M Stevens
Biographic Data
| ID | 11527 |
|---|---|
| NAME | M Stevens |
| GIVEN NAMES | M |
| FAMILY NAME | Stevens |
| SIGNATURE | STEVENS M |
| AFFILIATIONS | King's College London |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-2023-8564 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 45 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 192 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 45 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1987 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2022 |
| H-INDEX | 8 |
Experiences of adult social work addressing self-neglect during the Covid-19 pandemic
Internationally there has been much interest in the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the care and support of older people including those with needs arising from self-neglect and/or hoarding. During the pandemic English local authorities' legal duties remained to respond to concerns about harm about people with care and support needs living in the community. This paper reports interviews with 44 participants working for adult safeguarding/adult…
Adult safeguarding managers' understandings of self‐neglect and hoarding
Self-neglect and hoarding are behaviours that are hard to define, measure and address. They are more prevalent among older people because of bio-psycho-social factors, which may be exacerbated by advancing age. This paper aims to further understandings of self-neglect and hoarding in England's Care Act 2014 context, drawing on a study involving qualitative interviews with local authority adult safeguarding managers who play an important role in d…
Safeguarding and personal budgets
Purpose The purpose of this paper is to present findings from one element of a study exploring the relationship between personalisation, in the form of personal budgets (PBs) for publicly funded social care and safeguarding. Design/methodology/approach Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 12 people receiving PBs who had recently been the focus of a safeguarding investigation. Participants were recruited from two English local authority …
‘We’re effectively becoming immigration officers’
In the UK care sector, as much as other fields of work, managers need to check and monitor the immigration status of their staff. In this article, we examine accounts from care home and home care managers of making decisions about recruitment and employment practices placing these in the context of risk work. We use data from a secondary analysis of interviews with 121 social care managers that took place in four contrasting English local authori…
Workforce diversity and conflicts in care work
The care workforce in England is ethnically diverse yet little is known of how managers manage this aspect of human resources work. This article reports findings from a longitudinal study of the care workforce to offer insights into managers’ views of staff demographics, relationships and management challenges and strategies. Three themes emerged from the analysis: sources of conflict; reactive approaches to limiting conflict; and proactive appro…
Social workers’ power of entry in adult safeguarding concerns
Purpose The purpose of this paper is to explore debates about the powers social workers may need to undertake safeguarding enquiries where access to the adult is denied. Design/methodology/approach The paper takes as a starting point a scoping review of the literature undertaken as part of a study exploring social work responses to situations where they are prevented from speaking to an adult at risk by a third party. Findings A power of entry mi…
Safeguarding practice in England where access to an adult at risk is obstructed by a third party
Purpose Being able to speak in private to an adult about whom there is a safeguarding concern is central to English local authorities’ duty under the Care Act 2014 to make enquiries in such cases. While there has been an on-going debate about whether social workers or others should have new powers to effect these enquiries, it has been unclear how common obstructive behaviour by third parties is and how often this causes serious problems or is un…
Frailty and Social Care
Definitions of frailty are much debated. The focus of this article is on the representation of frailty; who employs the terms ‘frail’ or ‘frailty’ in social care, about whom and with what meanings? We report secondary analysis of interview data from two waves of a longitudinal study starting in 2008. Study participants were 240 social care managers/practitioners working in four English localities. Social care managers and practitioners did not ta…
The potential uses and abuses of a power of entry for social workers in England
Purpose Whether social workers should have a power of entry in cases where individuals seem to be hindering safeguarding enquiries for community-dwelling adults at risk is a topical question in England. The purpose of this paper is to present the findings of a re-examination of relevant sections of the 2012 Government Safeguarding Power of Entry Consultation. Design/methodology/approach Re-analysis of responses to question three of the 2012 Gover…
Parliamentary arguments on powers of access – the Care Bill debates
Purpose Opinion is divided on whether a new power of entry should be introduced for social workers in cases where individuals seem to be hindering safeguarding enquiries for community-dwelling adults at risk in England who have decision-making capacity. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the prevalence and circumstances of situations where access to an adult at risk is denied or difficult and what helps those in practice. The study consi…
