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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]

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]

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."