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Summary: This article explores children's learning experiences from taking part in an educational intervention about social services in school. Data were collected from six group interviews with 27 children after they had participated in lessons about social services. Following a narrative evaluation approach, the analysis focuses on the narratives of change that are made visible through the children's shared reflections about their learning experiences. Findings: In their narratives of change, the children presented the educational intervention as meaningful for them because it increased their knowledge about social services as a possible support function for children and families. Some of the children related their previous more negative perceptions of social services to a collective story building on the idea that social services take children away from their families. Through the educational intervention, this collective story changed in part into another collective story building on the idea that social services help children and families to improve their relationships. Applications: The study shows that an educational intervention about social services in school has the potential to increase children's knowledge about social services and to influence in a positive direction the collective stories that shape public perceptions of social work. Although such changes in collective stories can be expected to benefit social work practice, welfare professionals must be careful to promote opportunities for children to share experiences of social services that challenge, as well as align with, any of these collective stories. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary: An interview study was conducted with persons receiving home care services and personal assistance in Sweden (13 individuals, 25 interviews) with the aim to analyze their experiences of managing personal and intimate care. The analytical approach was guided by phenomenologically informed research and Erving Goffman's theoretical work on self-presentation and social life as it differs in frontstage and backstage settings. Findings: A reflected approach to the complex challenges associated with becoming and being a person in need of personal and intimate care was revealed. This involved continuous adaptations and attuning to organizational and relational conditions of formal home care. Being a recipient of personal and intimate care does not mean being passive. It entails relating to and sustaining the care relation, where even choosing to accept suboptimal conditions is an act of agency. The recipients' private homes were hybridized, transformed both into a waiting room, with the recipient on standby and into a workplace. The homes thus partly lost their character as a backstage realm where one could avoid the gaze of others. This also led to a hybridization of the personal sphere, in the form of marginal scope for true privacy, necessitating strategies for protecting one's own space. Applications: It is important both to acknowledge the intrusive nature of personal and intimate care, which results in extensive hybridization of the home and personal sphere and to recognize care recipients' agency in the relationship that care establishes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary: Whereas some studies have addressed the conditions and practices required to infuse critical notions into the organizational context of public social services, there is a paucity of knowledge on what a critical public service can look like in actual practice. This article explores the possibility of applying critical theory and practice at the organizational level of public social services. It focuses on one social services department in Israel that underwent a six-year process of learning and implementing the Poverty-Aware Paradigm. Findings: Based on an in-depth case study that combines ethnographic and participatory methods, we outline how critical ideas are translated to four organizational principles: developing a critical learning culture, acknowledging services users' knowledge and skills, leading a critical discourse in the community, and poverty-proofing services and allocating resources to tackle poverty. Each of these principles is presented with derivative organizational practices and a detailed account of their implementation. Applications: By broadening the framing of critical practice as an individual, street-level endeavor, the findings offer policymakers and public social services professionals an organizational model that mitigates the negative consequences of current neoliberal and managerial policies around the world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In anonymous online text-based counselling provided by social services, counsellors face specific communicative and professional challenges. Among other things, they need to ensure that they have understood the chat users correctly in order to provide relevant information and advice. The paper studies how counsellors check their understanding of users' situations by using formulations, namely, summarising and rephrasing users' initial problem descriptions. The data consists of chat logs from 56 web-based counselling sessions provided by social services in Sweden. Conversational analysis is used to examine the functions of chat counsellors' formulations. Analyses show that counsellors reformulate users' initial requests to establish a joint understanding of the users' situations and help requested. Three distinct functions of the initial formulations are identified: recasting requests in the institutional terms of social services, clarifying ambiguity in the user's initial posts and affiliating with the user. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary: Given the global and local social inequalities and the complex life circumstances of people living in poverty, social workers are called upon to broaden their knowledge with the purpose of developing social services that respond to the needs of this growing population. However, very little research has been done on the kind of knowledge that social workers require in order to care for this population. The present article focuses on the epistemological aspects of service development for people living in poverty and reviews three main issues: What is "poverty knowledge," where does it come from, and what are the barriers to and opportunities for its development? These questions are investigated through a qualitative paradigm among social workers employed in Israel's public social services. Findings: Findings reveal a profound epistemological controversy about what poverty knowledge means: Is it objective, consistent, readily available, and transferrable knowledge, or is it a dynamic and reflexive process affected by a great number of fluctuating contexts? Findings stress the dominance of positivist views of poverty knowledge, mostly derived from practice while other sources of knowledge development, such as service users' local knowledge, theory, and research knowledge were seen as less relevant to their needs. Applications: Practical recommendations are offered relating to the need for poverty knowledge development processes in social services as well as in social-work education through collaborative, contextual, and reflective learning with and from service users and other stakeholders. