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The recognition of social work as a writing-intensive profession is the first step needed to bridge the divide between academic and practice writing. The demonstration of persuasive writing skills rarely achieves a highly-ranked social work curriculum priority despite the recognition by faculty that these skills are essential for effective practice. This paper features curriculum examples that incorporate persuasive writing skills, the use of related rubrics, a proposed framework for bridging the gap between academic and practice writing, and a comprehensive illustration of persuasive writing in the form of a child welfare court report. It concludes with recommendations for enhancing student writing skills.

This paper explores the re-envisioning of a school of social work into a School of Social Work and Social Justice. The thought experiment identifies how a school can meet its educational and social justice mission in response to the historic crises of 2020. An outgrowth of the aspirational strategic vision statement is the proposed strengthening of democratic learning spaces involving students and faculty members, better alignment of school curricular reform with human service workforce dynamics and social work practice needs, and an emphasis on culturally responsive leadership. The overall intention is to identify opportunities for social work schools and departments at public and private universities to advance anti-racist, community-centered innovations in social work education in an uncharted environment.

Organizational support represents a critical driver of practice research projects. This analysis includes four international examples of such support (Norway, Finland, Belgium, and USA and China). The four studies capture the similarities and differences between university support and national government support. The analysis is placed within the context of defining practice research and the core components of organizational support. The findings emerged from presentations in a Practice Research Collaborative sponsored by the International Community on Practice Research in Social Work. The conclusion includes a discussion of a cross-case analysis along with the identification of implications for practice research studies in social work and affiliated professional disciplines. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Emphasis on evidence-informed practice (EIP) in human service organizations aimed at improving service quality and client outcomes has increased in recent decades. Research has suggested that the organizational context shapes EIP, yet few studies have explored the agency-based activities that constitute this form of practice. This survey of 473 managers and frontline practitioners in 11 county human service organizations examines EIP activities in agency settings. Analysis of responses to open-ended questions identifies the specific cognitive, interactive, action, and compliance dimensions of EIP, including challenges. EIP emerges as complex and nonlinear, shaped by organizational environment, practitioner perspectives, and client needs.

Forming partnerships with service users became a requirement for social work education programs in the United Kingdom as of 2003, leading to the development of innovative approaches to social work education that involve service users as experts who are helping to teach the future generation of social workers. This article examines the perceptions of service user involvement and how it is implemented in the United Kingdom in the social service sector and the university setting, and concludes with implications for the United States.

This analysis seeks to bridge the differences between micro and macro practice within the context of the shared mission of social work. The search for common ground, given decades of specialization, includes the identification of the different ways that the two forms of practice can inform each other, describes core workplace skills relevant to interventions at the micro and macro levels of organizational and community life, and explores the need for bilingual capacities to enhance communications between both domains of social work practice. It concludes with implications for future curricular changes.

Contextual changes affecting human service organizations have challenged human service managers to adapt through innovation. Yet no research has examined innovation along the spectrum of lower- to upper-level managers in public human service organizations. This study analyzed survey data of 466 public human service managers to examine the relationship between individual characteristics and managerial innovation. Results showed that 38% of managers took an innovative approach to their work, and characteristics of perceived responsiveness to change and evidence-informed practice network involvement were significantly associated with managerial innovation. Managerial innovation could be promoted through the development of evidence-based networks and communities of learning.

The integration of research and practice in social work education and agency practice is both complex and challenging. The analysis presented here builds upon the classic social work generalist framework (engagement, assessment, service planning and implementation, service evaluation, and termination) by developing a three-part framework to capture practice, research, and service user involvement. The article also includes a case vignette to illustrate the application of the framework. The evolution of practice-based research provides a venue for these integration issues, with special attention to the role played by service users. The analysis concludes with a series of questions to guide evolving practice and future research.

This case study examines the experiences and dynamics of the Safety Net Initiative, a multisector collaboration in Contra Costa County, California. The Great Recession hit social services in Contra Costa County especially hard, and local stakeholders launched the Safety Net Initiative in an effort to repair and reimagine the county’s understaffed and underfunded safety net. The case study is based on 14 stakeholder interviews and extensive document review to address 2 questions: (a) What are the challenges to social services collaboration that are unique to suburban jurisdictions such as Contra Costa County? (b) What were the interpersonal and interagency dynamics that facilitated or hindered the collaboration’s process? Findings are reported within the context of four major themes or tensions (short-term vs. long-term; awareness vs. action; process-focus vs. outcome-focus; centralized vs. decentralized authority). Practice implications for social service collaboration in suburban jurisdictions are also identified.

