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Edna Chamberlain (1921–2005) was appointed the first Professor of Social Work in Australia and was an inspirational figure promoting a more progressive social work and social work education throughout the country. As a role model for women, she rose to educational management and senior policy advocate in a profession dominated by men. Her contribution to academic life and services to the community and as prominent advocate for women’s advancement was honored by receiving a Member of the Order of Australia in 1988 and Doctor of Philosophy honoris causa in 1995.

Norma Parker (1906–2004) is generally regarded as one of the founders of social work in Australia. In 1925, she completed a BA at the University of Western Australia (UWA), where she was introduced to the idea of social work by the head of psychology at the university. She was instrumental in establishing the national social work association and was involved in setting up the first social work (almoner) departments at several key hospitals as well as inducing the Catholic Archbishop to establish the Catholic Social Service Bureau. She was a key player among a small group of Catholic visionaries keen to develop a professional occupation specializing in helping people with their social functioning, following the upheavals of postwar Australia.

This chapter explores professional supervision informed by a critical analysis. Embedding a critical analysis within the practice of supervision has, I argue, the potential to be a site of resistance to the current oppressive neo-conservative climate and the devaluing of social work’s social justice and human rights discourse associated with its philosophy.

This article outlines how the current rise in right-wing populism poses a threat to social work’s humanist positioning within western democracy and what strategies are needed to restore faith in the liberal democratic institutions that are committed to human rights and a polity that provides for all its citizens despite their diversity and often opposing interests. Using the example of the rise of ethnic-nationalist populism in the twentieth century in Europe, we forget at our peril how easily human rights can be both compromised and undermined. Today’s social works can learn from social work’s role in supporting the ethnic practices of Nazi Germany and be forewarned. The article highlights how a culture of hyper-productivity, anti-humanist populism, and authoritarian welfare can erode the human rights framework underpinning social work. By focussing on contemporary social work’s more progressive stance with its commitment to anti-oppressive practice, its linkages with civil society and community activism, and its commitment to carve out a prominent political space for advancing a human rights agenda, we hope to learn lessons from the past and act collectively to protect and return confidence to a universal human rights agenda for a progressive social work practice.

In the current context of the neoliberal subordination of social work education and practice to market demands and public austerity, this chapter argues that there is an urgent need for ‘critical pedagogies’ in social work education, enabling practitioners to understand and respond effectively to the conditions (many of them global in scope) that give rise to so much avoidable suffering in the lives of the people we work with. This chapter traces the historical development of critical pedagogy and its anchorage in critical theory, highlighting their potential to reinvigorate social work education as an emancipatory practice. This chapter also introduces The Routledge Handbook of Critical Pedagogies for Social Work as part of an alternative or ‘counter-hegemonic’ vision of the fundamental role of social work and related professions to how they are currently framed by neoliberal governments. As such, the collection is presented as a catalyst for mobilising resistance to dominant and destructive social trends by addressing the lack of critical theorising around pedagogy within social work, and offering educational alternatives to work toward a more socially just world.

The Routledge Handbook of Critical Pedagogies for Social Work traverses new territory by providing a cutting-edge overview of the work of classic and contemporary theorists, in a way that expands their application and utility in social work education and practice; thus, providing a bridge between critical theory, philosophy, and social work. Each chapter showcases the work of a specific critical educational, philosophical, and/or social theorist including: Henry Giroux, Michel Foucault, Cornelius Castoriadis, Herbert Marcuse, Paulo Freire, bell hooks, Joan Tronto, Iris Marion Young, Karl Marx, Antonio Gramsci, and many others, to elucidate the ways in which their key pedagogic concepts can be applied to specific aspects of social work education and practice. The text exhibits a range of research-based approaches to educating social work practitioners as agents of social change. It provides a robust, and much needed, alternative paradigm to the technique-driven ‘conservative revolution’ currently being fostered by neoliberalism in both social work education and practice. The volume will be instructive for social work educators who aim to teach for social change, by assisting students to develop counter-hegemonic practices of resistance and agency, and reflecting on the pedagogic role of social work practice more widely. The volume holds relevance for both postgraduate and undergraduate/qualifying social work and human services courses around the world.

