Qualitative Social Work

Even though Czech social policy cites child protection as one of its main priorities, there continue to be groups of children whose needs remain unnoticed. As many as forty thousand Czech children with at least one incarcerated parent have failed to gain public attention, find no support in the national legislative framework, and are only slowly attracting the attention of helping professionals. Guided by our research question—“What are the needs of children whose parent leaves the household due to incarceration?”—we describe the individual needs of children of incarcerated parents in their own voices through phenomenological optics. These needs, recorded via individual interviews and focus groups, contextualized using the theoretical methodology of the capability approach, which serves as the framework for assessing the relationship between the stated needs of these children and their overall well-being.

Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is a neurodevelopmental disorder characterized by impaired social interaction and communication. Autistic children suffer from social cognitive difficulties. There is no specific treatment for ASD, but ongoing individualized care can lead to an improvement in symptoms. Adopting a pet into a family with an autistic child is increasingly recognized as beneficial for improving some of the child’s social skills. Cats are the second most common pet in the homes of autistic children. Previous studies showed that adopting calm-tempered shelter cats to autistic children decreased anxiety and improved the child’s social skills. In the present study, we aimed to qualitatively explore the experience of parents of autistic children who adopted a shelter cat. 11 families participated in the study, and were asked 6 open-ended questions every 2 weeks for 18 weeks after the cat's adoption. Five main themes emerged from the analysis: benefits of cat adoption, challenges of cat adoption, parent-cat bonding, child-cat bonding, and family impact of cat adoption. Adoption leads to the creation of a strong relationship between the family members and the shelter cat, and an improvement in the child’s social skills, with some difficulties related to the maintenance of the cat. These findings highlight the beneficial impact of adopting a shelter cat into a family with an autistic child, and open the door for future research to generalize these results.

This article uses Feminist New Materialist theoretical perspectives on time and temporality to critically explore the social work practice of life story work, designed to help children who are or have been in public care, or are adopted, assemble a coherent narrative of their care journey, adverse experiences and identity. Interview data presented here was produced with 17 participants (foster carers, adoptive parents and social work professionals in care or adoption teams) who were part of a project which sought to understand how aspects of life story work could be transformed into everyday care conversations between children and the adults who care for them (see www.difficultconversations.info). Our analysis highlights the way participants understood and constructed temporal elements of children’s experiences and identities: their pasts, presents and futures, in the context of having conversations about care with them. Through the discussion, we indicate a need to loosen the configuration of children’s life stories and identities as ‘pre-care’ and ‘post-care’, and instead move toward an acceptance of children’s multiple selves and multiple important others as existing across time.

Visual elicitation methods, such as diagramming, are growing in their use with vulnerable populations, trauma-informed research, and social work studies where the use of traditional oral interviews alone may be lacking in their ability to increase access to different areas of human consciousness. The adoption and designing of innovative diagramming and visual methods have the potential to push the boundaries of data collection in understanding the experiences of forced migrants. However, scholars have seldom adopted this method in forced migration research. In this article, the authors explore three diagramming methods-timelines, convoy circles, and ecomaps-to highlight the possibilities of their use for social work research with forced migrants. The benefits of utilising these methods in support of the unique characteristics and challenges of forced migrants are also discussed. The article concludes by identifying several limitations while advocating for the adoption and documentation of the use of diagramming in studies with forced migrants.

Using the contents of journals has been an underutilized research approach in social work. Journal archives represent what has been legitimated in the discipline as well as what forms the dominant social work canon. To theorize about journal archival sourcing as a research method, we cite the limited extant examples, drawing out from these the methodology used. We then make a case for the value of journal mining and in particular from the vantage point of critical social work and critical discourse analysis, position the Foucauldian history of the present as an appropriate tool for analysis. We draw this article together by describing how to employ this research method and argue that this might be an exceptionally useful tool at this point of the discipline’s history.

This paper concerns parenting assessments which are integral to child-safeguarding professional processes in England, and which involve Deaf parents whose primary language is British Sign Language (BSL). In an under-researched area of social work, the research aim was to contribute to the existing literature by eliciting the practice wisdom of specialist professionals. Specifically, it draws upon their linguistic and cultural knowledge of the Deaf community when they are involved in parenting assessments with Deaf parents who are subject to safeguarding concerns. Data about these professionals’ actual experiences of navigating Deaf cultural-competency in contemporary child protection practices were collected through seven video-recorded, semi-structured interviews conducted in BSL. Using interpretive phenomenological analysis, data were analysed in their source language (BSL). This article focusses on one key theme, termed ‘Professional Recognition’, which incorporates a) the identification of specialist roles and b) the impact of referral processes and protocols on assessment outcomes. The findings highlight participants’ perspectives on the benefits and disadvantages of their specialist role in this context. Although their brokerage skills, cultural competence, linguistic fluency and specialist knowledge of the Deaf community are highly regarded and valued by some colleagues, there is insufficient recognition of their existence by the majority. Secondly, participants are concerned by the inefficiency and inconsistency of the referral processes and protocols which they consider have adverse effects on assessment outcomes, and consequently the parents involved. The BSL translation of this article is available in the supplementary material.

