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‘Guid times wi the bad times’: the meanings and experiences of befriending for people living alone with dementia
- Authors:
- ANDREW Jane, WILKINSON Heather, PRIOR Seamus
- Journal article citation:
- Dementia: the International Journal of Social Research and Practice, 21(1), 2022, pp.21-40.
- Publisher:
- Sage
Befriending is a service in which volunteers provide companionship and support usually to people who are lonely or isolated. Such services are promoted in Scotland’s national strategy to improve the lives of people with dementia, around a third of whom live alone. However, little is known about the perspectives of recipients. Taking a holistic qualitative case study approach, the aim of this research was to explore how people living alone with dementia experienced befriending and the contexts in which their befriending relationships were meaningful. Three people were visited on five separate occasions. Largely unstructured conversations allowed individuals to prioritise areas of importance to them within the broad topics of befriending, everyday life, social networks and biography. Participants also had the option of ‘showing’ how they spent their time with their befriender. Data were analysed using the voice-centred relational method. Three key messages emerged: befriending satisfied unmet needs and wishes for particular kinds of relationship; befriending was a facilitated friendship; and befriending was a human response to contingent and existential limitations. (Edited publisher abstract)
Playing the long game: exploring the phenomenon of dementia-friendly golf
- Authors:
- NORVAL Robbie S, HENDERSON Fiona, WHITTAM Geoff
- Journal article citation:
- Dementia: the International Journal of Social Research and Practice, 20(8), 2021, pp.2867-2875.
- Publisher:
- Sage
As individuals age, participation in previously accessible leisure activities can be compromised through diminished capabilities and negative societal expectations. This study investigates the unexplored accessibility of golf for older people with dementia using interviews and observations of Scottish participants in social enterprise–led golfing activities. The resulting thematic analysis concluded that golf is an accessible activity for people living with dementia, and continued participation generates social connectedness and enhances well-being. However, there remain social barriers to participation including societal stigma surrounding the perceived abilities of people living with dementia and the perception of golf as a middle-class and male-dominated sport. (Edited publisher abstract)
Building knowledge for policy and practice based on service user and carer experiences: a case study of Scottish adult safeguarding research
- Authors:
- SHERWOOD-JOHNSON Fiona, MACKAY Kathryn
- Journal article citation:
- Journal of Social Work, 21(5), 2021, pp.1182-1202.
- Publisher:
- Sage
Summary: This article presents Scottish adult safeguarding as a case study to illuminate some challenges of building knowledge for policy and practice based on service user and carer voices. It draws on five of our own research projects that have evaluated implementation of Scottish adult safeguarding legislation and/or asked more exploratory questions about risk, safety and support. Findings: This study shows how practical and ethical issues limited our more evaluative lines of inquiry. This paper then shows how increasingly participative approaches led to studies that were more accessible and that connected more deeply with service users’ and carers' lives, but that also faced greater challenges in the translation of their findings back into the policy and/or practice environment. Applications: This paper concludes with an argument for ongoing dialogue between policy-makers, professionals, service users and carers, researchers, educators and students about knowledge, its different forms and sources, its generation and its use. (Edited publisher abstract)
Fifty years of social work education: analysis of motivations and outcomes
- Authors:
- BUTLER-WARKE Alice, BOLGER Janine
- Journal article citation:
- Journal of Social Work, 21(5), 2021, pp.1019-1040.
- Publisher:
- Sage
Summary: This article uses the 50th anniversary of social work education provision at one of north-east Scotland’s universities as an opportunity to reflect on social work education outcomes and motivations for undertaking training. This empirical assessment is based on the detailed responses to questionnaires and interviews with social work graduates who studied between 1968 and 2012 to evaluate social work training and education among graduates. We use the Kirkpatrick model to evaluate social work education. Findings: This study highlights the combination of prior experience with social work and a sense of altruism that served to motivate students to engage in training. We discuss the levels of preparedness for practice based on training and note that it is the combination of teaching and placements that benefits students most. We reflect on the centrality of a common set of social work values that arise from a period of introspection during education, and we show that these values are incorporated into both professional and personal life. Applications: This study shows that ‘big picture’ and evaluations of social work education are important in order to orient social work education in line with political and social change. We also suggest that educators should be cognisant of the importance of personal development and growth that are central to the training of social workers. Rather than seeing personal development as a by-product of social work education, we argue that training that strengthens social work values of justice and empathy is imperative. (Edited publisher abstract)
Health promotion in adults with Down’s syndrome: experiences of caregivers
- Authors:
- BORTHWICK Claire, INCHLEY Joanna, JONES Jill
- Journal article citation:
- Journal of Intellectual Disabilities, 25(3), 2021, pp.312-330.
- Publisher:
- Sage
- Place of publication:
- London
Individuals with Down’s syndrome rely on caregivers to support lifestyle behaviour change. It is therefore important to understand how caregivers put health recommendations into practice. Through conducting semi-structured interviews, the present study sought to understand the facilitators and barriers that caregivers faced when implementing health promotion advice. Five interviews were conducted with paid support staff and four with family carers of individuals attending a specialist multidisciplinary Down’s syndrome health promotion screening clinic. Three main themes emerged in their accounts, including active promotion of weight management by caregivers, benefits of working practices such as record keeping and communication channels and the importance of having access to social care services and recreational activities. These findings have important implications for professionals working in specialised healthcare settings who may be able to tailor communication and services to better meet the needs of individuals with Down’s syndrome and their caregivers. (Edited publisher abstract)
’What about me?’ Stories of the educational experiences of care-experienced children and young people in a Scottish local authority
- Authors:
- MERCIECA Daniela, MERCIECA Duncan P., RANDALL Leisa
- Journal article citation:
- Adoption and Fostering, 45(2), 2021, pp.173-190.
