Viviene E Cree
Biographic Data
| ID | 1499786 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Viviene E Cree |
| GIVEN NAMES | Viviene E |
| FAMILY NAME | Cree |
| SIGNATURE | CREE V E |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Edinburgh |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-9995-1820 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 53 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 252 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 51 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 2 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1998 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2023 |
| H-INDEX | 9 |
Social Work
Building on the successful 1st edition, this reader brings together some of the most significant ideas that have informed social work practice over the last fifty years. At the same time as presenting these foundational extracts, the book includes commentaries that allow the reader to understand the selected extracts on their own terms as well as to be aware of their relations to each other and to the wider social work context. There is no settle…
Forming a new and unexpected relationship through digital technologies
This article is not a research paper in the conventional sense. Instead, it is a reflexive account of the building of a relationship which would not have happened without the existence of digital technologies and might not have happened but for the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic. It was through reading a digitised resource (an online PhD thesis) in the first UK ‘lockdown’ that Bob, now a semi-retired academic in the field of adult and organisati…
Ideological Dilemmas in Social Work
It has long been acknowledged that gender matters in social work, not least within justice social work, given the over-representation of men within the criminal justice system. Whilst there is significant theorising about the role of gender in criminal justice, there has been little empirical examination of how social workers understand and address gender in practice. This article sets out to redress this omission by introducing a novel study of …
Social Work
Research with children in rural China
Conducting research with children raises significant ethical and practical difficulties; when the context is rural China, where there has been no tradition of qualitative research with children, these become especially heightened. This article, written by a student and her supervisor, introduces a pilot study conducted in 2018 as part of a Master’s degree programme at a Scottish university. The study was designed to trial two child participatory …
Purdah in the 21st century
In many countries, women's movements continue to be dictated by gendered spaces, including social practices such as purdah. At the same time, globalisation and increased urbanisation in recent years have transformed women's lives, bringing about a significant increase in opportunities for women to work outside their homes. This article explores purdah in Bangladeshi society through an ethnographic study in one of Dhaka's low income communities. I…
‘Within my work environment I don’t see gender as an issue’
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 advanci…
Navigating the gendered academy
Women fare less well than men across all academic disciplines: they are less likely to be promoted, they earn less, and many more professors are men. There has, however, been little analysis to date of the experience of women in social work education, a discipline that has historically had higher representation of female staff and students. This study set out to explore women in the social work academy through a case-study of social work educatio…
Agency and exploitation
Social work has long been concerned about women’s involvement in the sex industry. This article asks what can be learned from sex workers themselves about how social work might better support those who work in the industry. Based on a qualitative study in Bangladesh, it is argued that although the non-governmental organisations who worked with these women helped to increase their feelings of agency, violence and abuse continued to feature in thei…
Social workers' reflexive understandings of their “everyday” communications with children
Over the past two decades, the use of ethnographic research methods, in combination with a range of discursive, conversational, and multimodal analytical approaches, have provided vivid accounts of the complex nature of social workers' everyday communication. This paper discusses the potential and the problems of combining a video‐stimulated recall methodology with an explicit theoretical framework, in order to generate critical reflexive “inside…
From communication to co‐operation
Communicating and engaging with children is a foundational component of child care social work practice, but all too frequently, in the wake of serious incidents, it is the focus of criticism. Drawing on findings from a large‐scale ESRC‐funded research project conducted in the four U.K. nations, this paper explores, through a psychosocial analytic lens, how social workers anticipate, enact and reflect on their encounters with both children and th…
Emotional Labour in Social Workers’ Encounters with Children and Their Families
The ways in which social workers experience a range of emotions that are evoked in their professional relationships with children and families is an area that is little focused upon and yet the processes involved in their expression and management can have profound implications for all involved. Theoretically informed by sociological concepts and combining data from a two-year, UK four-nation, ESRC-funded research project, ‘Talking and Listening …
