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This article explores the findings of a qualitative study comparing social work and human service practice with people who have sought asylum in Germany and Australia. Globally social workers are concerned with the record high of people forcibly displaced worldwide and the Global North host-nations' increasingly hostile, discriminatory and restrictive policies towards people seeking asylum. This policy context is antithetical to the professional values of social workers and human services practitioners. The findings of this study reveal how the policy directly impacts social work and human service practice, creates unique ethical challenges and dilemmas and, subsequently, diverse practice responses. The paper also suggests that the country of practice influences how practitioners perceive and respond to ethical challenges and dilemmas. Through doing so, the findings challenge traditional understandings of critical practice theories that suggest that practice focused solely on the individual level is inadequate for work with people seeking asylum. Due to the diversity of contexts and their influences, we encourage social work and human services to view practice on a personal-political continuum when working with people seeking asylum. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues that acquiring competencies in different approaches and procedures in qualitative or interpretative social research provides a strong foundation for case analysis in professional social work practice. When students of social work become familiar with such research and are encouraged to engage in their own supervised projects they develop skills for a circumspect and sensitive practice with clients. The paper reports on work with students of social work in Germany, which can be described as an attempt to help them to become self-reflective ethnographers in their own affairs, of their own emergent social work practice. It spells out different phases of a process in which they learn to make their own practice strange. This process consists of developing different competencies in observing, analysing and writing, and requires a setting in which students' written observations and reflections can be shared and discussed by their peers in a critical, egalitarian and supportive manner. The author thinks that such a critical and self-critical discourse which addresses professional issues in general, as well as the individual student's (or practioner's) experiences and reflections, can have important implications for the collective development of social work and its relationship with other professions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objectives: There is a growing consensus worldwide that palliative care needs to be both more inclusive of conditions other than cancer and to improve. This paper explores some common challenges currently faced by professionals providing palliative care for patients with either cancer or dementia across five countries. Method: One focus group (n = 7) and 67 interviews were conducted in 2012 across five countries: England, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and Norway, with professionals from dementia, cancer and palliative care settings. Results: The interviews revealed five common challenges faced across the five countries: communication difficulties (between services; and between professionals, and patients and their families); the variable extent of structural/functional integration of services; the difficulties in funding of palliative care services; problematic processes of care (boundaries, definitions, knowledge, skills and inclusiveness) and, finally, time constraints. Conclusion: These are not problems distinct to palliative care, but they may have different origins and explanations compared to other areas of health care. This paper explored deeper themes hidden behind a discourse about barriers and facilitators to improving care. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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This article deals with the political context of social work practice with refugees. Specifically, it addresses the ways politics and policies that derive from them, interplay with social workers' perceptions and constructions regarding their daily practice. It is based on findings from a qualitative study that included 22 in-depth interviews with Israeli and German social workers who work with refugees. Working in a 'highly political' field meant that practitioners encountered xenophobia and racism, reinforced by the negative public discourse surrounding refugees, and faced the outcomes of exclusionary state policies towards service users and social services. The article demonstrates that working under challenging political circumstances, enhanced social workers' political awareness, termed politicisation, in that they became more attuned to their identities in relation to practice, to user-worker power imbalances, and to the ways politics and policies influence service users' well-being. Politicisation included social workers highly emotional involvement, which motivated them to take action towards social justice, as well as enhanced the risk of being overwhelmed and experiencing 'political fatigue'. The article discusses implications for the 're-politicisation' of social work research, practice and education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]