Instructional Motivations
Some educational theorists have believed that the beneficial aspects of home education will eventually find their way into mainstream educational contexts. The purpose of this paper was to extract the motivations behind homeschooling instructional decisions. This study was built on surveys and interviews from over 1000 homeschooling parents across the United States. Participants were asked about the reason for their instructional routines. Instru…
Did anyone notice the transformation of adult social care? An analysis of Safeguarding Adult Board Annual Reports
Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to report on a part of a study examining the interrelationships between personalisation and safeguarding practice. Specifically the authors aimed to examine how safeguarding practice is affected by the roll out of personalisation in adult social care, particularly when the adult at risk has a personal budget or is considering this. Design/methodology/approach – A sample of annual reports from Adult Safeguard…
Developing and Modeling Complex Social Interventions
Objectives: Modeling the processes involved in complex social interventions is important in social work practice, as it facilitates their implementation and translation into different contexts. This article reports the process of developing and modeling the connecting people intervention (CPI), a model of practice that supports people with mental health problems to enhance their social networks. Method: The CPI model was developed through an iter…
Content and Purpose of Supervision in Social Work Practice in England
Social work supervision is receiving renewed attention internationally with calls for it to be remodelled and given greater priority, this paper uses data from a longitudinal study in England, which involved: three online surveys of Newly Qualified Social Workers (NQSWs); an online survey of Directors and face-to-face interviews with 23 social work managers which enabled us to investigate the receipt of supervision and its provision. Data on the …
Adult Safeguarding Policy and Law
Elder abuse is a ‘social problem’, as illustrated by the production of policy documents and legislation that define and revise the scope and nature of the problem. This article synthesises and discusses the policy documents and legal changes that have taken place in England since 2000, when the first policy guidance to address adult safeguarding as a whole was produced. The focus of this article is on particular locations, namely care home and ho…
Investigating models of adult safeguarding in England – a mixed-methods approach
Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to describe the methodology being used in a study exploring the organisation of adult safeguarding. Design/methodology/approach – A mixed-methods study is presented which describes how the research team is seeking to identify models of adult safeguarding and then compare them using a quasi-experimental study design. Findings – Close examination of this study's methodology highlights the potential value of mi…
Enhancing social networks
People with severe mental health problems such as psychosis have access to less social capital, defined as resources within social networks, than members of the general population. However, a lack of theoretically and empirically informed models hampers the development of social interventions which seek to enhance an individual's social networks. This paper reports the findings of a qualitative study, which used ethnographic field methods in six …
Revisiting the Causes of Stress in Social Work
Social workers in adult social care are at particular risk of job-related stress, although the contribution of different organisational and policy changes to this phenomenon is subject to debate. This paper explores a theoretical framework from the occupational psychology literature (the Job Demand/Control Model) to identify the characteristics of those most at risk of stress, in a sample of 249 social workers and other care managers working in E…
Defining the “perpetrator”
Purpose The purpose of this paper is to set out and discuss findings from a developmental study, commissioned by the English Department of Health and the charity, Comic Relief, which was commissioned to clarify definitional issues and recommend ways of operationalising key concepts for a prospective survey of abuse, neglect and loss of dignity in the care of older people in residential care in the United Kingdom (UK). Design/methodology/approach …
Native Acts
Few peoples suffer under the weight of a single concept as much as Native Americans do under the notion of “authenticity.” Non-Indians want to know who the “real Indians” are or whether certain traditions and activities are indeed authentic. We have various ideas of what it is to play Indian or even to “go native,” but all of these notions raise the specter of Indianness as something performed. Phrases such as “honest injun” and “Indian giver” ar…
Personalisation through Individual Budgets
In England, ‘personal budgets’ are being implemented at a time of financial austerity. They are part of a growing trend internationally to give users of publicly funded social care and support more choice and control. In the individual budgets' (IB) pilot, people were allocated and had control over the way their IB was managed and spent, offering the opportunity to explore the potential of IBs to deliver better outcomes for people than convention…
