Lena Dominelli
Biographic Data
| ID | 259546 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Lena Dominelli |
| GIVEN NAMES | Lena |
| FAMILY NAME | Dominelli |
| SIGNATURE | DOMINELLI L |
| AFFILIATIONS | Durham University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-7266-5517 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 88 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 561 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 87 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1974 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 12 |
Social work during the management of socio-environmental risk: Tensions between the professional and the caring spheres
The role played by social work in socio-environmental disasters has been studied since the 1970s, although the challenges faced by social workers in carrying out their professional role while also dealing with their care responsibilities in the family context has received insufficient attention. That said, feminist theory demonstrates that the tensions between the professional and family spheres have an impact on both the physical and mental heal…
Charting a Path for Disaster-Informed Social Work: Developing a Free Online CPD Course in England
This article documents the development of a free-to-access online social work in disasters continuing professional development (CPD) training course in England. The training is contextualized within adult learning theory and existing literature on social work training in disasters, as well as the contemporary CPD context in England. A small-scale pilot study of the training is also analyzed. The pilot found that the training course was overwhelmi…
Racial Justice and the Limits of the Law, Bharat Malkani, Bharat Malkani
Country on the Move: Comparing the Impacts of Service Provision During the Waves of Displacement Before and After Full-Scale Aggression Against Ukraine
The ongoing war in Ukraine demands a comprehensive and holistic state-level and social work response. This should address the psychosocial, economic, relational, and family reintegration aspects of the crisis and the needs and human rights of those affected by war-related displacement and migration. While the current global media has primarily focused on refugees leaving Ukraine, the severity of the impact of this conflict on those displaced with…
Information Communication Technology during Covid-19
This paper seeks to explore social work educators’ experiences of using technology to teach during the COVID-19 pandemic. Over the last decade, there has been a move to digitalise higher education in many countries worldwide. The COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in a mass exodus from the classroom to the home-based office at breakneck speed and highlighted, amongst other things, the digital divide that exists across the world. This research analyse…
Social Work Practice During Times of Disaster: A Transformative Green Social Work Model for Theory, Education and Practice in Disaster Interventions
Disasters affect people individually and collectively in their communities, national societies, and the international sphere and in any setting from the home to the planetary level. Furthermore, these disasters can be complex, multi-layered and what happens in one location can affect sentient beings elsewhere directly and/or indirectly. These create interdependencies between people, the flora, fauna, and physical environment that require the holi…
Social Work Practice During Times of Disaster: A Transformative Green Social Work Model for Theory, Education and Practice in Disaster Interventions
Performing gender: Social workers’ roles during the Covid-19 pandemic in China
Women social workers' roles during COVID-19 have been under-researched. We contribute to filling this gap by examining patriarchal inequalities in the pay and status of women social workers in Wuhan, China to determine whether change occurred when they replaced men in first-tier responder or protector roles when the government replaced men in frontline social work with women social workers. We conducted a qualitative investigation into these prac…
Complex identities in ethical social work practice and research
Ethnicity and Old Age: Expanding Our Imagination , Sandra Torres
Ethnicity and Old Age. The title entices the reader with the promise of ‘expanding our imagination’ in getting readers to think creatively about the intersectionality between ethnicity and ‘race’ and old age. The book is a call to arms in getting social gerontologists to reframe their thinking about ethnicity and old age beyond essentialist nostrums and to search for novel ways of understanding and theorising ways of being, thinking and doing fro…
Carers' perceptions of harm and the protective measures taken to safeguard children's health against inhalation of volcanic ash: A comparative study across Indonesia, Japan and Mexico
Volcanic ash contains potentially toxic elements which could affect human health. There is a paucity of research focusing on the impact of airborne volcanic emissions on the health of children, and on their exposure reduction. Children's carers (parents/guardians) are critical to their protection, so documenting their perceptions of the health risk and their knowledge of how to reduce their children's exposure is an important first step to increa…
Social Work Core Competencies in Disaster Management Practice: An Integrative Review