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary: Children of social service users are at risk for developing mental health problems as well as social and behavioral problems. Social service counselors should therefore be aware of service users' children and provide support for them. In fact, they are obligated by law to consider children's views and their best interests in cases affecting them. Despite this, little is known about social service counselors' child focus in their practice. In this study, self-reported survey data from 93 counselors working for the Norwegian Labor and Welfare Administration (NAV) were analyzed to explore their child focus. Findings: Findings suggest that a particular focus on children is no part of common practice among NAV counselors; nor is use or knowledge of The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC). Knowledge and use of the CRC may be a predictor of child-focused practice. The results showed a significant difference of medium effect size between NAV counselors who ask about children and NAV counselors who do not when it comes to knowledge and use of the CRC. Applications: Policy makers and practitioners should utilize NAV's potential as a preventive arena. For NAV counselors to be aware of and support children of social service users they need a stronger focus on children and hence know and use the laws concerning children's rights. Incorporating children's rights into social workers' education and internal training may strengthen the focus on children in NAV counselors' practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The opioid crisis in Canada has led to over 9,000 opioid-related deaths. The impact of this crisis on frontline workers is poorly understood. We spoke to 14 frontline workers to explore the impact of the opioid crisis on their work, examine perceptions of supports in the workplace, and identify recommendations to mitigate overdose-related stressors. Findings suggest that workers are experiencing significant increases in stress/burnout. Perceived stressors included new/increased job duties, fear of deaths, inadequate staffing/training, heightened vigilance, and fears for safety. Additional counseling, debriefing, staffing, training, and recreation were recommended. Public policies favoring harm reduction are also discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary: One major effect of the demise of the welfare state on public social services is increased heavy workload which leads to stress, burnout, and compromised well-being among social workers. Less explored are the ways in which heavy workload shapes the helping relationship between social workers and clients. Extrapolating from the narratives of 14 Israeli social workers who participated in an institutional ethnographic study, this paper offers a nuanced understanding of the toll that heavy workload takes on the helping relationship. Findings: Results showcase heavy workload as a ruling relation, an organizational reality outside the control of social workers and clients. The damaging effects of heavy workload on the helping relationship as well as on the social workers were apparent: social workers expected to slice themselves thin and deal with frustration and guilt in the face of an organizational reality that deters them from investing in their clients the time and energy required to cultivate helping relationships. Application: The helping relationship has been paramount to social work throughout the history of the profession. This research contributes to this longstanding focus with a renewed understanding of the helping relationship in public social services as a political and public encounter between social workers and clients, one that is governed by extra-local relations of ruling. Heavy workload is one such ruling relation that organizes the helping relationship. As such, this organizational reality can be reorganized to eliminate, or at least reduce, the toll that heavy workload takes on the helping relationship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The support needs of people with neurodevelopmental disorders are not sufficiently met during the initial years of adulthood. To evaluate feasibility and preliminary effects of a novel programme designed to empower young adults with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and/or attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) to make progress within significant life domains (i.e. work, education, finance, housing/household management, health, leisure/participation in society, and relationships/social network). TRANSITION is a 24-week programme that combines group-based workshops with personalised support based on goal attainment scaling. The study enrolled 26 young adults (50% females; age 17–24 years) in the normative intellectual range, diagnosed with ASD (n = 8), ADHD (n = 4), or both (n = 14). The intervention was delivered by the regular staff of publicly funded psychiatric services in Stockholm, Sweden. The programme was possible to implement with minor deviations from the manual. Participants and staff generally viewed the intervention positively, but also provided feedback to guide further improvement. There was a high degree of attendance throughout, with 21 participants (81%) completing the programme. All completers exceeded their predefined goal expectations within at least one domain. The TRANSITION-programme is a promising concept that deserves further evaluation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction: Despite a generally decreased length of stay in Swedish hospitals, an increasing delay of discharge has been observed among patients with long‐term care need. Aim: Identify challenges and opportunities in the transition of patients between hospitals and out‐patient care. Method: Data were obtained from national registers on patients discharged from hospitals in 2014, interviews with public care authorities, and a systematic literature review. Results: A total of 1 121 823 persons were discharged from Swedish hospitals in 2014. Of all discharged patients, 334 420 (30%) was in need of further out‐patient medical care while 221 221 (20%) needed social services. Among these discharged patients, 53 763 (5%) needed both medical care and social services. In this group of frail persons (primarily females 80 years or older), 25 760 (48%) were readmitted to hospital within 30 days from the discharge. Main reported challenges in the transition were as follows: a decreasing number of beds in hospitals and nursing homes, lack of staff with proper education, and problems in transfer of information between caregivers. To solve these problems, respondents reported some new approaches: extensive initial home services after discharge, out‐patient care organised by both municipalities and county councils, local follow‐up of patient data as well as an emphasis on collaboration between caregivers. The literature reported ambiguous results about effects of single interventions at discharge. However, evidence suggests that the number of