This article reports on a study that provides insights into the challenges faced by practitioners in the Northern Territory (NT) who support families in enhancing child safety and well-being, particularly for children at risk of or exposed to domestic or family violence. Despite increased funding for programs aimed at improving children's safety and well-being, reports and substantiations of child maltreatment in the NT continue to escalate. Interviews with twelve participants from various organizations involved in child protection services, family support services, and residential care shed light on the existing gaps in support services, including limited resources for families escaping domestic violence and inadequate assistance for children transitioning from out-of-home care. The findings emphasize the need for early intervention services targeted at families displaying risk factors for child maltreatment. Additionally, community consultation is crucial for the design and implementation of support programs that align with the unique needs of communities, including the necessity of maintaining connections to community, culture, and family to address concerns related to meeting basic needs. The study calls for a comprehensive approach that integrates community input, cultural safety, and tailored support programs to bridge these gaps and facilitate lasting positive changes. By addressing these challenges, there is a potential to mitigate child maltreatment and improve the well-being of children and families in the NT, contributing to the overall welfare of the community.

Sexual assault survivors who report to the criminal legal system often need the assistance of victim advocates to navigate this complex and often retraumatizing system. In recent years, victim advocates have been called upon to assist more survivors in “cold case” sexual assault prosecutions. The term “cold case” refers to a criminal incident that is reopened years after it was initially reported, often because new evidence has become available. In this study, we interviewed sexual assault survivors and community-based victim advocates about their experiences working together in cold cases. These cases were reopened because victims’ sexual assault kits (SAKs; also known as “rape kits”) had not been submitted by the police for forensic DNA testing in a timely way. When these SAKs were finally tested, the biological evidence produced new investigatory leads, and prosecutors wanted to move forward with criminal charges against the offenders. Re-opening these legal cases caused significant emotional distress for survivors, but most did not want mental health counseling during their legal re-engagement. Instead, survivors wanted their advocates to provide emotional support while focusing on their tangible needs so that they had sufficient life stability to re-engage in the prosecution process. Survivors also needed extensive legal advocacy from their advocates throughout their hearings and trials. These results underscore the need for cold case protocols that train practitioners about the long-term impacts of trauma and the importance of centering survivors’ individual needs.

This autoethnography seeks to open up for re-interpretation and debate three topics that feature within social work practice, research, and education: firstly the value and use of metaphor in understanding practice, secondly approaches to social work reflective writing, and thirdly the issue of poverty and its significance and impact in child and family social work. Metaphors can be valuable in framing understanding of issues within social work practice and advocating for change. Three metaphors have been particularly used in understanding the relationship between social work practice and poverty: The Invisibility of Poverty, The Elephant in the Room, and The Wallpaper of Practice. The three Parts of this autoethnography each adopt a different approach to autoethnographic writing and addresses and unsettles one of these metaphors. The first part adopts a narrative-reflective-analytical approach conventional to reflective writing in social work. The second and third parts adopt poetic and post-humanist approaches, respectively. It is proposed that adopting autoethnography as a methodology challenges the uncritical application of metaphor to situated practice and thereby prevents interpretive foreclosure. ‘Writing against’ objectified social work knowledge may assist in opening up practice to more challenging critical reflection and re-interpretation. Juxtaposing these three parts demonstrates the potential of non-conventional autoethnographic approaches to provide opportunities for deeper reflection on the experiences of doing social work within the context of poverty than conventional approaches to reflective writing. Furthermore, they indicate a need to reconsider how well these metaphors reflect social work practice experience with poverty.

Text-based vignettes are widely used within qualitative social work research yet there is little guidance on how to construct and integrate them into the research process. This article discusses the uses, benefits and limitations of written vignettes as part of semi-structured interviews and focus groups with social workers and related professionals. It provides clear guidelines on how to design a vignette. This includes the choice of scenario, characteristics of the protagonist, type of vignette, research setting, length, vignettes in semi-structured interviews and pre-testing. Text-based vignettes have been successfully used in social work research on six continents in a variety of research contexts including single context, comparative, cross-sectional, longitudinal and replication studies. Written vignettes are a useful tool to elicit (professional) values, attitudes and decision-making processes in a time efficient manner that produces focused, in-depth knowledge without the need to use real practice examples that could potentially include sensitive data or breach confidentiality. Vignettes have been used to explore a wide range of topics including but not limited to adult safeguarding, care planning, child protection and multi-agency working together. There is some debate whether vignette responses mirror real-life actions. The value of vignette data goes beyond documenting real-world decision-making. It can uncover tacit social work knowledge and unquestioned beliefs to show how they interplay in decision-making.

There exist ongoing calls among social work scholars and practitioners to cultivate applied knowledge of critical and emancipatory practice. In this paper, I explore the utility of text-based vignettes as instruments that can be used to elicit insight from marginalized service users on critical social work practice. To do this work, I draw on data from interviews with 20 transgender and gender diverse (TGD) social service users, along with 10 social workers, whose responses to a text-based vignette were originally used to build an understanding of the constituents of equitable social work practice with TGD people. Incorporating critical pragmatism as a conceptual framework and constructivist grounded theory as a methodological orientation, I analyze data from this study as an exemplar that substantiates the promise of using text-based vignettes in qualitative social work research to generate knowledge of critical social work practice. Specifically, I demonstrate how text-based vignettes in this study (1) contextualized the meaning, significance, and impact of oppression for service users, (2) built insight on practice that reflects solidarity and allyship, and (3) identified opportunities for social workers’ reflexive use of professional power to effect change. Accounting for the tensions between empiricism and critical praxis in social work, I consider the promise of incorporating text-based vignettes to develop empirical social work literature that is rooted in the voices of marginalized service users.

The article considers the possibility of expressing the contested nature of social work via objects and their stories. Two Collections of objects and their stories (object/stories) are analysed and compared – an English language Collection (Obj1) and a Latin American Spanish language Collection (Obj2). A thematic analysis results in a schema of three categories of object/story: practical, symbolic, and totemic. The object/stories vary in the degree to which they reflect a social work that is community-oriented or focused on the individual. The two Collections are analysed for similarities and differences, and the authors consider wider applications of the learning from the project.