Aotearoa New Zealand Social Work

Resistance and rangatiratanga in a time of political change

2024-12-15T13:40:38+13:00

Editorial in 2 parts: 'Social work, the politics of cruelty and political resistance' by Kendra Cox, Donna Baines, Eileen Joy and
Liz Beddoe; and 'On rangatiratanga' by Kendra Cox.

Exploring palliative care debates: Equitable access and the role of social workers

2024-09-24T11:57:24+12:00

INTRODUCTION: Equity of access to palliative care for older adults and the role of social work are interwoven as older adults are the largest population group requiring end-of-life care and hospice social workers predominantly work alongside older adults. This article explores the intersections of palliative care policy and practice, older adults’ inequitable outcomes, Te Tiriti o Waitangi (1840), and challenges faced by social workers seeking to be effective advocates for older adults.

APPROACH: Undertaking post-graduate study in palliative care allowed for an exploration of the literature and older adults’ experiences of inequity observed in practice through a social work lens. Literature reviews completed during post-graduate study foreground the literature search informing this article. The literature search was completed using University of Canterbury Library and CINAHL Health sciences databases focused on palliative and end-of-life care, older adults and caregivers. Keywords used included literature reviews, palliative or end-of-life, older adults or elderly, caregivers or family, psychosocial, New Zealand, caregiver distress, and ageism. Abstracts of articles were reviewed; literature was chosen based on relevance to the topic. Additional literature was sourced through Google Scholar, Google searches of current proposals/reports, and international databases.

CONCLUSIONS: The current Aotearoa New Zealand Ministry of Health (MoH) (2001) Palliative Care Strategy does not effectively respond to older adults’ end-of-life care needs or acknowledge the roles and contributions of social workers within palliative care. Improving older adults’ equity of access to palliative care requires interlinking and prioritising older adults’ end-of-life care and empowering the contributions of social workers.

Exploring courage and compassion in social work

2024-08-13T14:00:01+12:00

INTRODUCTION: Both courage and compassion can contribute to the process of managing adverse situations in social work, particularly where there are high levels of distress or confronting behaviour. Courage can enable social workers to enter and remain engaged in these situations, while compassion can be considered essential to support the relational work required to increase safety and contribute to sustained change. These concepts can also support social worker safety and wellbeing, helping mitigate the emotional impacts of the work.

APPROACH: This article defines and explores the potential application of both courage and compassion to social work practice. The potential contribution of both concepts to sustaining social worker wellbeing, safe practice and personal growth are also identified. The intention of the article is to invite further discussion and articulation of these concepts in social work practice.

CONCLUSIONS: Courage and compassion can offer ways to support social workers to be steadfast in their practice, while developing relationships that can contribute to increased wellbeing and safety for both themselves and others. This, in turn, can bring profound rewards through the experiences of vicarious resilience, compassion satisfaction, and even post-traumatic growth. Further application and discussion of these concepts within social work is warranted.

The Empire Strikes Back: Māori and the 2023 coalition government

2024-12-15T13:57:22+13:00

Commentary on the 2023 NZ Govt and its attacks on Māori

Sustaining the social work workforce in Aotearoa: A whole system challenge

2024-11-01T14:42:38+13:00

This viewpoint explores social work workforce information and challenges.

The possibilities and dissonances of abolitionist social work

2024-07-20T17:39:45+12:00

INTRODUCTION: The normative ideal of justice in Aotearoa New Zealand is dominated by the twin pillars of colonialism and carceralism. The expansion and entrenchment of this colonial carceral paradigm is facilitated by auxiliary and complicit social systems. How can social work respond to its position as an element of these systems?

APPROACH: This article uses the three-stage framework of Emancipatory Social Science to examine the harms of carceralism and carceral social work, to offer abolitionist social work as an alternative, and to begin an exploration of the possibilities and dissonances presented by this alternative.

CONCLUSIONS: Like carceralism, carceral social work is inherently harmful. However, the alternative praxis of abolitionist social work raises questions for our profession regarding the balancing of immediate relief and wider social change, the potential abolition of many currently accepted forms of social work, and the strengthening or building of non-carceral social works.

Emancipatory social work: An anticapitalist perspective

2024-08-09T11:50:14+12:00

The global definition of social work, as articulated by the International Federation of Social Workers, states that social work is a practice-based profession and an academic discipline that, amongst other things, promotes the empowerment and liberation of people. The knowledge base for social work has a rich history of different theoretical perspectives, frameworks and practice models that have attempted to highlight key aspects of human oppression, discrimination and marginalisation and tease out the implications for social work practice in these domains. These approaches have included anti-discriminatory practice, anti-oppressive practice, anti-racist practice, and feminist and empowerment perspectives. In the same tradition, this paper draws on the work of US analytical Marxist sociologist, Eric Olin Wright to consider how his concept of emancipatory social science could be harnessed by social work practitioners, researchers and policymakers to advance human emancipation and what this might mean in different practice domains. The article will focus primarily on a close reading of two of Olin Wright’s publications–Envisioning Real Utopias and How to Be an Anticapitalist in the 21st Century. The article argues for the value of emancipation over empowerment as a concept to convey an authentic commitment to human liberation. It also considers the implications of emancipatory social work for relationships with service users in the context of anti-capitalist struggle and discusses the ramifications for decolonising social work practice in a settler colonial state.