Containment
This article examines children's agency in their interactions with social workers during statutory encounters in a child protection context. It draws from a UK-wide ethnographic study. It finds that much of social workers' responses to children's agency in this context are best understood as a form of 'containment'. In doing so, it offers an original and significant contribution to the theoretical understanding of children's agency, as well as it…
Social Work Education – A Local and Global History
Evaluating effectiveness in social work
Evaluating effectiveness is of primary concern to social work practice; resources will always be limited, and those using services deserve the best. But what is effectiveness, and how should it be measured? This paper explores the challenge of measuring effectiveness in social work by examining two small-scale evaluations of services (statutory and voluntary) in Scotland. Both evaluations used a mixed method approach and both were conducted in a …
University opened up so many doors for me
There is a substantial body of quantitative evidence about the benefits of higher education. However there is little qualitative evidence about the extent to which these benefits accrue to graduates from non-traditional backgrounds. This paper contributes to this gap in knowledge by exploring the experiences of a group of 15 graduates 10 years after they had started at university. The cohort was unusual because they had all completed a college-le…
Encountering #Feminism on Twitter
The growth of social media presents an unparalleled opportunity for the study of social change. However, the speed and scale of this growth presents challenges for social scientists, particularly those whose methodologies tend to rely on the qualitative analysis of data that are gathered firsthand. Alongside the growth of social media, companies have emerged which have developed tools for interrogating 'big data', although often unconnected from …
Reflective thinking in social work
Reflective thinking in social work: learning from student narratives." Ethics and Social Welfare, 11(4), pp. 412–413
Exploring Communication between Social Workers, Children and Young People
A key issue for the social work profession concerns the nature, quality and content of communicative encounters with children and families. This article introduces some findings from a project funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) that took place across the UK between 2013 and 2015, which explored how social workers communicate with children in their everyday practice. The Talking and Listening to Children (TLC) project had th…
Social Suffering
Child protection systems across the English-speaking world have been subject to critique in recent years, identified as overly procedural and compliance-based, within which relationships between social workers and clients are characterised by mutual suspicion and animosity. This article draws on findings from a knowledge exchange project in which a university social work department worked with two local authorities with the aim of bringing about …
Social Work. A Very Short Introduction
Towards an interactional approach to reflective practice in social work
Reflective practice is a key aspiration within social work; being a reflective practitioner is considered to be a foundational attribute of the social work professional. However, achieving reflective practice is not straightforward. Reflection is inevitably subject to issues of memory and recall, so that the recollection of a case is likely to differ in important ways from the original instance. Moreover, giving an account of an event to one's pe…
Making meaningful connections
Reports into incidents of child death and serious injury have highlighted consistently concern about the capacity of social workers to communicate skilfully with children. Drawing on data collected as part of an Economic and Social Research Council funded UK‐wide research project exploring social workers' communicative practices with children, this paper explores how approaches informed by social pedagogy can assist social workers in connecting a…
The Challenge of Measuring Effectiveness in Social Work
This article explores the challenge of measuring effectiveness in social work, building from an evaluation of a service for those with drug- and alcohol-related problems in Scotland conducted in 2012. Drug and alcohol misuse have long been recognised as major issues for the Scottish economy, health service and population, affecting high numbers of individuals, families and communities in Scotland. For this reason, it is vital that the services pr…
Social Work Home Visits to Children and Families in the UK
The home visit is at the heart of social work practice with children and families; it is what children and families' social workers do more than any other single activity (except for recording), and it is through the home visit that assessments are made on a daily basis about risk, protection and welfare of children. And yet it is, more than any other activity, an example of what Pithouse has called an 'invisible trade': it happens behind closed …
A real rollercoaster of confidence and emotions