- Publisher:
- Sage
This qualitative study explores the educational experiences of looked after children and young people in one Scottish local authority. The preoccupations of government are academic achievement and school attendance, but these are not the prime concerns of the children, carers and professionals involved. Moreover, they can be both enhanced and restricted by the background characteristics and care situations of the young people and the responses of schools to their needs and behaviour. Five influential factors emerged from interviews and focus groups with professionals, carers and young people: behaviour; school attendance; carers as educators; friendships; and communication between home and school. Each of them is discussed with extended quotations that convey the voices of participants.
‘Any d*** can make a baby, but it takes a real man to be a dad’: group work for fathers
- Authors:
- LUCAS Sian E., MIRZA Nughmana, WESTWOOD Joanne
- Journal article citation:
- Qualitative Social Work, 20(3), 2021, pp.718-737.
- Publisher:
- Sage
This article contributes to debates about fathers in social work by examining a group work intervention for fathers in Scotland. We present findings from observations of a ‘dad’s group’ and interviews with seven fathers and staff members. Participating in the dad’s group was found to be an expanded perception and expression of masculinity and fatherhood. The group provided a platform for the men to define and challenge understandings of fatherhood in which they developed a sense of expertise and self-belief as individuals and as fathers. We provide examples of the way that the men manoeuvre against societal barriers, in the context of disadvantage, unemployment and persistent mental health difficulties and prevailing gendered stereotypes and allow the fluid expression of manhood through engaging with non-masculine activities. In consideration of policy and practice implications, we argue that parenting support such as group work for fathers is crucial to improve parenting skills and wellbeing and positive outcomes for children.
‘Within my work environment I don’t see gender as an issue’: reflections on gender from a study of criminal justice social workers in Scotland
- Authors:
- McCULLOCH Trish, et al
- Journal article citation:
- Probation Journal, 68(1), 2021, pp.8-27.
- Publisher:
- Sage
Community justice professionals operate within deeply gendered territory, yet there has been little attention to how gender is understood and embodied by the workforce. Building on findings from a mixed method study, this article explores professional perceptions of how gender plays out in criminal justice social work (CJSW) in Scotland. Our findings demonstrate that gender is an important but neglected dimension of CJSW. We conclude that advancing gender in this field requires a more inclusive theorising of gender in professional education and research, a more practical commitment to gender equality in policy and practice, and more routine opportunities for dialogue on issues of gender and justice within and across these domains. (Edited publisher abstract)
Nonprofit care work as social glue: creating and sustaining social reproduction in the context of austerity/late neoliberalism
- Authors:
- BAINES Donna, et al
- Journal article citation:
- Affilia: Journal of Women and Social Work, 35(4), 2020, pp.449-465.
- Publisher:
- Sage
This article will bring together the social glue concept of social reproduction and a feminist analysis of civil society to the study of nonprofit care work in order to cast analytic light on the dynamics of care work in the nonprofit sector and contribute to theorizing care work, to identify and theorize aspects of nonprofit care work which reproduce and sustain social glue, and to supplement theory on civil society. Drawing on qualitative interviews with nonprofit care workers in South Africa and Scotland, this article argues that care work, in general, and nonprofit care work, more specifically, are key components of civil society and central to the gendered social glue that holds societies together. We argue that nonprofit care workers are part a distinctive but porous set of social relations and have their own unique way of sustaining social bonds in the context of late neoliberalism. The article looks closely at three dynamics of social glue in nonprofit care work, namely, empowerment, emotional/personal costs, and unpaid work. We argue that nonprofit care workers find micro ways of resisting the erosion of social glue and reweaving the social fabric through care and relationship and further that these forms of resistance may sustain much needed social bonds until larger social transformation is possible. (Edited publisher abstract)
‘We are “free range” prison officers’, the experiences of Scottish Prison Service throughcare support officers working in custody and the community
- Authors:
- MAYCOCK Matthew, McGUCKIN Kenny, MORRISON Katrina
- Journal article citation:
- Probation Journal, 67(4), 2020, pp.358-374.
- Publisher:
- Sage
Between 2015 and 2019, 41 throughcare support officers (TSOs) supported people serving short sentences leaving custody across 11 Scottish Prison Service establishments. The role of prison officers in the provision of throughcare in the community was an innovation in Scotland and represents a new approach to the long-standing challenges around supporting reintegration from custody. Drawing on data from semi-structured interviews with 20 TSOs, this article examines their reflections on their role, bringing attention for the first time to the front-line perspectives of those involved in this novel approach to throughcare. TSO’s reflections revealed their growing awareness of the ‘pains of desistance’ and the challenges around reintegration, insights which had not been apparent to them in their prior work as officers working only in prison. The community ‘place’ of the TSO work also enabled a renewed awareness of the limits of rehabilitation within a prison and their own institutionalization after years of working in the custodial environment. (Edited publisher abstract)