The Social Work Bursary in England
The financial support available to students on social work qualifying programmes appears to be a neglected topic in published social work research. This article draws on a literature review and secondary data analysis of an existing dataset to discuss what is known about this topic and specifically considers the impact of a financial incentive to undertake social work qualifying education in England, the social work bursary. In the context of maj…
What Drives the Recruitment of Migrant Workers to Work in Social Care in England
This article outlines the reasons for the recruitment of migrant workers by the adult care sector in England, as revealed by participants in a multi-method study. The background to the study is the changing socio-demographic profile of the social care workforce, notably the employment of non-UK citizens in large numbers from outside traditional recruitment sources within the British Commonwealth. The article reports on 136 individual interviews w…
Personalisation and Partnership
As in other countries, improving collaboration between health and social care services is a long-established objective of English social policy. A more recent priority has been the personalisation of social care for adults and older people through the introduction of individualised funding arrangements. Individual budgets (IBs) were piloted in 13 English local authorities from 2005 to 2007, but they explicitly excluded NHS resources and services.…
The experiences of migrant social work and social care practitioners in the UK
Over recent years there has been a growing interest in the role of migrants in the social care sector in the United Kingdom (UK) and beyond. This article reports on the findings of an online survey of migrant social care workers in the UK, undertaken to complement a larger scale qualitative study on the subject. The survey aimed to test hypothesised relationships between migrant workers’ characteristics, circumstances, experiences and future plan…
Personalisation through Individual Budgets
In England, ‘personal budgets’ are being implemented at a time of financial austerity. They are part of a growing trend internationally to give users of publicly funded social care and support more choice and control. In the individual budgets' (IB) pilot, people were allocated and had control over the way their IB was managed and spent, offering the opportunity to explore the potential of IBs to deliver better outcomes for people than convention…
Enhancing social networks
People with severe mental health problems such as psychosis have access to less social capital, defined as resources within social networks, than members of the general population. However, a lack of theoretically and empirically informed models hampers the development of social interventions which seek to enhance an individual's social networks. This paper reports the findings of a qualitative study, which used ethnographic field methods in six …
People in Places
Social work and social care vacancies in England have partly been filled by international labour migration. Some staff are recruited from their home countries; others are recruited post arrival in the UK. The business of recruitment is often undertaken by commercial employment agencies; however, there is little literature on the workings of this sector. This article reports the first phase of a study of international recruitment in social care in…
Making the Transition
This article reports the results of a scoping review examining the transition from student to newly qualified professional across the social work, teaching, nursing and allied health professions. The extent to which professional qualifying programmes prepare students to make the transition into the workplace is a dominant theme in the literature but there is limited consensus about how to measure this reliably and objectively. The perceptions of …
Developing and Modeling Complex Social Interventions
Objectives: Modeling the processes involved in complex social interventions is important in social work practice, as it facilitates their implementation and translation into different contexts. This article reports the process of developing and modeling the connecting people intervention (CPI), a model of practice that supports people with mental health problems to enhance their social networks. Method: The CPI model was developed through an iter…
Content and Purpose of Supervision in Social Work Practice in England
Social work supervision is receiving renewed attention internationally with calls for it to be remodelled and given greater priority, this paper uses data from a longitudinal study in England, which involved: three online surveys of Newly Qualified Social Workers (NQSWs); an online survey of Directors and face-to-face interviews with 23 social work managers which enabled us to investigate the receipt of supervision and its provision. Data on the …
What (a) Difference a Degree Makes
After many years of debate in the UK about the need for a degree-level qualification in social work, the arguments for a minimum degree-level qualification were accepted. The requirements for the degree in England were developed drawing on work from a number of sources, including a benchmark statement for undergraduate degrees in social work and focus groups with stakeholders. The new degree in England, launched in 2003, involves one extra year’s…