Accounts of emotion and affect have gained popularity in studies of learning. This article draws on qualitative research with a group of non-traditional students entering an elite university in the UK to illustrate how being and becoming a university student is an intrinsically emotional process. It argues that feelings of loss and dislocation are inherent to the students' experiences of entering university, and that 'coming to know' a new commun…
Research with children
This paper identifies a number of significant gaps between the principles of good practice in research with children and the practical realities of conducting a research project with children. The context of the discussion is an ongoing research study of children and young people in Scotland with a parent or carer with HIV. The paper argues that conducting research with what is a hidden (and in many ways secret) population throws into sharp relie…
Worries and problems of young carers
This paper reports on a research study which explored the worries and problems of young carers in Edinburgh. Sixty‐one young carers took part in the study, conducted between April and June 2002. Findings indicate that young carers identify significant worries and problems in relation to their well‐being, and that these come over and above any ‘normal’ adolescent difficulties. It is suggested that these findings may have important implications for…
Containment
This article examines children's agency in their interactions with social workers during statutory encounters in a child protection context. It draws from a UK-wide ethnographic study. It finds that much of social workers' responses to children's agency in this context are best understood as a form of 'containment'. In doing so, it offers an original and significant contribution to the theoretical understanding of children's agency, as well as it…
Exploring Communication between Social Workers, Children and Young People
A key issue for the social work profession concerns the nature, quality and content of communicative encounters with children and families. This article introduces some findings from a project funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) that took place across the UK between 2013 and 2015, which explored how social workers communicate with children in their everyday practice. The Talking and Listening to Children (TLC) project had th…
Anti‐Oppressive Social Work Theory and Practice
Making meaningful connections
Reports into incidents of child death and serious injury have highlighted consistently concern about the capacity of social workers to communicate skilfully with children. Drawing on data collected as part of an Economic and Social Research Council funded UK‐wide research project exploring social workers' communicative practices with children, this paper explores how approaches informed by social pedagogy can assist social workers in connecting a…
Engaging with Involuntary Service Users in Social Work
The participation of service users in the planning and delivery of social work services has become a familiar objective in the UK. Policy injunctions, however, mask a lack of clarity around what is meant by terms such as ‘participation’ and ‘engagement’. Moreover, since many service users do not engage with social workers voluntarily, the expectation that they become centrally involved in the planning and delivery of services highlights tensions …
Social Work Home Visits to Children and Families in the UK
The home visit is at the heart of social work practice with children and families; it is what children and families' social workers do more than any other single activity (except for recording), and it is through the home visit that assessments are made on a daily basis about risk, protection and welfare of children. And yet it is, more than any other activity, an example of what Pithouse has called an 'invisible trade': it happens behind closed …
Moral Panics, Claims-Making and Child Protection in the UK
This paper brings sociological theory on moral panics to a discussion of child protection social work in the UK. We begin by considering the extent to which policy and practice may be susceptible to distortion by ‘claims-making’, the influence of which, we will argue, casts a rarely explored and less understood influence on the service's practice and direction. We conclude that claims-making has had a detrimental effect on child protection, contr…
From communication to co‐operation
Communicating and engaging with children is a foundational component of child care social work practice, but all too frequently, in the wake of serious incidents, it is the focus of criticism. Drawing on findings from a large‐scale ESRC‐funded research project conducted in the four U.K. nations, this paper explores, through a psychosocial analytic lens, how social workers anticipate, enact and reflect on their encounters with both children and th…
Emotional Labour in Social Workers’ Encounters with Children and Their Families
The ways in which social workers experience a range of emotions that are evoked in their professional relationships with children and families is an area that is little focused upon and yet the processes involved in their expression and management can have profound implications for all involved. Theoretically informed by sociological concepts and combining data from a two-year, UK four-nation, ESRC-funded research project, ‘Talking and Listening …
It all just clicked
This paper explores the transitions that a group of students, admitted from further education colleges as part of broader widening access initiative at a Scottish research-intensive university, made across the lifetime of their degrees. It investigates how they negotiate their learning careers beyond the first year, and how they (re)define their approaches to independent learning as they progress to the later years of their courses. Evidence is d…
