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Centre for Policy on Ageing | |
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Professional ideologies and preferences in social work
— a British study in global perspective | | Author(s) | Johanna Woodcock, John Dixon |
| Journal title | British Journal of Social Work, vol 35, no 6, September 2005 |
| Pages | pp 953-974 |
| Source | http://bjsw.oupjournals.org |
| Keywords | Social workers ; Attitude ; Social work ; Social policy ; Comparison ; United Kingdom ; International. |
| Annotation | This paper comes at a time when the social work profession in the UK is redefining its professional ideology and working practices in the face of key government initiatives for social work education and the regulation of practice. It seeks to contextualise and thereby inform these deliberatinos, by providing a cross-national perspective. The paper uses data from a global study (by I Weiss et al, forthcoming) that identifies and compares the attitudes of 781 graduating social workers at the point of qualification in 10 countries, representing a diverse range of social, economic and cultural contexts. The paper compares commonalities and differences of professional ideologies, to distinguish particular characteristics of the social work profession in the UK. Findings reveal a mix of psycho-social orientation, whereby a welfare agenda was preferred - one that co-existed with the espousal of elements of a statutory social work role in terms of ideology, level of practice, choice of technologies, age and population groupings and practice strategies. Whilst such a mix appeared contradictory in conceptual terms, the students appeared to reconcile the dilemma through the espousal of a particular value position. A key finding for policy-makers and educators, however, concerns the fact that while the UK students felt willing to work through social problems in individual situations, they were unhappy about the extent to which they were able to utilise the therapeutic skills in statutory social work settings. Their preference would be to work in the independent sector. (RH). |
| Accession Number | CPA-051027207 A |
| Classmark | QR: DP: IG: TM2: 48: 8: 72 |
Data © Centre for Policy on Ageing |
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| ...from the Ageinfo database published by Centre for Policy on Ageing. |
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