This Statement on Practice Research is a work in progress. It emerges out of deliberations from three international conferences on defining and operationalizing practice research. It seeks to capture both a process and outcome in which practitioners, researchers, service users, and educators collectively engage in a negotiated process of inquiry. One of the goals of this form of research is to place equal emphasis on improving practice and improving services. Practice research also seeks to rebalance the power relations in terms of integrating the voices of service users, service providers, service researchers, and instructors preparing future and current service providers. This third statement emerges out of the most recent international conference in New York City (2012) and continues the construction of the social science and social philosophy foundation of practice research. It seeks to expand the dialogue on practice research to include more international voices while also searching for linkages with the evolving process of defining the mixed methods approach to evidence-informed practice. This Statement provides a platform for the 4th International Conference on Practice Research planned for Hong Kong in 2017.

Promoting the use of evidence by managers is a strategy for enhancing effectiveness in human service organizations, and for responding to the demands of performance management. This study addresses two multipart questions. First, what levels of managerial evidence use exist in public human service organizations and for what purposes is this evidence used? Second, what organizational factors and individual attitudinal characteristics are associated with different levels of evidence use? Based on survey data from a sample of administrators, middle managers, and supervisors in 11 county public human service organizations located in the San Francisco Bay Area, we find that managers are engaged in evidence use at moderate levels. They are most engaged in reviewing agency reports, searching for research literature and other evidence, and using online resources to identify promising practices. Evidence use is found to be positively associated with having access to performance measurement systems, being an administrator, and being innovation minded and responsive to organizational change. Our findings suggest that evidence use by human service managers may be contingent on organizational resources, organizational role, and individual attitudes. These results underscore the importance of training human service managers in evidence-informed practice in order to promote agencywide knowledge utilization and organizational effectiveness.

If some practitioners are more research minded than others, then promising approaches for bridging the research to practice gap may be developed by describing research-minded practitioners and examining how to locate and support them. This article follows this basic logic in providing an overview of organizational development and practitioner support models for increasing knowledge use in human service organizations. The article begins with a conceptual profile of research-minded practitioners—individuals with an affinity for empirical inquiry, critical thinking, and reflection allied with a commitment to data-driven organizational improvement—and the organizational settings needed to host research-minded practice. This is followed by a description of the challenges involved in promoting practitioner involvement in using, translating, and doing research and strategies to address these challenges. We conclude with implications for supporting research-minded practitioners and aligning their efforts with organizational improvement processes. The goal of the analysis is to identify the organizational contexts in which research-minded practitioners can thrive as well as new directions for practice research.

The HUSK projects, involving collaboration between service users, providers, educators, and researchers, coincided with the reorganization of national government services (NAV). The NAV reorganization brought together employment services, social insurance, and municipal social service benefits, and called for a service model where users would be empowered to influence the provision of services. In this analysis of the HUSK cases the authors focus on the relationship between the service user and the service provider, identifying themes in two broad domains: concepts of the individual that included the service user and the service provider and concepts of the relationship that included power, role, activity, interaction, and communication. Within each theme, the analysis highlights the transition from a traditional or historical state to a new or desired state and draws upon some of the classic literature that frames the encounters between service users and providers.

Medical imaging informatics is the rapidly evolving field that combines biomedical informatics and imaging, developing and adapting core methods in informatics to improve the usage and application of imaging in healthcare; and to derive new knowledge from imaging studies. This chapter introduces the ideas and motivation behind medical imaging informatics. Starting with an illustration of the importance of imaging in today's patient care, we demonstrate imaging informatics' potential in enhancing clinical care and biomedical research. From this perspective, we provide an example of how different aspects of medical imaging informatics can impact the process of selecting an imaging protocol. To help readers appreciate this growing discipline, a brief history is given of different efforts that have contributed to its development over several decades, leading to its current challenges. © Springer Science + Business Media, LLC 2010.

This invited set of reflections upon the research carried out under the auspices of a school of social work is part of a series featuring research centers. It reflects 25 years of scholarly work related to both public and nonprofit human service organizations at the only university-based research center in the United States devoted to research on the management of human service organizations. Organized in the predefined categories of center history, structure, past projects, and current projects, it features current and past research in the areas of welfare services, child welfare services, adult and aging services, organizational support for evidence-informed practice, sustainability of nonprofits, international human services, and practice research methodology. Dedicated to the principles of team science by including graduate students, postdoctorate fellows, and consulting researchers, the Mack Center features the processes of practice research in which practitioners play a major role in the research process.