The Presentation of Child Trafficking in the UK
This article explores the ways in which the highly emotive subject of child trafficking has been, and currently is, presented in the UK. It does so by examining the way the issue has been tackled at two moments in time: the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twenty-first century. We argue that, although the trafficking of children is clearly both undesirable and unacceptable, the reaction to this issue in the UK has been out o…
Moral panics and social work
In this paper we apply the lens of moral panic to analyse child protection social work in the UK. We suggest that many of the anxieties that beset social work are best understood as moral panics and discuss processes in which ‘claims-makers’ have introduced and amplified concerns into panics. We discuss two examples of anxieties over child endangerment: the first is concerned with the foundation of the NSPCC and its campaign for the Children’s Ch…
Time to be Heard
This article problematises the Scottish Government's response to historical abuse in residential child care.This is a sensitive subject, eliciting powerful emotional and moralising impulses that act to inhibit expressions of dissent.In this article we do introduce dissenting perspectives.We provide a brief background to the emergence of historical abuse as a public issue and outline the Scottish Government's response to this, through its commissi…
Encountering #Feminism on Twitter
The growth of social media presents an unparalleled opportunity for the study of social change. However, the speed and scale of this growth presents challenges for social scientists, particularly those whose methodologies tend to rely on the qualitative analysis of data that are gathered firsthand. Alongside the growth of social media, companies have emerged which have developed tools for interrogating 'big data', although often unconnected from …
Towards an interactional approach to reflective practice in social work
Reflective practice is a key aspiration within social work; being a reflective practitioner is considered to be a foundational attribute of the social work professional. However, achieving reflective practice is not straightforward. Reflection is inevitably subject to issues of memory and recall, so that the recollection of a case is likely to differ in important ways from the original instance. Moreover, giving an account of an event to one's pe…
The Role of Practitioner Research in Developing Cultures of Learning in Children and Families Social Work
Over the past decade, higher education policy in the United Kingdom has increasingly focused on the impact of academic research with research councils putting out specific calls for knowledge exchange (KE) opportunities. This KE project involved a Scottish university working with practitioners from two Local Authority Children and Families Social Work departments. The aim, in line with the recent UK Government-sponsored review of child protection…
Confronting sex trafficking
English Sex trafficking, the trafficking of women and children for the purposes of sexual exploitation, is recognized today as a worldwide problem, affecting hundreds of thousands each year. It is not, however, a new phenomenon. This paper will discuss the lessons raised by the National Vigilance Association's response to this problem. French Le marché du sexe, le trafic des femmes et des enfants aux fins d'exploitation sexuelle, est aujourd'hui …
Widening Participation at an Ancient Scottish University
The issue of widening participation is one which has been exercising all universities in the UK in recent years. Initiatives at UK and Scottish government level have forced higher education institutions to acknowledge that something must be done to make admissions fairer, more transparent, and above all, to make higher education more accessible to a wider range of applicants. For instance, as a condition of the Scottish Funding Council core grant…
Agency and exploitation
Social work has long been concerned about women’s involvement in the sex industry. This article asks what can be learned from sex workers themselves about how social work might better support those who work in the industry. Based on a qualitative study in Bangladesh, it is argued that although the non-governmental organisations who worked with these women helped to increase their feelings of agency, violence and abuse continued to feature in thei…
Social Suffering
Child protection systems across the English-speaking world have been subject to critique in recent years, identified as overly procedural and compliance-based, within which relationships between social workers and clients are characterised by mutual suspicion and animosity. This article draws on findings from a knowledge exchange project in which a university social work department worked with two local authorities with the aim of bringing about …
Standing up to complexity
Moral panics are central to social work policy and practice. Voluntary agencies and statutory bodies (including governments) create and sustain moral panics in order to raise awareness of, and win support for, their own understandings of social issues and problems. This is not a neutral enterprise; on the contrary, moral panics often have consequences that are negative, whether intended or unintended. Far from leading to greater social justice an…
Critical reflection workshops and knowledge exchange