readmissions to hospital may be reduced by combining several interventions before discharge (individual planning, geriatric assessment, and patient education) with follow‐up after discharge. Conclusion: Since many frail patients are readmitted to hospital within 30 days after discharge, Swedish out‐patient care may need new working methods in order to promote a coherent care. Further, multi‐component interventions at discharge, including follow‐up after discharge, may prevent unintended readmissions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examined communication between 51 transition-aged foster youth and their social workers as related to perceived relationship quality and satisfaction with care receipt/provision. Youth–worker dyads were audio-recorded during a requisite monthly meeting and completed assessments of perceived relationship quality and satisfaction with social services. Communication was rated in a 5-minute excerpt across full audio-recorded speech, verbal transcribed content, and nonverbal content-filtered tone. Findings: Ratings of workers' communication in transcribed content most closely reflected workers' reported perceptions of their relationship with the youth. In turn, youth's perceptions of the relationship and satisfaction with care were most strongly linked to the content of workers' communication. Similarly, youth's communication in full speech and content most closely reflected their reported perceptions of their relationship with the worker and their satisfaction with care, and workers' perceptions of the relationship and satisfaction with care were most strongly linked to these channels of youth communication. Applications: Findings suggest that foster youth and social workers may communicate their authentic beliefs and expectations differentially by communicative channel. Further, both communication partners appeared selectively attuned to the most authentic speaker channels. These findings can inform case planning and intervention work focused on leveraging the power of the worker–youth relationship to improve key service outcomes for foster youth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary This study examines factors associated with Israeli social workers’ investment of effort in, and inclusion of, volunteers in their work. The variables are drawn from three theories: status characteristic theory, psychological contract theory, and organizational culture theory, and from claims regarding training in working with volunteers. The sample consisted of 118 randomly selected direct social workers in 26 municipal social service departments in Israel. The instruments were designed specifically for the study. Findings Social workers’ effort investment and inclusion increased when they: (a) viewed volunteers as contributing to social workers and the organization; (b) expected themselves to invest effort in their volunteers; (c) believed their volunteer met their expectations with regard to service users and social workers; (d) trusted their volunteer; (e) perceived their managerial culture, peer culture, and artifacts as encouraging effort investment and inclusion; and (f) received training in working with volunteers. Implications On a theoretical level, the findings expand our knowledge about factors that may impact on social workers’ investment of effort in volunteers and their inclusion. On a methodological level, instruments with good psychometric properties were developed to examine the associations studied and these can serve in future research. On the practical level, the findings highlight the importance of training in working with volunteers and underscore the value for managers and volunteer coordinators discussing the workers’ psychological contract with them and of fostering an organizational culture that encourages effort investment in, and inclusion of, volunteers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study analyzed fundraising efficiencies within the South African nonprofit social services sector. Employing an electronic questionnaire, this quantitative study used a national database of social service organizations as its sample. A secondary data analysis of the organizations' audited annual financial statements was conducted. Fundraising-related financial data was in most cases inaccurate which limited amore extensive interrogation of fundraising indicators. The findings revealed inadequate fundraising management with limited or no fundraising monitoring and evaluation procedures. Better informed fundraising leadership was needed to alleviate organizations' reliance on state funding, which in itself was also found to be problematic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background Many medically complex patients with special health-care needs ( PSHCN) receive home-based medical support, placing a major burden on their caregivers. We characterized the caregiving factors involved in PSHCN and their relationship with caregiver burden. Methods The PSHCN and their families were recruited from children's hospitals and rehabilitation centers. A medical information handbook was distributed to the families on enrollment, followed by a self-report questionnaire 1 year later. Data on the type of caregiving involved, family circumstances, and caregiver burden were collected. The Zarit caregiver burden scale ( ZS) was used to evaluate caregiver burden. Logistic regression (proportional odds model) was used to determine associations between each variable and caregiver burden in each of two PSHCN age groups: <15 years old (younger group) and ≥15 years (older group). Results Sixty-eight PSHCN and their families were included in the analysis. The mean age of the PSHCN was 15.4 ± 11.8 years. On multivariate analysis there was a significant positive correlation between ZS score and older siblings (odds ratio [ OR], 3.65), but no significant correlation between caregiver burden and type of care involved in the younger group. In the older group, a positive correlation was observed between caregiver burden and home mechanical ventilation with tracheostomy ( OR, 15.16), but a negative correlation with younger siblings ( OR, 0.04). Conclusions Family circumstances play a bigger role than type of care required in increasing caregiver burden in families of PSHCN aged less than 15 years. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper the hypotheses on differences among welfare state sectors with regard to decline and convergence are subject to comparative empirical tests focusing on healthcare. A diachronical cross-national analysis of healthcare services is performed, comparing developments with that of cash benefits. Contrary to previous claims we find that European healthcare systems are not particularly hit by retrenchment and that convergence is absent in key healthcare dimensions, namely coverage and provision. Convergence appears mainly in terms of the increased reliance on private healthcare financing. Our examination is based on Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) Health Data and institutional data on entitlement levels of major cash benefit programmes, providing both a descriptive analysis and multi-level regressions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]