This qualitative study examines the experiences of four nonprofit human service organizations engaging in performance measurement processes to satisfy accountability requirements and increase organizational and program effectiveness. Nonprofits are increasingly required to respond to performance measurement mandates issuing from multiple sources. However, many of the recommended strategies have been developed in the for-profit and public sectors, and are less appropriate or feasible for nonprofit organizations. Three central findings emerged from interviews, focus groups, and review of archival data. First, the complexity of human change processes and the variation among individual clients complicate efforts to define client outcomes. Second, staff skills play a critical role in effective utilization of data systems. Third, organizational strategies to support performance measurement include incorporating user perspectives into system design and providing adequate staff access to data.

The dual objective of subsidized employment programs is to support employers and low-income job seekers. However, few studies of these programs have examined employer perspectives or reflected critically on the role of soft skills in relationships between employers and subsidized employees. This qualitative study examined employer perspectives on soft skills, drawing on the concept of fit from the person-in-environment perspective, as framed by personnel psychology, to interpret the findings. Employers emphasized the importance of motivation, self-presentation, and interpersonal skills. They described the effect of these characteristics and behaviors on workplace interactions, as they sought employees whose similarity offered a supplementary fit. The findings suggest recommendations for improving subsidized employment programs, as well as implications for social work education and research.

The transition from direct service to management in human service organizations requires newly promoted managers to engage in significant role transformation that calls into question their self-concept and identity. This analysis draws upon the for-profit and nonprofit literature to construct a conceptual model of managerial identity formation. The model is then applied to a case vignette of a managerial leadership development training program developed by a regional network of nonprofit human service agency directors. The analysis concludes with implications for managerial training and leadership development in human service organizations. © 2013 Copyright Taylor and Francis Group, LLC.

Objective: Agencies that provide welfare-to-work services often struggle with achieving successful outcomes, particularly for clients experiencing multiple complex barriers to work. California's Family Stabilization program provides whole-family, intensive case management and services to address destabilizing crises among families. This study explores client and worker perspectives on Family Stabilization services to understand the helping relationship at the core of the program and identify key characteristics of positive client–worker relationships within the context of welfare-to-work services. Method: Data were collected via in-depth interviews with 51 Family Stabilization clients and focus groups with Family Stabilization workers at six Northern California county human service agencies. Findings: We identify shared and complementary views among clients and workers regarding positive client–worker relationships. Clients emphasized mutuality and authenticity, responsiveness, resourcefulness, and flexibility as key factors promoting a positive helping relationship. Case workers described the relationship dynamics involved in skillful assessment and team-based services and highlighted the importance of both relational and analytical skills. Conclusion: Policy and practice implications include strategies to support clients and workers and strengthen the client–worker relationship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using teaching cases in professional education programs has gained increased attention in the past several decades. While the use of teaching cases has been an important part of social work education, the majority of current casebooks focus on micro or direct practice issues and settings. Over the past forty years only four major casebooks have focused exclusively on the macro practice of social work. This analysis of case-based learning is divided into the following components: 1) the search for practice wisdom emerging from analyzing cases within the context of management knowledge and skills, 2) case discussion in the classroom, including student and instructor preparation, case selection and integration into the course, case debriefing, student-designed cases, and conceptual frameworks for teaching management, 3) a conclusion that identifies the benefits and limitations of case-based learning. (Contains 7 tables.)

While the case method has been used in teaching social work practice for many years, its use as an evaluation tool is less common. This analysis describes the use of the case method in a comprehensive examination for MSW students in an Administration concentration. After a brief review of the issues related to student outcome assessment and the curriculum of the Administration concentration, a case debriefing framework is described, along with examples of student responses. The analysis concludes with a discussion of issues and implications for future research. (Contains 2 tables.)

The multifaceted role of research in social work education and practice requires innovation to respond to the broader mission of the university and the needs of the community. Building research capacity and supporting infrastructure for research thus demands new approaches to effective collaboration between stakeholders. Intermediary organizations such as the Bay Area Social Services Consortium (BASSC) respond to the directive to bridge research and practice in social service delivery. This article presents BASSC as an example of a modern intermediary organization, discussing in turn the development of the training, policy, and research agendas and the challenges associated with implementing and maintaining the collaboration. The article concludes with a discussion of the unique contribution of intermediary organizations such as BASSC to supporting the multifaceted roles of research in schools of social work.