“Not social workers, but social fighters”: Navigating the search for macro social work identity in the Aotearoa New Zealand Social Work Journal

2024-09-16T11:53:46+12:00

Introduction: Given the social work profession’s roots in social justice and recognising the social determinants of wellbeing, macro social work is an essential part of the professional identity. However, macro work is often a marginalised part of the profession because of an increasing focus on clinical work due to the rise of neoliberalism and practical barriers.

Methods: To better understand macro social work’s place in the profession, this research sought to assess the historical and current discourses surrounding macro social work in Aotearoa New Zealand. To do this, a qualitative interpretive meta-synthesis was conducted on publications of the Aotearoa New Zealand Social Work Journal since it began in 1965 to 2020. This meta-synthesis was one part of a broader study on macro social work for a PhD thesis.

Findings: The analysis focused on finding journal articles that relate to macro social work to generate themes around how social workers think and feel about the place of macro social work in the profession. Themes around historical trends, scope of practice and the status of the profession were discussed in the context of macro social work and social change. The themes illuminated key tensions between micro and macro social work in the professional identity.

Conclusions: This article makes a case for bridging the divide between micro and macro work and increasing the discussion of macro social work in the professional discourse in the Journal and beyond.

Galvanising criticality: Analysing trans health policy in a hostile political context

2024-09-02T15:45:07+12:00

INTRODUCTION: Pathologisation has long provided the architecture for governing access to gender-affirming medical care. An explicit orientation towards human rights in the latest revision of the World Professional Association for Transgender Health’s (WPATH) Standards of Care is an important success in achieving trans depathologisation. This development is the result of sustained efforts by trans activists who have been dismantling pathologising structures and practices in the face of intensifying opposition and vitriolic attacks.

METHODS: We present findings from the comparison of approaches to depathologisation in the WPATH Standards for Care, version 7 (SOC-7), and an alternative best-practices guide created by the Spanish Network for Depathologization of Trans Identities (the Guide) using the What’s the Problem Represented to be? (WPR) approach to policy analysis. This WPR analysis is informed by trans and First Nations policy workers, scholars, and activists. This methodological–conceptual approach is used to explore uncertainties about the limits of a liberal rights model in the Guide.

FINDINGS: Situating rights in the broader field of governing logics indicates that, although this approach seeks to replace harmful practices, it does little to address underlying colonial mechanisms. Noticing uncertainty supported consideration of the dynamic ways that medicalisation and rights, liberalism and neoliberalism, and colonial power are sustained in trans health policy.

CONCLUSION: In an increasingly hostile context, when uncertainty about the transformative capacity of human rights necessarily shifts focus, returning to trans analytics provides solid ground for deepening interrogation of the colonial conditions of care to enable full depathologisation to unfold.

“Suicide prevention … I hate that word.” Women’s experiences of carceral logics whilst supporting loved ones with suicidal distress in rural Australia

2024-08-07T09:25:08+12:00

INTRODUCTION: Modern neoliberal states discipline subjects through diffuse operations of state power by making individuals both the object of and subject of disciplinary gaze. Constructions of activities like caring, which are overwhelmingly performed by women, are devalued and marginalised.

METHODS: Semi-structured interviews were conducted with carers and workers and volunteers in the welfare and community sector from a rural part of Eastern Australia.

FINDINGS: Women’s experiences of the mainstream mental health system are characterised by carceral logics which limit women’s choice and their relationships with their loved ones, yet some women resist through enacting a form of relational feminist justice.

IMPLICATIONS FOR PRACTICE: This study contributes to broader literature on women’s embodied experiences of legislation and critical mental health scholarship on the harms of coercion in the mental health system in many modern neoliberal states. I encourage social workers practising in neoliberal settings to critically reflect on the impact of carceral logics on women who support loved ones with suicidal distress, and I discuss ways social work practice can promote social justice through centring mutuality in relationships.

The impact of studying social work on student social wellbeing in Aotearoa New Zealand: Struggling with incongruent demands

2024-07-15T10:09:52+12:00

INTRODUCTION: Social work education places many demands on students, including dealing with challenging content, demanding assessment requirements, and long unpaid placements. A growing literature reports that social work students are experiencing social and financial hardship with impacts on their health and wellbeing.

METHOD: A mixed methods study incorporating a survey (n = 353) and 31 semi-structured interviews was conducted in Aotearoa New Zealand in 2019. Participants in the study were then current students or new graduates in their first 2 years of practice.

FINDINGS: The findings reported in this article are drawn from analysis of the responses to the relevant open-ended questions in the survey and the qualitative interviews. Participants reported various challenging impacts of their engagement in a social work qualifying programme. These impacts were felt in their personal and family relationships, social and cultural participation, and physical and emotional wellbeing. Some students reported impacts on their opportunities to participate in social activism.

IMPLICATIONS: These findings confirm, in a local context, those from Australia and elsewhere. It is recommended that professional bodies and social work education providers should urgently address how study in social work could have a less detrimental impact on students. It is vital that we avoid an overly responsiblising emphasis on self-care but rather acknowledge the impact of structural factors. The lack of congruence between social work stated values of social connection and participation and the student experience reported here suggests a dissonance that limits student inclusion and success.

Practising feminism for social welfare: A global perspective

2024-12-16T13:09:08+13:00

Review of Practising feminism for social welfare: A global perspective by Ruth Phillips. Routledge, 2023

ISBN: 978-1-138-65068-8, paperback, pp.193, $62.24 (through www.routledge.com)

Becoming Pākehā

2024-12-16T13:13:32+13:00

Review of Becoming Pākehā by John Bluck. HarperCollins, 2022

ISBN: 9781 7755 42100, paperback, pp.304, $39.99