In 2013, academics from a S cottish university came together with social work managers and practitioners from two local authorities ( LAs ) in S cotland to run a knowledge exchange ( KE ) project co‐sponsored by the E conomic and S ocial R esearch C ouncil and the LAs . The project's aim was an ambitious one: to contribute to culture change in the children and families' departments in the two partner agencies. The project grew out of an earlier K…
Working with Men
Ms Brownlie's review usefully highlights and describes in some detail a number of important themes from the book which she herself identifies as constructive and thought-provoking. On the other hand, however, aspects of the review are less well formulated, at times merely serving to reinforce points already made in the book itself. There are also, disappointingly, straightforward inaccuracies and misinterpretations in the review. Most importantly…
Research with children
This paper identifies a number of significant gaps between the principles of good practice in research with children and the practical realities of conducting a research project with children. The context of the discussion is an ongoing research study of children and young people in Scotland with a parent or carer with HIV. The paper argues that conducting research with what is a hidden (and in many ways secret) population throws into sharp relie…
Worries and problems of young carers
This paper reports on a research study which explored the worries and problems of young carers in Edinburgh. Sixty‐one young carers took part in the study, conducted between April and June 2002. Findings indicate that young carers identify significant worries and problems in relation to their well‐being, and that these come over and above any ‘normal’ adolescent difficulties. It is suggested that these findings may have important implications for…
Anti‐Oppressive Social Work Theory and Practice
Social support and children affected by parental HIV
While HIV and AIDS continue to decimate the population of sub-Saharan Africa, HIV remains an issue of major concern for those working with children and families throughout Europe. The combined impact of intravenous drug use by young adults and heterosexual transmission means that increasing numbers of children and young people in many countries in Europe are growing up in families where one or both parents is HIV positive (EuroHIV Report Citation…
Listening to children and young people affected by parental HIV
This study, conducted between 1999 and 2002, set out to explore the experiences of children and young people in Scotland with a parent or carer with HIV. The study had three elements: a postal survey of health and social work agencies, interviews with twenty-eight children and young people and a postal survey of schools. The study found little recognition from statutory agencies of the needs of affected children, whether in health, education or s…
Widening Participation at an Ancient Scottish University
The issue of widening participation is one which has been exercising all universities in the UK in recent years. Initiatives at UK and Scottish government level have forced higher education institutions to acknowledge that something must be done to make admissions fairer, more transparent, and above all, to make higher education more accessible to a wider range of applicants. For instance, as a condition of the Scottish Funding Council core grant…
Risk and HIV
Sex education is back on the agenda. Recent years have seenthe re-emergence in Scotland of a pro-abstinence lobby in the media, ostensibly influenced by the conservative movement in the United States. The rhetoric touched a cord with those concerned by Scotland’s high levels of teenage pregnancies and increasing rates of sexually transmitted infections (STIs) (Scottish Executive 2003a). It also provides a backdrop to our discussion of HIV educati…
Social work
Social Work: Voices from the inside offers unique insight into social work from the perspectives of those 'on the inside', that is, service users, carers and practitioners. Drawing on a narrative tradition, 59 people from across the UK tell their stories about how and why social work came into their lives, and what happened next." "Focusing on issues for good practice in social work and social work education, this book is essential reading for st…
Confronting sex trafficking
English Sex trafficking, the trafficking of women and children for the purposes of sexual exploitation, is recognized today as a worldwide problem, affecting hundreds of thousands each year. It is not, however, a new phenomenon. This paper will discuss the lessons raised by the National Vigilance Association's response to this problem. French Le marché du sexe, le trafic des femmes et des enfants aux fins d'exploitation sexuelle, est aujourd'hui …
A real rollercoaster of confidence and emotions
Accounts of emotion and affect have gained popularity in studies of learning. This article draws on qualitative research with a group of non-traditional students entering an elite university in the UK to illustrate how being and becoming a university student is an intrinsically emotional process. It argues that feelings of loss and dislocation are inherent to the students' experiences of entering university, and that 'coming to know' a new commun…
Children and HIV in Scotland
This article reports on a study conducted in 2009 and funded by the Elton John AIDS Foundation, which set out to chart the health and social care needs of children and young people infected with, and affected by, HIV in Scotland. The study had three elements: a scoping study, an epidemiological survey of infected and affected children, and young people and interviews with forty-eight informants (practitioners, parents and carers, and infected and…