Change and Continuity
The UK has long experienced a shortage of social workers and has recruited internationally to meet demand. There have been few specific data quantifying the scale of social work mobility to the UK through which such experiences can be set in context. The analysis reported in this article uses data from October 2008, relating to registered social workers working in England. As part of a wider study of migrant social care workers in England, the ar…
Banned from working in social care
Since July 2004, employers of social care staff working with vulnerable adults in England and Wales have been legally required to refer workers or volunteers dismissed for misconduct because they have harmed vulnerable adults or placed them at risk of harm to the Protection of Vulnerable Adults (POVA) list. The POVA list is unique to England and Wales, and is a powerful tool of quality assurance for the care sector and for the safeguarding of vul…
Revisiting the Causes of Stress in Social Work
Social workers in adult social care are at particular risk of job-related stress, although the contribution of different organisational and policy changes to this phenomenon is subject to debate. This paper explores a theoretical framework from the occupational psychology literature (the Job Demand/Control Model) to identify the characteristics of those most at risk of stress, in a sample of 249 social workers and other care managers working in E…
The experiences of migrant social work and social care practitioners in the UK
Over recent years there has been a growing interest in the role of migrants in the social care sector in the United Kingdom (UK) and beyond. This article reports on the findings of an online survey of migrant social care workers in the UK, undertaken to complement a larger scale qualitative study on the subject. The survey aimed to test hypothesised relationships between migrant workers’ characteristics, circumstances, experiences and future plan…
Parliamentary arguments on powers of access – the Care Bill debates
Purpose Opinion is divided on whether a new power of entry should be introduced for social workers in cases where individuals seem to be hindering safeguarding enquiries for community-dwelling adults at risk in England who have decision-making capacity. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the prevalence and circumstances of situations where access to an adult at risk is denied or difficult and what helps those in practice. The study consi…
Personalisation and Partnership
As in other countries, improving collaboration between health and social care services is a long-established objective of English social policy. A more recent priority has been the personalisation of social care for adults and older people through the introduction of individualised funding arrangements. Individual budgets (IBs) were piloted in 13 English local authorities from 2005 to 2007, but they explicitly excluded NHS resources and services.…
Safeguarding and System Change
Cash for care or consumer-directed services are increasing in scope and size in Europe and North America. The English Department of Health initiated a pilot form of personalised support for adults (Individual Budgets) in 13 local authorities that aimed to extend opportunities for users of social care services to determine their own priorities and preferences in the expectation that this will enhance their well-being. This article reports on and d…
Barring ‘inappropriate people’? The operation of a barring list of social care workers
Since July 2004, employers of social care staff working with vulnerable adults in England and Wales have been required to refer workers dismissed for misconduct that harmed vulnerable adults or placed them at risk of harm, to the Protection of Vulnerable Adults (POVA) list. Employers are also required to check the list before employing people to work with vulnerable adults. The Department of Health commissioned the authors to analyse the first 10…
Did anyone notice the transformation of adult social care? An analysis of Safeguarding Adult Board Annual Reports
Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to report on a part of a study examining the interrelationships between personalisation and safeguarding practice. Specifically the authors aimed to examine how safeguarding practice is affected by the roll out of personalisation in adult social care, particularly when the adult at risk has a personal budget or is considering this. Design/methodology/approach – A sample of annual reports from Adult Safeguard…
Defining the “perpetrator”
Purpose The purpose of this paper is to set out and discuss findings from a developmental study, commissioned by the English Department of Health and the charity, Comic Relief, which was commissioned to clarify definitional issues and recommend ways of operationalising key concepts for a prospective survey of abuse, neglect and loss of dignity in the care of older people in residential care in the United Kingdom (UK). Design/methodology/approach …
Increasing Care Options in the Countryside
Journal Article Increasing Care Options in the Countryside: Developing an Understanding of the Potential Impact of Personalization for Social Work with Rural Older People Get access Jill Manthorpe, Jill Manthorpe * Jill Manthorpe is professor of social work at King's College London and Director of the Social Care Workforce Research Unit. She was a member of the IBSEN team, evaluating the pilot individual budgets pilots in England. Her research in…