bell hooks is an influential feminist educator and cultural critic. Her theories, stories and pedagogical examples can be read across the boundaries of race, gender, class and educational levels. Her teaching trilogy (1994, 2003, 2010), which covers a lifelong exploration of anti-racist, anti-colonial, multi-cultural and critical and feminist pedagogies, is pivotal to a transformative approach to social work supervision, especially as the current student population is increasingly multi-cultural and with varying levels of educational competence and positional power. Her work promotes community, a pedagogy of hope, self-reflection, critique of power in and outside of the classroom and, importantly, critical thinking, as key qualities to undergo a transformative learning experience. By applying bell hooks’ engaged pedagogy as a basis for a transformational learning for social work supervision, students and practitioners are provided with both the theory and skills to practice criticality and model a critical practice when a progressive transformative response to the current practice context and social issues is most needed.

For social workers to work critically they need to be well versed in a pedagogy that equips them with the necessary knowledge, skills, and ability for lifelong learning and critical thinking. This chapter examines the key concepts of a critical pedagogy, its theoretical underpinnings and associated learning strategies and establishes its centrality in framing a critical practice for use in professional social work supervision. Critical pedagogy facilitates constant questioning and reflection and ongoing dialogue on, and critique of, the socio-political, economic and cultural power relations within the organisation as well as more broadly in the community and society at large. Its use in supervision has the potential to open up discussions and interaction beyond what is known to spaces where new knowledge, theory, practice options, and broader societal concerns are explored. It encourages ‘deep learning’ that can shepherd a transformational opportunity for new learning. Nothing begets learning that stimulates curiosity and the desire to learn more when a good supervisor and eager learner meet in supervisory relationship with an ultimate end to achieve justice for all.

This chapter explores the more critical 'discontents' of capitalism and global neoliberalism by highlighting the ecological damages, natural disasters and social problems that have resulted from its rapid growth with less and less government sanctions and political and social control to check its domination and impact. Neoliberalism relies almost exclusively on unfettered economic growth from extracting the Earth's limited natural and non-renewable resources to fuel energy and manufacturing products for mass consumption while squirreling millions of dollars for a select few individuals and corporations in charge and/or owners of manufacturing sites and resource extraction projects. The chapter argues that social workers need to re-focus their practice on grassroots activism, alternative economic models and sustain criticism of capitalism to redress its massive industrial consumerism to protect human and non-human species and show a clear platform for action. Green social work has undertaken this challenge, but this is only the beginning.

This chapter explores the movements that share an ideological commitment to social citizenry and social justice and are able to accommodate a range of social identities and interests, even those that exist in contradiction to each other. It focuses on attention to the paradoxes of the argument by contending that the idea of creating new possibilities for social and cultural life is really a cover-up hiding more sinister exploitative socio-political relations defined by powerful elites creating new patterns of inequality and social divisions. The impact of globalisation and contemporary conceptualisations of the postmodern condition are having and an enormous impact on social work scholarship and practice. Connecting with new social movements in a proactive way is an important concept for reclaiming collective action more generally. The chapter argues that for the embracing of global collective action as a way of reorienting radical social work and provide some direction for the politics of hope that are much called for in die current literature.

Reviewed by Allyson Davys

• Summary: This article identifies important challenges facing social work supervision as a result of the social, political and economic changes that have characterized the last two decades in most Western countries. In response a re-positioning of the critical tradition in the scholarship and practice of social work has been proffered by several authors (for example, Allan et al., 2003; Dominelli, 2002) as a means of addressing and counteracting the more negative challenges facing social work emanating from these changes. We argue that this critical re-positioning can also be applied to similar challenges facing practice supervision.• Findings: As the social work landscape has to contend with a more conservative and fiscally restrictive environment, so too has practice supervision become more focused on efficiency, accountability and worker performance often at the expense of professional and practice development. In addition, current research has identified a crisis in the probity of practice supervision where many practitioners cite disillusionment and despair, as well as lack of opportunity to stop and critically reflect on practice situations as another challenge in this changed climate.• Application: As a significant site of practice, a critically informed supervision praxis has the potential to emerge as a site for modelling social change strategies associated with the critical social work tradition.

