Suchergebnisse

Cover -- Contents -- Acknowledgements -- 1 Introduction -- The increased policy impetus -- The 'professional turn' -- Outline of the underpinning research -- A practice-led focus -- Organisation of the book -- 2 Introducing Communication Skills -- Developing communication capacity from basic social work ­communication skills to 'specialist social work communication' -- A 'relationship-based practice' approach -- Reflexivity -- Communication obstacles and the wider communication environment -- The 'social work' in social work communication skills -- Social work communication skills do not 'come naturally' -- 3 Assessing Communication Skills -- From 'assessing competence' to 'assessing capability' -- What am I measuring when I assess communication capacity? -- How can I measure communication capacity? -- Different assessment methods for producing different types of ­evidence for developmentally progressive, holistic assessment -- 4 Basic Universal Communication Skills -- '"Beginning Skills" to establish purposeful work' -- 'Tuning-in' (Shulman, 2009) -- 'Achieving a shared purpose' -- 'Empathy skills' -- Skills for 'gathering facts' -- Skills for 'ending work' -- 5 Working with Children -- Policy and background literature -- Practice application -- 6 Working with Young People with Offending Behaviour -- Policy and background literature -- Practice application -- 7 Working with Parents -- Policy and background literature -- Practice application -- 8 Working with People with Problematic Substance Use -- Policy and background literature -- Practice application -- 9 Working with Adults with Disabilities -- Policy and background literature -- Practice application -- 10 Working with People with Mental Health Problems -- Policy and background literature -- Practice application -- 11 Working with Older People -- Policy and background literature.

Abstract
Given Britain's religious, spiritual and secular diversity, and national legislation and policy directives such as The Children Act 1989 and Working Together to Safeguard Children, this empirical study addressed the lack of specific research investigating social workers' actual communication-in-action with Christian parents during statutory parenting assessment. The research deployed the two complementary theoretical frameworks of Critical Realism and Worldview studies to generate a deep understanding of communication. Thick descriptions of the communication act, social-worker-with-Christian-parent communication and the attendant meanings attributed to this event by study participants were generated from substantive data obtained from (i) a Forum Theatre performance delivered to thirty-one volunteering qualifying and qualified social workers and from (ii) unstructured qualitative interviews with twelve volunteering Christian parents. Analytic tactics from grounded theory were deployed to conduct the retroductive analysis. Key findings identified some shared social-worker-with-Christian-parent understandings. However, generally, Christian parents were so mistrustful about revealing ontological commitments to their Christian living/parenting praxis that they altered their language—a wariness worsened by the social workers' absenting of Christian belief-talk through using formulaic strategies.