Training for Change
Individual Budgets are central to the implementation of English government policy goals in social care. Like other consumer-directed or self-directed support programmes operating in parts of the developed world, they are envisaged as a way of increasing individuals' choice and control over social care resources provided by the public sector. While the opportunities they provide for people using services have been identified prospectively in the E…
Adult safeguarding managers' understandings of self‐neglect and hoarding
Self-neglect and hoarding are behaviours that are hard to define, measure and address. They are more prevalent among older people because of bio-psycho-social factors, which may be exacerbated by advancing age. This paper aims to further understandings of self-neglect and hoarding in England's Care Act 2014 context, drawing on a study involving qualitative interviews with local authority adult safeguarding managers who play an important role in d…
The potential uses and abuses of a power of entry for social workers in England
Purpose Whether social workers should have a power of entry in cases where individuals seem to be hindering safeguarding enquiries for community-dwelling adults at risk is a topical question in England. The purpose of this paper is to present the findings of a re-examination of relevant sections of the 2012 Government Safeguarding Power of Entry Consultation. Design/methodology/approach Re-analysis of responses to question three of the 2012 Gover…
Investigating models of adult safeguarding in England – a mixed-methods approach
Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to describe the methodology being used in a study exploring the organisation of adult safeguarding. Design/methodology/approach – A mixed-methods study is presented which describes how the research team is seeking to identify models of adult safeguarding and then compare them using a quasi-experimental study design. Findings – Close examination of this study's methodology highlights the potential value of mi…
Social care stakeholders' perceptions of the recruitment of international practitioners in the United Kingdom—a qualitative study
Mobility of labour is common within Europe and globally, particularly in social and health care. This article examines the findings from a qualitative study of 15 expert or stakeholder views that explored supply and demand factors in international social care staff recruitment to the United Kingdom (UK). Findings are that international social care workers have a better reputation and are perceived as being harder workers, more productive, more re…
What Drives the Recruitment of Migrant Workers to Work in Social Care in England
This article outlines the reasons for the recruitment of migrant workers by the adult care sector in England, as revealed by participants in a multi-method study. The background to the study is the changing socio-demographic profile of the social care workforce, notably the employment of non-UK citizens in large numbers from outside traditional recruitment sources within the British Commonwealth. The article reports on 136 individual interviews w…
Better evidence for better commissioning
Commissioning of services has become integral to the role of those in the health and social care profession and a plethora of guidance on commissioning exists to aid professionals in this strategic activity. As part of a study of the Care Services Improvement Partnership (CSIP), the evidence base of published generic social care commissioning guides, published between 2003 and 2008, was assessed. Guides that were intended for healthcare commissio…
A comparison of some retrograde and anterograde effects of electroconvulsive shock in patients with severe depression
Seventy severely depressed patients were randomly assigned to receive either a standard course of bilateral electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) or a course of simulated ECT (muscle relaxant and anaesthesia) identical to the real course except that the shock was omitted. Anterograde amnesia due to the shock was demonstrated in recognition memory for word lists and in recall of labels for faces, but this was eliminated by priming. Retrograde amnesia wa…
Conservatively managed tibial shaft fractures in Nottingham, UK
OBJECTIVES: To investigate longterm pain and disability subsequent to a tibial shaft fracture treated conservatively. DESIGN AND SETTING: Subjects who had sustained a tibial shaft fracture more than 27 years ago were compared with those who had not. SUBJECTS: 572 fracture patients (identified from the records of the plaster room) aged over 16 at the time of injury were contracted and were compared with 2285 randomly selected subjects matched for …
Moral Positioning
Several studies have indicated the importance of challenging behaviour as a limiting factor on quality of life (Murphy et al., 1996; Brown and Thompson, 1997; Schwartz, 2003). This article presents the findings of research that aimed to investigate adults with learning disabilities’ understanding and experiences of what is perceived by staff and services to be challenging behaviour. This study was the final phase of research reported previously i…
Decision and debate
