4.3 Conclusion Social work practice is based upon assessments of situations and decisions about strategies to be adopted. Sometimes there can be a tension between the law and working within social work values; the law provides the framework for practice. In the next section you are going to examine the legal structures and processes within which social work skills are applied. 4.2 Conflict and partnership Whatever the professional setting of their practice, social workers are likely to be working with service users from a diverse range of cultures and backgrounds. As noted above, it is part of their responsibility as practitioners to respect and value social diversity and to work with service users in a way that recognises and builds on their strengths. This can be difficult to do in the context of the legislation. At this point, however, we want you to start to think about how practitioners c 4.1 Unit themes and social work values The next activity asks you to consider the relationship between the unit themes and value requirements for social care workers set out below. 2.1 The nature of the social work task Social work is a responsible and demanding job. Practitioners work in social settings characterised by enormous diversity, and they perform a range of roles, requiring different skills. Public expectations, agency requirements and resources and the needs of service users all create pressures for social workers. The public receives only a snapshot of a social worker's responsibilities and, against a background of media concentration on the sensational, the thousands of successful outcomes and 1.6 Valuing diversity Social workers need to recognise diversity: valuing and respecting service users – irrespective of, for example, their ethnicity, gender or age – is central to good practice. It is also about working in a way that counters the unfair or unequal treatment of individuals or groups on the basis of their race, gender, class, age, culture, religion, sexuality or ability. There is a growing body of law that seeks to prohibit and punish a range of discriminatory behaviours in various kinds of so 4.1 The international perspective Earlier in this unit (Section 1) you looked briefly at cross-cultural approaches towards children's play and children's work. In many societies throughout the world it is expected that children, even very young children, will help with the family's work or contribute to the family income. In some societies the separation betwe 3.2 The role of adults in children's play Bennett et al. (1997) questioned the view that exploring and discovering leads to learning. They argued that children needed adults’ help to make sense of their discoveries and to make links and connections between new discoveries and their existing knowledge. Repetitive play can also be a dilemma, in that adults are uncertain about when, or indeed whether, they should intervene to move the child on. This uncertainty is linked with a particular view of the child as a learner, a 3.1 An overview of the issues As Section 2.3 demonstrated, there has been a long tradition of valuing play in early years settings. Most definitions and descriptions of, and justifications for, play are from the adult's point of view. The dominant discourse of play in early years settings presents play as fun, enjoyable, free from externally-imposed rules, Learning outcomes By the end of this unit you should be able to answer the following questions: What can very young babies do? How can adults and older children involve babies fully in everyday life and help them feel valued? 3.2 Types of placement in foster care The Nottinghamshire Pathfinder Trust (2005) describe the following different types of placement in foster care Short-term placements may be chosen for example, when there are relationship difficulties between parents and children or when the principal carers or parents have serious health problems. Placements can vary from an overnight stay to one of several weeks. Support foster care offers short breaks to parents and ch 2.3 ‘Looked-after’ children There are 70,000 ‘looked-after’ children in the UK (National Statistics, 2005). Children are ‘looked after’ when they are: in care (this term refers to children who are the subject of a care order made by a body with legislative powers) and are accommodated or provided with accommodation, by voluntary agreement with those having parental responsibility for the child. The t 2.2 ‘Children in need’ All local authorities in the UK have a duty to provide services that look after the welfare of children. This duty is underpinned by the Children Act 1989 (England and Wales), the Children (Scotland) Act 1995 and the Children (Northern Ireland) Order 1995. The term ‘children in need’ derives from such legislation. ‘Children in need’ are defined similarly in legislation for each nation of the UK. The Children Act 1989 (England and Wales) section 17(10), for example, defines child 2.1 Introduction Some of you will know children who live in settings that are not their original family home. You may have lived away from your family of origin yourself. It is remarkably common in children's fiction to find characters who have become separated from their parents and families, for example, Harry Potter, the children in the Narnia Chronicles, Tracy Beaker and many more. The fictional Tracy Beaker tells us a lot about what it feels like to be separated from family and familiar places. She 1 The circumstances of separation In this first section, we want you to think about the circumstances of children separated from their parents, why such separations might occur and the different places in which children can live. Learning outcomes By the end of this unit you should be able to: Knowledge outline a range of different reasons – social, personal, health, economic, family-based – that cause children to be separated from their families of origin and to live in different settings; Skills demonstrate the development of key transferable study skills including the ability to summarise arguments, learn from personal experience, and apply theory to issues and dile Acknowledgements Except for third party materials and otherwise stated (see terms and conditions), this content is made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 Licence The following material appears in Understanding youth: perspectives, identities and practices, (edited by Mary Jane Kehily) pu 3.3 The mental health of young black men According to the Health Development Agency, ‘Young black men are over-represented in the mental health statistics’ (Health Development Agency, 2001, p. 36), particularly in terms of diagnosis for schizophrenia, which is generally three times higher for the African-Caribbean population than for the UK white population (Nazroo, 1997). Young black men are over-represented in hospital admissions for mental health problems, contact with psychiatry via the police, courts and prison, and at the 2.2 Defining wellbeing Wellbeing has become popular among policy makers as a generic term that embraces physical, mental and emotional health. Is this simply a matter of changing fashions in terminology or does it reflect particular assumptions about what it means to be healthy? Moreover, does the term have particular meanings when used in relation to young people? In this section we will analyse current ideas about what constitutes wellbeing for young people, and work towards producing a critical framework for und 2.1 Introduction In the unit overview we explored some of the images and discourses about young people's health currently in circulation. But what assumptions are being made in these stories about what it means for a young person to be healthy, whether physically or mentally? What kind of model of wellbeing is being used in these discourses, and are there alternative approaches? 1 Unit overview The focus of this unit is young people's health and wellbeing, a topic that has received much attention from commentators and policy makers in recent years. Specifically, the unit will set out to answer the following core questions: How has young people's health been constructed in public and policy discourse in recent years, and what are the implications for young people and those who work with them? What might an alternative,
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Activity 4 Unit themes and social work values
Activity 1: Learning about children who live apart from their parents