8 Perspectives The LETSLINK UK website provides information and news about LETS initiatives in the UK. The American sociologist Robert Putnam has argued powerfully for the importance of social capital – something which is built up collectively through the voluntary activities of individuals participating in community organisations and other community activity – leading to a bonding of the member
3.2 Clips 4 to 5 In this clip, we hear about the problems faced by those in the private rented sector, and find out about EAGA. 2.2.3 Elizabeth Belk Elizabeth Belk was living in Hamilton, South Lanarkshire. Unlike Florence Foster and Thomas Marnie, she owned her home, but 2.2.1 Thomas Marnie At the time of recording, Thomas Marnie was in his fifties. He had worked in a jute, and later a polypropylene fibre factory 1 Fuel poverty The audio clips in this unit feature interviews about fuel poverty in Scotland. Read through the information about each of the participants, and then listen to the clips in Section 3. As you read, and while you listen, m 5 Audio clip 2: Danny Danny is 49 and sleeps rough in the city, as he has done for very many years. He was born and bred in Northern Ireland, and recounted some happy childhood memories. He became a civil servant in London, working for the Department of Health and Social Security, as a higher executive officer, but lost his job and his wife through drink. After sleeping rough on the streets of London for a while, he returned to Belfast. After robbing a chemist's shop, he was sent to prison for seven years, for rob 4 Audio clip 1: John In this first clip, Julia Johnson, from the Open University, talks to John, who had been sleeping rough in the city and living in an abandoned van in a car park for three weeks. At the time of the interview, John was 43. He was born in a town near Swansea, but had spent much of his life in institutions. His childhood was spent in a large ‘mental handicap’ hospital, which has now closed. Some years after his discharge, he and his brother were arrested, and subsequently imprisoned for Learning outcomes On completion of this unit, you should be able to: understand how minority communities require different types of support from caring agencies. 7 Moving to a positive paradigm Aaron Antonovsky (1984) has called the emphasis on illness and disease the pathogenic paradigm and has stated that this disease-focused paradigm has dominated our healthcare system. He claims that there are five important consequences of this domination: ‘We have come to think dichotomously about people, classifying them as either healthy or diseased’ (p. 115). Those categorised as ‘healthy’ are normal, those categorised as non-healthy or ‘d 4.3 Understanding lay knowledge Popay et al. (1998) are also concerned that lay knowledge be taken seriously to help us understand the causes of variations in health status found in different social groupings. It has been suggested that we need a ‘lay epidemiology’ which would study the experiences of individuals and their biographies within specific social situations. They argue that people express their views on health in narrative form which is, as they say, ‘antithetical to traditional models of cause and effect, 3.5 People's views on health Health accounts, as well as being based in the experience of health, also relate to health behaviour. People's accounts of health are likely to be different at different stages in their lives. Two health promotion researchers, Backett and Davison (1992), have investigated the perceptions of health at different stages of life. Their work is based on two qualitative studies conducted in Edinburgh and South Wales. In these studies, health was also linked to health behaviours. The stage of life w 3.3 Health and ethnicity Clearly ethnicity, religion and culture have a great deal of influence on the way people view health. It was noted in the introduction to Section 2 that most of the early work was on health beliefs and that it was anthropological, focusing on ‘other’ cultures. Britain is a multicultural, multiracial society, yet attention 3.2 Health and the middle class In contrast, a study which focused on white, middle-class men and women between the ages of 35 and 55 (Saltonstall, 1993) found that respondents' views of health were closely connected to wellbeing, and this condition of being was related to ‘capacity, performance and function’ (p. 8). Saltonstall reports that the respondents, both male and female, catalogued what he called a ‘health inventory’ which included things they felt they had and things they thought they were expected to do t 3.1 Health and low income Health is a very personal matter, but people's health is very much situated in their life experiences and so their perceptions of health are likely to reflect their social situation. Bostock (1998), a health researcher, interviewed mothers who were managing on low incomes to find out about their perceptions of their health. She was struck by the difference between her respondents' self-assessed health status compared to that found by the British Household Panel Survey (BHPS) which relat 1.3.1 Alcoholic liver disease Rachael's story illustrates the start of damage to the liver (Vignette 1). Rachael drank heavily throughout her time as a manager in a travel company. For many years she was able to cope with the heavy demands of her job with 7.5.1 The statement of expectations A social work degree places an increased emphasis on service users' perspectives. This was first outlined in the White Paper Modernising Social Services (DoH, 1998) that introduced legislation to set up the new qualification along with the regulatory and registration mechanisms discussed above within the devolved nations of the UK. This emphasis on the perspectives of service users is illustrated through the results of extensive consultation exercises carried out with them, their carer 5.7 References for Extract 4 Barn, R. (1999) Working with Black Children and Adolescents in Need, London, BAAF. Butler-Sloss, E. (1988) Report of the Inquiry into Child Abuse in Cleveland, London, HMSO. Department of Health (2000) Framework for the Assessment of Children in Need and their Families, London, Department of Health. Gardner, R. (2003) Supporting Families: Child Protection in the Community, Chichester, John Wiley. James, A. and Prout, A. (1997) Constructin 4.1 Introduction: the social context of social work Extract 1 discussed the four components of good practice: Knowledge, Skills, Values and Process. From Extract 2 you will now have an understanding of ‘individual people’ in soci 3.8 Psychosocial theories of identity This section does not discuss theories of identity in detail. It is important to note, however, that the theory associated with Erik Erikson, a German psychoanalyst who worked in the USA from the 1930s, has been very influential in social work and continues to be so. Erikson (1950) proposed eight stages of life, from infancy to old age, and each stage had its own particular task in the development of an individual's identity. Erikson's theory is one of several and should not be regarded 3.6 Self identity Thinking about your own life story and those of other people can lead you to the realisation that we are not just interested in people's experiences, but in what it is those experiences mean to them and how they affect their lives. After all, some events will seem more important than others; we all highlight some experiences as more significant than others. In this way, we build up a picture of ourselves that we can call our identity. But what do we mean by identity? A useful de
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Vignette 1 Rachael's health problems as the result of her drinking