This article describes the signs and symptoms of Parkinson's disease and the complications that arise as the condition progresses. Motor and non-motor symptoms are discussed as well as the problems that patients experience on admission to hospital. The complexities of medication management--including issues of concordance--are outlined and advice is given on how nurses can help patients and their carers to manage this condition.

PurposeThis discussion asks why women leaders are, at the beginning of the twenty‐first century, as scarce in the corporate boardrooms and university corridors as they were 30 years ago. After nearly three decades of legislative and organisational support for more gender equity and inclusive management practices, the illusive glass ceiling still remains an issue for management policy debate.Design/methodology/approachIn this discussion the culture of work in the new economy is discussed.FindingsIt seems that the feminist approach calling for equity in public life has lost its currency as new management restructures and workplace changes are again “gender inflicted”.Originality/valueIn the final analysis more research is required where successful women leaders are positioned centre stage so that they stay in the mainstream of paid work and public life, not in the margins.

EnglishInternationalizing the US social work curriculum with programs of study abroad is an effective method to develop students’ awareness of the importance of global interdependence and increase multicultural knowledge. Results from the Multicultural Awareness/Knowledge/Skill Survey and pre-post focus groups indicate the merits of a US-Australian social work program of study abroad for master’s-level social work students.FrenchInternationaliser le curriculum américain en travail social par le biais de programmes d'études à l'étranger est un moyen efficace pour prendre conscience de l'importance de l'interdépendance globale et pour hausser nos connaissances multiculturelles. Les résultats du sondage sur les degrés de conscience, de connaissances et d'habiletés multiculturelles ainsi que les résultats des entrevues en 'focus groups' pré et post expérience, révèlent les mérites d'un programme d'étude de maítrise à l'étranger en travail social dans un échange entre les Ütats-Unis et l'Australie.SpanishUna manera eficaz de desarrollar el sentido de interdependencia global y aumentar el conocimiento de asuntos multiculturales es a través de planes de estudio que incorporen temas internacionales y con programas en países fuera del propio. Los resultados de la encuesta Conciencia Multicultural/Conocimiento/Destrezas, y los grupos de pre y post focus señalan los méritos que tienen en este sentido los programas internacionales de master's de trabajo social entre EE.UU. y Australia.

•Summary: Postmodern discourse in contemporary social work literature has captured a growing audience and is raising a serious challenge for social work theory and practice. While attention is being focused on this new post-activist work the role and function of the welfare state in many western democratic countries is being devalued. At the same time state-based services and resources are being cut, with social workers becoming prime targets for rationalization. Addressing and responding to this postmodern ‘turn’is one of the major challenges that confront social work today: a concern that needs urgent attention if social work is to remain a viable player in the ‘post welfare’debate.•Findings: Social work needs to wake up from the enticing, almost mesmerizing effect of postmodern discourse and take another look at the way economic, gender and colonial issues continue to lie at the root of injustice and impoverishment. Focusing on the local and the contextuality of the specific takes attention away from the pervasive power of structural forces. Rather than call for the negation of grand theories, social work needs to realign itself with a more, rather than less, national and global focus.•Applications: Postmodern social work argues for the jettisoning of ‘grand’or ‘universal’social change theories on which social work was founded, in favour of the re-appreciation of the local and the everyday contexts of practice as sites for action and resistance. Underlying this development is a neo-conservative ideology that creates great discrepancies between rich and poor and undermines traditional social work theory and practice. Ultimately social work must refocus its attention on exposing global economic inequalities and oppressive gender and ethnicity-based relations across the globe. Social work will survive in its mission if it takes on this challenge in addition to the micro-deconstruction offered by the postmodern discourse. Finding a way forward means combining the personal with the political so that both are integrated into a more relevant social work discourse.

This article discusses the joint project between the International Association of Schools of Social Work (IASSW) and the International Federation of Social Workers (IFSW) to establish guidelines for the training and standard setting that elucidates what social work represents on a global level. While it is impossible to address all the issues that might be significant in such a large scope, attention is given to the challenges establishing global standards might encounter in a region as diverse as the Asia-Pacific.

