings from a small, qualitative study of experienced practitioners in New Zealand suggest that social work education contributes in multi-faceted ways to preparing resilient practitioners. The authors recommend the strengthening of these elements in pre-service education. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper argues that the potential tensions within the role, function, and purpose of supervision, potentially magnified by the adoption of the process within a variety of organisational and occupational settings, underscore the importance of supervision being seen as a contextually informed activity. Supervision can be constructed as a professional development activity with processes of reflection that are potentially active contributors to practitioner resilience. It can also be viewed as a developmental tool that assists a worker adapt to the workplace context and to process environmentally located challenges and tensions. Within some workplaces, supervision has an active managerial and risk-management function. Using the lens of resilience theories, this paper addresses key issues for supervision emerging from its different functions and argues that in becoming aware of its contextual location in complex practice and organisational environments, supervision practice itself cannot remain politically innocent. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How the social work profession supports people to live through experiences of trauma and helps to facilitate recovery represents an important base of our practice. Whilst the impacts of trauma in people's lives cannot be discounted, there remains significant scope to further inquire into how people respond to traumatic situations and locate their own sources of healing, hope and survival. Drawing on two different case studies-one with resettled Sudanese refugees in Australia and another involving critical incident debriefing-this paper looks to address the complex intersections between trauma, well-being and the roles of social work pedagogy and practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article considers implications of research in regard to support systems for workers who have experienced traumatic events and critical incidents. The evidence is aligned with educators' practice experience that students on placement, new graduates and experienced workers alike, all locate significant stressors and challenges to their resiliency within the systemic and structural organisational contexts of the workplace. This emphasis upon job context as opposed to job content raises key challenges for social work educators. The article addresses issues that arise in the preparation for the management of stress and incidents and considers some tools and models that educators might employ in the pre-practice environment. The article is based upon a presentation given at the Social Work Education symposium in Auckland in January 2006. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]