The Safeguarding Vulnerable Groups Bill introduces a central vetting process for staff and volunteers working with vulnerable adults and children in England and Wales. This new scheme will bring together the current Protection of Vulnerable Adults banning scheme (POVA), List 99 (banning teachers) and the Protection of Children Act list (applicable to those working in childcare). This article draws on research analysing the first 100 referrals to …
Barring ‘inappropriate people’? The operation of a barring list of social care workers
Since July 2004, employers of social care staff working with vulnerable adults in England and Wales have been required to refer workers dismissed for misconduct that harmed vulnerable adults or placed them at risk of harm, to the Protection of Vulnerable Adults (POVA) list. Employers are also required to check the list before employing people to work with vulnerable adults. The Department of Health commissioned the authors to analyse the first 10…
Weighing the evidence
This article describes research investigating the steps involved in recommending to the Secretary of State for Health whether a care worker should be included on the Protection of Vulnerable Adults (POVA) list, which records individuals barred from working and volunteering with vulnerable adults in England and Wales.The aims of the study were to investigate patterns of referrals to the list; factors associated with the collection of evidence to p…
Banned from working in social care
Since July 2004, employers of social care staff working with vulnerable adults in England and Wales have been legally required to refer workers or volunteers dismissed for misconduct because they have harmed vulnerable adults or placed them at risk of harm to the Protection of Vulnerable Adults (POVA) list. The POVA list is unique to England and Wales, and is a powerful tool of quality assurance for the care sector and for the safeguarding of vul…
Developing world class commissioning competencies in care services in England
This article provides an insight into the support needs of health and social care commissioners seeking to develop world class commissioning competencies and the role of service improvement agencies in meeting these needs. Reporting findings from the evaluation of one service improvement agency based in England, we focus on the 'improvement supports' (the products and services) that were delivered by the 'Care Services Improvement Partnership' th…
Safeguarding and System Change
Cash for care or consumer-directed services are increasing in scope and size in Europe and North America. The English Department of Health initiated a pilot form of personalised support for adults (Individual Budgets) in 13 local authorities that aimed to extend opportunities for users of social care services to determine their own priorities and preferences in the expectation that this will enhance their well-being. This article reports on and d…
What (a) Difference a Degree Makes
After many years of debate in the UK about the need for a degree-level qualification in social work, the arguments for a minimum degree-level qualification were accepted. The requirements for the degree in England were developed drawing on work from a number of sources, including a benchmark statement for undergraduate degrees in social work and focus groups with stakeholders. The new degree in England, launched in 2003, involves one extra year’s…
Training for Change
Individual Budgets are central to the implementation of English government policy goals in social care. Like other consumer-directed or self-directed support programmes operating in parts of the developed world, they are envisaged as a way of increasing individuals' choice and control over social care resources provided by the public sector. While the opportunities they provide for people using services have been identified prospectively in the E…
Better evidence for better commissioning
Commissioning of services has become integral to the role of those in the health and social care profession and a plethora of guidance on commissioning exists to aid professionals in this strategic activity. As part of a study of the Care Services Improvement Partnership (CSIP), the evidence base of published generic social care commissioning guides, published between 2003 and 2008, was assessed. Guides that were intended for healthcare commissio…
Social care stakeholders' perceptions of the recruitment of international practitioners in the United Kingdom—a qualitative study
Mobility of labour is common within Europe and globally, particularly in social and health care. This article examines the findings from a qualitative study of 15 expert or stakeholder views that explored supply and demand factors in international social care staff recruitment to the United Kingdom (UK). Findings are that international social care workers have a better reputation and are perceived as being harder workers, more productive, more re…
My Expectations Remain the Same. The Student Has to Be Competent to Practise
Research has emphasized the importance of practice learning to social work qualifying education but has tended to feature social work educator and student perspectives more strongly than the views of those responsible for assessing students' practice in the field. This article draws on 195 responses to a postal questionnaire sent at two points in time to practice assessors working with students from nine social work qualifying programmes run in s…
Making Decisions about Who Should Be Barred from Working with Adults in Vulnerable Situations