The study of social protest movements is well established in the sociological literature, but its influence on social work's more progressive practice has been less well documented and discussed. That is until the reemergence of a capitalist recession across Western democracies in the late twentieth century, which resulted in massive rises in unemployment, homelessness and other social manifestations of poverty, and structural and personal disadvantage, characteristic of postwar Europe. Recalling the activism of social workers during the 1970s and their links with the radical milieu of the time, many social work scholars are calling for a reengagement with contemporary social protest movements to speak out against the unchecked growth in inequality and social disadvantage that has resulted from the recession and compounded by the more recent global financial crisis. This article explores what a more serious engagement with the politics of social protest movements might have on social work's more progressive politics and practice, especially the more change-orientated focus of community work and its links with social action.

Social work has absorbed and adapted major theories from related disciplines since its inception as an applied discipline over 100 years ago. These positions have been used to construct its ethical underpinnings and its epistemological standpoint. In this chapter we revisit this activity and address two questions: can we act as practitioners before we are fully cognisant of the ontological and philosophical position informing our practice? Is it possible to have a unitary, core ‘truth to act’ in light of the current globalisation of cultural norms, intercultural influences and challenges to intellectual traditions as being patriarchal, colonial and monocultural? Social workers must critically engage with philosophical and theoretical writings in order to understand the bases and implications of their practice decisions. Equally, however, a philosophy of social work must be dynamic, intersubjective and dialogic, and propose that we co-create theory, knowledge and praxis with our clients.

• Summary: This article reports on a research project with final year social work students on placement from a University in Sydney which, as part of developing a more critically reflective pedagogy, asked students to write narratives about placement experiences. The richness of these narratives makes them useful for developing a critically reflective process for application in practice teaching, in both Australia and the UK, where critical reflection is increasingly being incorporated in the field placement curriculum. • Findings: The use of narratives is found to represent a way of knowing and thinking that is particularly suited to identifying the issues which students on placement have to confront. • Applications: Used in the context of a critically reflective framework, student-centred narratives provide practice-based teachers with an opportunity to develop critically reflective processes as part of curriculum scholarship; overcoming, rather than reinforcing, the potential division between theory and practice strands.

Parkinson's disease is a chronic and degenerative condition. Rather than effecting a cure, the nurse's role in caring for those with this condition is to enable them to live as independent a life as possible.

This article focuses on the impact of the Australian Affirmative Action (Equal Employment Opportunity) legislation (1986), on women’s employment in the higher education sector. This Act aimed to address the disadvantage faced by women in the workplace. In the academy, this meant that some of the difficulties encountered by women who aspired to careers and senior positions were to be documented and addressed. Fourteen years after its implementation, while there has been a general growth in women’s employment in the sector, there still exists a glass ceiling preventing women in both academic and administrative positions moving into management structures. This article examines some of the issues that have emerged in attempting to create a “level playing field” for women in the academy with regard to supporting promotional opportunities and encouraging a positive and supportive workplace. Strategies for overcoming existing barriers and the importance of future research are emphasised.

This article explores subjective and political dimensions of the home birth movement which emerged in public discourse in Australia from the late 1970s. In re-defining their subjectivity around the act of childbirth, women participants created an emancipatory social movement that encouraged other women to resist medical/state control over that aspect of their lives. As they fought collectively to establish their right to birth at home, the personal and the political became entwined in their rejection of the dominant codes concerning childbirth.

This paper explores the limits inherent in social work codes of ethics in the light of progressive developments in social work theory and practice. The authors contend that in spite of significant developments in theory and ideology, exploration of the ethical and moral base of the profession has at best been minimal, and, at worst, tokenistic. This has implications for the teaching and practice of social work. In critiquing professional codes of ethics in some Western countries, particularly that of Australia, findings from an exploratory project conducted in Sydney in 1996 are presented and analysed.

Parkinson's disease is the second most frequent neurodegenerative condition after Alzheimer's disease and with an ageing population, the burden of care will only increase. This article presents an overview of the condition, its pharmacological and care management, and novel treatment approaches.