Time to be Heard
This article problematises the Scottish Government's response to historical abuse in residential child care.This is a sensitive subject, eliciting powerful emotional and moralising impulses that act to inhibit expressions of dissent.In this article we do introduce dissenting perspectives.We provide a brief background to the emergence of historical abuse as a public issue and outline the Scottish Government's response to this, through its commissi…
Engaging with Involuntary Service Users in Social Work
The participation of service users in the planning and delivery of social work services has become a familiar objective in the UK. Policy injunctions, however, mask a lack of clarity around what is meant by terms such as ‘participation’ and ‘engagement’. Moreover, since many service users do not engage with social workers voluntarily, the expectation that they become centrally involved in the planning and delivery of services highlights tensions …
Children's Work
There is a widespread consensus internationally, demonstrated in the UN Charter on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) and subsequent policy documents, that children should be protected from work that is hazardous and harmful. This paper, based on doctoral research conducted with street-vending children and young people in Nigeria, argues that this approach fails to address the complex reality of children's lives in developing countries. Findings fro…
Moral panics and social work
In this paper we apply the lens of moral panic to analyse child protection social work in the UK. We suggest that many of the anxieties that beset social work are best understood as moral panics and discuss processes in which ‘claims-makers’ have introduced and amplified concerns into panics. We discuss two examples of anxieties over child endangerment: the first is concerned with the foundation of the NSPCC and its campaign for the Children’s Ch…
Moral Panics, Claims-Making and Child Protection in the UK
This paper brings sociological theory on moral panics to a discussion of child protection social work in the UK. We begin by considering the extent to which policy and practice may be susceptible to distortion by ‘claims-making’, the influence of which, we will argue, casts a rarely explored and less understood influence on the service's practice and direction. We conclude that claims-making has had a detrimental effect on child protection, contr…
Social Work and Pornography
On the back of recent high-profile cases, the subject of internet pornography has become the focus of media and political attention. Social workers are increasingly likely to be drawn into this issue through requirements to provide courts with reports or taking child protection decisions relating to clients' use of child or, potentially, extreme pornography. Within a risk paradigm, they may look for answers based on technical and ‘scientific’ kno…
Facilitating Recovery from Drug and Alcohol Problems — Reflections on Interviews with Service Users in Scotland
Service users were interviewed as part of a multi-method evaluation of an alcohol and drug social work service in Scotland. This paper explores service user interviews that were conducted in the evaluation, addressing the following questions: What did the service users feel about the service itself? Leading on from this, what did they see as helpful in facilitating their recovery in general? The research will be contextualised in Scotland’s cultu…
Critical reflection workshops and knowledge exchange
In 2013, academics from a S cottish university came together with social work managers and practitioners from two local authorities ( LAs ) in S cotland to run a knowledge exchange ( KE ) project co‐sponsored by the E conomic and S ocial R esearch C ouncil and the LAs . The project's aim was an ambitious one: to contribute to culture change in the children and families' departments in the two partner agencies. The project grew out of an earlier K…
The Presentation of Child Trafficking in the UK
This article explores the ways in which the highly emotive subject of child trafficking has been, and currently is, presented in the UK. It does so by examining the way the issue has been tackled at two moments in time: the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twenty-first century. We argue that, although the trafficking of children is clearly both undesirable and unacceptable, the reaction to this issue in the UK has been out o…
Responsibility in Social Work
Revisiting Moral Panics
Revisiting Moral Panics
The Role of Practitioner Research in Developing Cultures of Learning in Children and Families Social Work
Over the past decade, higher education policy in the United Kingdom has increasingly focused on the impact of academic research with research councils putting out specific calls for knowledge exchange (KE) opportunities. This KE project involved a Scottish university working with practitioners from two Local Authority Children and Families Social Work departments. The aim, in line with the recent UK Government-sponsored review of child protection…
Political science (43 works) · Sociology (41 works) · Psychology (32 works) · Social Work (26 works) · Social Work Education and Practice (26 works) · Engineering (20 works) · Law (19 works) · Public relations (19 works) · Social science (15 works) · Work (physics (14 works)