Purpose: Though social workers are increasingly engaged in the disaster management, there has been a lack of professional guidelines for social work practice and training in this emerging field. This study aims to develop a rudimentary social work competence framework to plug this gap. Method: We conducted an integrative review of 183 international empirical studies and practice reflections, comprising a systematic search, selection, review, and …
Working and learning from home during Covid-19: International experiences among social work educators and students
This research seeks to explore the experiences of social work educators and students working and learning from home. The findings, from an international survey sample of 166 educators and students, showed that the respondents faced issues with private and personal boundaries, felt the impact of working and learning from home on both physical and emotional levels, and experienced challenges to what was expected of them. The respondents primarily u…
Rethinking masculinity in disaster situations: Men's reflections of the 2004 tsunami in southern Sri Lanka
Facemask use for community protection from air pollution disasters: An ethical overview and framework to guide agency decision making
Disasters involving severe air pollution episodes create a pressing public health issue. During such emergencies, there may be pressure on agencies to provide solutions to protect affected communities. One possible intervention to reduce exposure during such crises is facemasks. Ethical values need to be considered as part of any decision-making process to assess whether to provide advice on, recommend and/or distribute any public health interven…
Personal reflections on 30 years of social work development in China
China has developed modern social work over the past 30 years, introducing new theories and models of good practice that have been drawn from diverse parts of globe. It has also made extensive contributions to disaster interventions based on its engagement in numerous calamities that have affected the population in China, including the devastating Wenchuan earthquake of 2008. More recently, its dynamic leaders have supported the development of so…
A green social work perspective on social work during the time of Covid‐19
COVID-19 has challenged social workers to engage with health pandemics and provide essential services in conditions of uncertainty and high risk. They have safeguarded children, older adults and diverse adults in 'at risk' groups under tough conditions mediated by digital technologies, adhered to government injunctions, maintained social and physical distancing under lockdown and worked from home remotely. Social workers and social care workers h…
Women and Community Action: Local and global perspectives
Introduction; Constructing, deconstructing and reconstructing communities; Gendered communities; The state, social policy and communities; Feminist challenges to community work; Feminist campaigns and networks; Feminist action on the individual level; Feminist action in the workplace; Feminist political action; Conclusions: changing communities and women's roles in them
Learning from our past: Climate Change and Disaster Interventions in Practice
Rebuilding Lives and Communities Postdisaster: A Case Study on Migrant Workers and Diversity in the USA
There is a need to better understand long-term disaster recovery and reconstruction challenges in diverse communities. This case study was part of a larger study undertaken by the Rebuilding Lives Post-Disaster research partnership, where field research was conducted in disaster-affected communities in Canada, the USA, Australia, India, Pakistan, and Taiwan. The objective of this exploratory case study was to focus on experiences of affected migr…
Not only Eating Together: Space and Green Social Work Intervention in a Hazard-Affected Area in Ya’an, Sichuan of China
A 7.0-magnitude earthquake hit Lushan county of Ya’an city, Sichuan Province, China, on 20 April 2013. The Lushan earthquake damage is less than the 2008 Wenchuan earthquake’s, where 70,000 houses collapsed and 2 million people across nineteen prefectures and 115 counties of Sichuan province were affected. Temple Village (fictitious name), an old village in S township, was chosen as an intervention site. As most young adults went to work in the c…
Anti-Racist Probation Practice
The probation service has committed itself to anti-racist initiatives and those promoting equal opportunities for some time. However, the experiences of black people, whether as workers or 'clients' indicates that the realities of day-to-day practice are far removed from this. Moreover, the picture is just as bleak if not even more so in other parts of the criminal justice system including the judiciary and the prison service. Anti-Racist Probati…
Adaptation to extreme weather events in complex health and social care systems: The example of older people’s services in England
Our findings contribute to a growing international literature on how conceptual models from complexity theory may be relevant to inform planning in health and social care systems, helping to adapt and improve preparedness and resilience to extreme weather events. We focus on findings from two case studies in England and their relationship to national policy for adaptation. Complexity theory helped to frame strategies for planning for events that …
Green social work and its implications for social development in China