This article reports on an element of recently completed research that aimed to explore factors leading to placement on the Protection of Vulnerable Adults (POVA) List—a barring list unique to England and Wales. A multiple methods approach was adopted, involving in-depth quantitative analysis of POVA referral records and a set of discussion groups and interviews investigating how decisions were being made. This article focuses on this latter elem…
People in Places
Social work and social care vacancies in England have partly been filled by international labour migration. Some staff are recruited from their home countries; others are recruited post arrival in the UK. The business of recruitment is often undertaken by commercial employment agencies; however, there is little literature on the workings of this sector. This article reports the first phase of a study of international recruitment in social care in…
Increasing Care Options in the Countryside
Journal Article Increasing Care Options in the Countryside: Developing an Understanding of the Potential Impact of Personalization for Social Work with Rural Older People Get access Jill Manthorpe, Jill Manthorpe * Jill Manthorpe is professor of social work at King's College London and Director of the Social Care Workforce Research Unit. She was a member of the IBSEN team, evaluating the pilot individual budgets pilots in England. Her research in…
What Drives the Recruitment of Migrant Workers to Work in Social Care in England
This article outlines the reasons for the recruitment of migrant workers by the adult care sector in England, as revealed by participants in a multi-method study. The background to the study is the changing socio-demographic profile of the social care workforce, notably the employment of non-UK citizens in large numbers from outside traditional recruitment sources within the British Commonwealth. The article reports on 136 individual interviews w…
Personalisation and Partnership
As in other countries, improving collaboration between health and social care services is a long-established objective of English social policy. A more recent priority has been the personalisation of social care for adults and older people through the introduction of individualised funding arrangements. Individual budgets (IBs) were piloted in 13 English local authorities from 2005 to 2007, but they explicitly excluded NHS resources and services.…
The experiences of migrant social work and social care practitioners in the UK
Over recent years there has been a growing interest in the role of migrants in the social care sector in the United Kingdom (UK) and beyond. This article reports on the findings of an online survey of migrant social care workers in the UK, undertaken to complement a larger scale qualitative study on the subject. The survey aimed to test hypothesised relationships between migrant workers’ characteristics, circumstances, experiences and future plan…
Exploring the potential of refugees and asylum seekers for social care work in England
Literature highlights the potential for refugees to contribute to the labour force of receiving countries. Such a contribution may be welcomed in sectors, such as social care, where demand for labour is increasing and high vacancy rates exist. This article reports on empirical data examining the potential of refugee communities to work in social care in England. The analysis is based primarily on 20 interviews with refugees and asylum seekers and…
Change and Continuity
The UK has long experienced a shortage of social workers and has recruited internationally to meet demand. There have been few specific data quantifying the scale of social work mobility to the UK through which such experiences can be set in context. The analysis reported in this article uses data from October 2008, relating to registered social workers working in England. As part of a wider study of migrant social care workers in England, the ar…
Making the Transition
This article reports the results of a scoping review examining the transition from student to newly qualified professional across the social work, teaching, nursing and allied health professions. The extent to which professional qualifying programmes prepare students to make the transition into the workplace is a dominant theme in the literature but there is limited consensus about how to measure this reliably and objectively. The perceptions of …
Personalisation through Individual Budgets
In England, ‘personal budgets’ are being implemented at a time of financial austerity. They are part of a growing trend internationally to give users of publicly funded social care and support more choice and control. In the individual budgets' (IB) pilot, people were allocated and had control over the way their IB was managed and spent, offering the opportunity to explore the potential of IBs to deliver better outcomes for people than convention…
The Social Work Bursary in England
The financial support available to students on social work qualifying programmes appears to be a neglected topic in published social work research. This article draws on a literature review and secondary data analysis of an existing dataset to discuss what is known about this topic and specifically considers the impact of a financial incentive to undertake social work qualifying education in England, the social work bursary. In the context of maj…
Political science (38 works) · Medicine (34 works) · Nursing (28 works) · Healthcare innovation and challenges (27 works) · Psychology (26 works) · Sociology (26 works) · Public relations (25 works) · Elder Abuse and Neglect (16 works) · Law (16 works) · Social Work (15 works)