Green social work has been significant in introducing new issues into environmental debates and increasing its centrality to social work practice. These have included: the mainstreaming of environmental considerations; a widening of the theoretical and practice base to ensure that social and environmental justice are considered integral to any environmental involvement by social workers; highlighting the need to think of innovative approaches to …
The local–global nexus in social work education and practice
Deprofessionalizing Social Work: Anti-Oppressive Practice, Competencies and Postmodernism
Social Work is in a state of flux. One of the key factors impacting on the direction it is currently taking is market forces. This article argues that the globalization of the economy and the internationalization of the state are affecting social work education and practice in Britain through the competency-based approach being promoted by CCETSW and the government. This is leading to the demise of the autonomous, reflective practitioner, creatin…
Globalization, contemporary challenges and social work practice
Globalization has had a profound effect on social work practice, changing service delivery; altering the labour process for professional social workers; creating new social problems for practitioners to address, such as people-trafficking and environmental issues; and producing demands for indigenization, or the development of locality specific forms of theory and practice. This article considers globalization in terms of these issues and the imp…
Manufacturing ghost fathers: The paradox of father presence and absence in child welfare
Fathers exist in the lives of women and children involved with child welfare authorities, and yet, they are rarely seen by child welfare. This invisibility exists whether or not fathers are deemed as risks or as assets to their families. Using an analysis of fundamental child welfare policies and practices and relevant literature, the paper examines how ‘ghost’ fathers are manufactured, and how this phenomenon affects families and professionals i…
Connecting father absence and mother blame in child welfare policies and practice
Globalization and the technocratization of social work
Few commentators have focused on how globalization has impacted on social work practice. This article demonstrates the significance of global ization on the process of intervention and the labour process in social work. As a result of global market forces, needs-led assessments and re lationship building have given way to budget-led assessments, increased managerial control over practitioners and bureaucratised procedures for handling consumer co…
Environmental justice at the heart of social work practice: Greening the profession
Social workers face many contemporary challenges. Alongside the difficulties of upholding human rights, social justice and active citizenship, are those of affirming environmental justice and care for planet earth in and through social work practice and addressing climate change and other disasters. I call for social workers to take action that addresses these issues as a strong, united profession that works alongside dispossessed and marginalise…
Undeserving’ mothers? Practitioners’ experiences working with young mothers in/from care
Although teen pregnancy is on the rise in Canada, and while adolescent mothering in general has received considerable recent attention from researchers, there is a paucity of information about the particular experiences of young women who become mothers while in government care. Emerging out of a study guided by a grounded theory methodology to address this knowledge gap, this paper examines the experiences and perspectives of government‐based so…
Social Media and Social Work: The Challenges of a New Ethical Space
Social media and other online technologies have transformed communication between social workers and service users, with many practitioners engaging and working with clients through social networking sites. While there are numerous ethical issues associated with online practice related to confidentiality, dual relationships, and boundary crossing, there is lack of clarity about how to deal with such issues. This article uses a case example to dev…
The opportunities and challenges of social work interventions in disaster situations
Professional social workers’ positive contributions to humanitarian aid are seldom publicly acknowledged. If unaware of cultural sensitivities, locally defined needs and power relations, they are decried as oppressive. I use a research project to examine opportunities and challenges social workers have in developing empowering practices with victim–survivors of the 2004 tsunami in Sri Lanka. Whether reducing risks, mitigating disaster, providing …
Women rebuilding lives post-disaster: Innovative community practices for building resilience and promoting sustainable development
Disasters result in devastating human, economic, and environmental effects. The paper highlights women's active participation in community-based disaster recovery efforts drawing from the results of the 'Rebuilding Lives Post-disaster: Innovative Community Practices for Sustainable Development' by an international research partnership. Two case studies are presented from Pakistan and the USA to demonstrate how women contribute to building resilie…
Promoting environmental justice through green social work practice: A key challenge for practitioners and educators
Environmental crises associated with disasters exacerbate existing socio-economic and cultural inequalities. This article argues for the inclusion of environmental justice in contemporary social work practice as one way of promoting inclusionary social work that meets some of the challenges of the 21st century. It does so by exploring the implications of environmental degradation and its reinforcement of structural inequalities in Sri Lanka follo…
A green social work perspective on social work during the time of Covid‐19
COVID-19 has challenged social workers to engage with health pandemics and provide essential services in conditions of uncertainty and high risk. They have safeguarded children, older adults and diverse adults in 'at risk' groups under tough conditions mediated by digital technologies, adhered to government injunctions, maintained social and physical distancing under lockdown and worked from home remotely. Social workers and social care workers h…
Neo‐liberalism, Social Exclusion and Welfare Clients in a Global Economy
Globalization has played a major role in redefining the nature of the welfare state and the ways in which social work practice is being undertaken in a number of different countries. Moreover, its impact has been to exacerbate gendered and racialized social relations. In this article, I explore the changes that globalization has wrought on the social work profession. These have resulted in neo‐liberialist policies that have contributed to the rea…
Feminist Political Organization in Iceland: Some Reflections on the Experience of Kwenna Frambothid
History is littered with examples of feminist activity aimed at eliminating gender oppression. The continued persistence of sexual inequality reflects the enormity of the task being undertaken. Creating the political machinery capable of transforming society in accordance with feminist objectives has also proved elusive for feminists who insist that the machinery they create for so doing remains true to the collectivist principles of practice enu…
Internationalizing professional practices: The place of social work in the international arena
Internationalizing practices are seldom explicitly considered in social work theory, practice and education. This article examines internationalizing practices, using both historical materials and empirical data recently obtained through a project involving humanitarian aid in a disaster to demonstrate that when people want help in such situations, they prefer locality-specific, culturally-relevant forms of interventions under their own control. …
Climate change: Social workers' roles and contributions to policy debates and interventions 1
Dominelli L. Climate change: social workers' roles and contributions to policy debates and interventions Int J Soc Welfare 2011: 20: 430–438 © 2011 The Author(s), International Journal of Social Welfare © 2011 Blackwell Publishing Ltd and the International Journal of Social Welfare. Climate change is seldom discussed in mainstream social work. Its first presentations on the world stage occurred in Copenhagen during the Conference of the Parties (…
Community development across borders: Avoiding dangerous practices in a globalizing world
Community development (CD) has a long tradition of crossing borders through initiatives that transfer lessons across them. Some of these have been mutually bene.cial. Others have not. In this article this transposition of CD models is problematized, together with a consideration of how such exchanges might avoid becoming exploitative and/or disrespectful of local needs. French Le dé veloppement communautaire (DC) a une longue tradition de travers…
Globalization, Contract Government and the Taylorization of Intellectual Labour in Academia
There is a distinct climate of anti-intellectualism in Britain today. It is important therefore, that intellectuals once more become the subject of serious sociological analysis. This paper makes a start in the re-examination of the role of intellectuals which must be sustained by further systematic research
Mind the Gap: Built Infrastructures, Sustainable Caring Relations, and Resilient Communities in Extreme Weather Events
Climate change debates seldom link the insights derived from the physical sciences to the concerns of social scientists. Understanding how failures in built infrastructures increase the caring burden on women is one of these instances. This article draws on a pilot study on climate change and older people to demonstrate that women who provide informal care services are called upon to fill the gap between declining levels of formal care provisions…
Working with Me, Working at Me: Fathers' Narratives of Child Welfare
This article examines the experiences of fathers involved in the child welfare system. Fathers who were interviewed as part of a multiyear Canadian project were atypical in that they were actively engaged with the child welfare system. Their stories show how, although not always physically present, child welfare's ghostly form is still very much a part of the daily lives of fathers and their families. These fathers had to be resourceful and resil…
Here's my Story: Fathers of 'Looked After' Children Recount their Experiences in the Canadian Child Welfare System
Fathers tend to be excluded and ‘invisible’ participants in the child welfare system. We interviewed fathers with ‘looked after’ children in a child protection system in Western Canada. They wanted active roles in children's lives and to become engaged fathers, whether the children were theirs by birth or not. Their stories exposed the strategies they used to convince social workers that they were ‘good enough’ fathers. In the telling, they revea…
Working with violent men from a feminist social work perspective
For two decades feminism has addressed the problem of male violence in inter-personal relationships by working with women. However, men continue to violently abuse women. This article argues that work with men is a legitimate focus for feminist social workers, and male social workers who are prepared to work in pro-feminist ways, and discusses pro-feminist groupwork as a model for bringing about change
An uncaring profession? An examination of racism in social work
Social work purports to be a caring profession aimed at meeting the needs of its clients. But this is not the case for black people.1 Whether they enter the social work arena as clients, employees, or students, black people experience negative treatment. They are under‐represented as users of welfare services, but are over‐represented in penal institutions. The subtle dynamics of personal, institutional and cultural racism permeate the routine mi…
The Challenges of Realising Social Justice in 21 st Century Social Work
Social Work Responses to the Challenges for Practice in the 21 st Century
Autogestion1 in Boufarik
AUTOGESTION IN BOUFARIKThe Algerian revolution promised to fulfill socialist dreams for workers' control through the phenomenon of autogestion. This article describes the historical process leading to this momentous event in the commune of Boufarik: from the trade society under Turkish domination to the export-oriented, mechanized economy, dominated by wealthy French landowners. It discusses autogestion: its promising beginnings at Domain Souidan…
Father-daughter incest: Patriarchy's shameful secret
The Power of the Powerless: Prostitution and the Reinforcement of Submissive Femininity
Deviancy has been explored in terms of its potential to challenge the existing power structure. However, the implications of gender for power relationships, even in discussions of women deviants have been largely ingnored by crimonologists. Using Liazos' paradigm of power as its starting point, the interaction between power and gender is explored by examining prostitution and the efforts of prostitutes to organise collectively in PROS to decrimin…
Family therapy is not feminist therapy: A reply to Cosis Brown's response, CSP Issue 17
Thatcher's attack on social security: Restructuring social control
Feminist Political Organization in Iceland: Some Reflections on the Experience of Kwenna Frambothid
History is littered with examples of feminist activity aimed at eliminating gender oppression. The continued persistence of sexual inequality reflects the enormity of the task being undertaken. Creating the political machinery capable of transforming society in accordance with feminist objectives has also proved elusive for feminists who insist that the machinery they create for so doing remains true to the collectivist principles of practice enu…
Betrayal of Trust: A Feminist Analysis of Power Relationships in Incest Abuse and its Relevance for Social Work Practice
Feminist analyses of incest have revealed that this is a highly prevalent form of sexual abuse which is perpetrated primarily by male assailants against young girls. Feminists have focused on incest as the expression of unequal power relations within the family, and demonstrated that it is more than the genital penetration of a young girl by her father or step-father. This paper examines incest from a feminist perspective and highlights the signi…
An uncaring profession? An examination of racism in social work
Social work purports to be a caring profession aimed at meeting the needs of its clients. But this is not the case for black people.1 Whether they enter the social work arena as clients, employees, or students, black people experience negative treatment. They are under‐represented as users of welfare services, but are over‐represented in penal institutions. The subtle dynamics of personal, institutional and cultural racism permeate the routine mi…
Books
Philip E. Ogden and Paul E. White (eds), Migrants in Modern France: Population Mobility in the Later 19th and 20th Centuries London: Unwin Hyman, 1989, 320 pp., £45.00 h.b. Hastings Donnan, Marriage among Muslims: Preference and Choice in Northern Pakistan Delhi: Hindustan Publishing Corporation, 1988, 231 pp, $38.25 p.b. Malcolm Cross and Gad Heuman (eds), Labour in the Caribbean: from Emancipation To Independence Basingstoke: Macmillan Caribbea…
Globalization, Contract Government and the Taylorization of Intellectual Labour in Academia
There is a distinct climate of anti-intellectualism in Britain today. It is important therefore, that intellectuals once more become the subject of serious sociological analysis. This paper makes a start in the re-examination of the role of intellectuals which must be sustained by further systematic research
Globalization and the technocratization of social work
Few commentators have focused on how globalization has impacted on social work practice. This article demonstrates the significance of global ization on the process of intervention and the labour process in social work. As a result of global market forces, needs-led assessments and re lationship building have given way to budget-led assessments, increased managerial control over practitioners and bureaucratised procedures for handling consumer co…
Deprofessionalizing Social Work: Anti-Oppressive Practice, Competencies and Postmodernism
Social Work is in a state of flux. One of the key factors impacting on the direction it is currently taking is market forces. This article argues that the globalization of the economy and the internationalization of the state are affecting social work education and practice in Britain through the competency-based approach being promoted by CCETSW and the government. This is leading to the demise of the autonomous, reflective practitioner, creatin…
Contract government and the academic intellectuals
Men, Power and Caring Relationships
Power is a controversial subject. In this article we reject the notion that power is simply a matter of the exercise of control over others. Instead, we posit the view that power is a complex phenomenon which is constantly negotiated and renegotiated between social actors. We examine this idea by looking at men working as carers and consider how power is used in caring relationships through the use of case materials. Our analysis reveals that no …
Moving beyond Litigation and Positivism: Another Approach to Accusations of Sexual Abuse
The Current polarized debated about false memory and reclaimed memory with regard to child sexual abuse have trivialized the significance of experimental knowledge and contributed to the silencing of the voice of the victim-survivor. They have also enabled the alleged abuser to avoid confronting those elements of his behaviour which are problematic for others and discouraged preventative approaches by locking the protagonists into adversarial pos…
Neo‐liberalism, Social Exclusion and Welfare Clients in a Global Economy
Globalization has played a major role in redefining the nature of the welfare state and the ways in which social work practice is being undertaken in a number of different countries. Moreover, its impact has been to exacerbate gendered and racialized social relations. In this article, I explore the changes that globalization has wrought on the social work profession. These have resulted in neo‐liberialist policies that have contributed to the rea…
Community, Citizenship and Empowerment
What is ‘community’? This question exercises the four books which form the basis of this review essay and links a disparate collection together. Each text covers substantially different subjects in addressing the relevance of community in diverse settings. Beyond Communitarianism has twelve chapters which explore rights and citizenship in different domains. Living Community, Living School provides a set of sketches which examines how a school in …
The impact of globalization on social work in the UK
Since the late 1980s social work in the UK has undergone a period of unremitting change affecting its organizational structure, value-base, and service users. There has been a regretable narrowness of scope in the social work literature on such changes as if they were simply new technical responses to the problems of reorganizing social services. We argue that such analyses do not engage sufficiently with the complex dynamics driving these change…
Working with violent men from a feminist social work perspective
For two decades feminism has addressed the problem of male violence in inter-personal relationships by working with women. However, men continue to violently abuse women. This article argues that work with men is a legitimate focus for feminist social workers, and male social workers who are prepared to work in pro-feminist ways, and discusses pro-feminist groupwork as a model for bringing about change
Globalizacija: Mit Ili Stvarnost Za Socijalne Radnike
Znacaj globalizacije za praksu socijalnoga rada kontroverzno je pitanje. U ovom se clanku definira globalizacija i ispituje njezin utjecaj na praksu socijalnoga rada, s osvrtom na istraživanje provedeno u Velikoj Britaniji kojim su postanskom anketom prikupljeni odgovori od 179 socijalnih radnika. Govori se o tome da, iako globalizacija ima znacajan utjecaj na praksu socijalnoga rada, prakticari ne razumiju dovoljno kako se to događa, jer su vise…
Anti-Oppressive Social Work Theory and Practice
This book, by one of the leading theorists of social work, tackles a subject of crucial importance to students and practitioners alike: how social workers can enable their clients to challenge and transcend the manifold oppressions that disempower them (whether through poverty, disability, mental illness, etc.). It moves from a discussion of social work's purpose and ambitions to an exposition of theory and, from there, to the practice arenas of …
Undeserving’ mothers? Practitioners’ experiences working with young mothers in/from care
Although teen pregnancy is on the rise in Canada, and while adolescent mothering in general has received considerable recent attention from researchers, there is a paucity of information about the particular experiences of young women who become mothers while in government care. Emerging out of a study guided by a grounded theory methodology to address this knowledge gap, this paper examines the experiences and perspectives of government‐based so…
Feminist Social Work Theory and Practice
Dominelli seeks to develop a new framework for feminist social work that takes on board postmodernist arguments to do with difference and power, yet retains a commitment to collective solidarity and social change
Testimonial to Dr Francis J. Turner
News and Views…from Iassw
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