Keynote speakers
Mark Drakeford
Mark Drakeford is a Professor of Social Policy and Applied Social Sciences at the University of Cardiff and the Cabinet's Health and Social Policy Adviser at the Welsh Assembly Government. He has previously worked as a probation officer and community development worker. From 2000 - 2005 he was joint editor of the British Journal of Social Work and is currently the European editor of the Journal of Comparative Social Welfare. He has published extensively in the fields of youth justice, poverty, privatisation and devolved policy-making. His most recent book, Scandal and Social Policy, with Ian Butler, has been published by Palgrave and, in its second edition, by Policy Press.
Keynote abstract - Social work in the living laboratory
The past sixty years may have witnessed the rise and fall of social work as a distinctive feature of the British welfare state. In England, certainly, the preference for market mechanisms, and a distaste for local government, has produced an inhospitable soil to promote the sort of collectively organised, community-based social work which is one powerful strand in its history. At the same time, shifts towards a culture of regulation, inspection and managerialism, has allowed social work to become positioned as part of the agenda of social authoritarianism of New Labour, a tool in the armoury of the politics of enforcement. This lecture argues, however, that devolution has seen distinctive approaches to social welfare emerge in Scotland, England and Wales, and that these different approaches reflect different underlying political contracts between governments and their electorates. This distinctiveness extends both to the mission of social work, and its relationship with the state, as well as to the particular methods and approaches through which social work is learnt and practised. In the process there may be other, more conducive, futures for social work being attempted, in the 'living laboratory' which devolution has provided.
Keynote audioJan Fook
Jan Fook has been a social worker and educator for nearly 30 years. She is currently Professor in Social Work Studies at the University of Southampton and was most recently Professor and Director of the Centre for Professional Development at La Trobe University, Australia. This centre was an initiative in continuing education across health and social welfare, and in this position she conducted hundreds of critical reflection workshops. Over the course of her career she has worked at several Australian Universities, including Deakin University where she designed and set up new social work program. From Australia she has been regularly invited to give keynote addresses, seminars and conduct workshops in the Nordic and Scandinavian countries, the UK, Canada and Asia. She currently holds Visiting Professorships with two UK universities.
Her work includes critical reflection, critical social work, professional practice and practice research. Throughout the course of her career, she has been keenly involved in developing social work education, particularly using innovative and reflective methods, and also has experience teaching practice skills and field education. Her research work involves the empirical research of professional practice, and developing better methods for representing the complexity of this. She has published 12 books and over 70 book chapters and articles. Her books include: Radical Casework (Allen & Unwin); Professional Expertise (with Martin Ryan & Linette Hawkins, Whiting & Birch) and Social Work: Critical Theory and Practice (Sage). Practising Critical Reflection (with Fiona Gardner, Open University Press) is to be published shortly.
At Southampton she is setting up the Southampton Practice Research Initiative Network Group (SPRING), designed to develop and resource practice research initiatives in partnership between practitioners and academics, and to profile the use of innovative methods in practice research. From June 2007 she will be Head of the Division of Social Work Studies.
Keynote abstract - Certainty in Uncertainty? What are our responsibilities?
How is it possible to live and work in a meaningful way within an uncertain and changing social context? This question is perhaps most pressing for social workers who daily make moral, ethical and professional decisions in complex situations of conflicting perspectives. Is it possible, or even ethical, to try to be certain in this kind of climate? What are our responsibilities, as professionals, as service users, and as citizens?
In this paper I revisit what uncertainty means in practical terms, for us as social beings and as responsive practitioners. Then I look at the kinds of choices we have to respond to uncertainty. Is the "George Bush" type option the only one?
I look in some detail at the kinds of certainty which may be possible (and good) in our current uncertainty, and then I look at what this means (in practical terms) for all involved: social workers, educators, services users, managers and researchers. I argue for an approach which reaffirms the certainty of some fundamental value positions, but which seeks to co-create how these might be expressed in particular and changing situations.
Such an approach calls for a reflexive orientation to situations and people which has repercussions for how and what we practice, teach and research. Specifically I will use the example of critical reflection, as an educational method, and show how its principles may inform our specific practices in many different roles. What can each of us do, here and now, to be more open to uncertainty, but to act on the basis of our fundamental guiding values?
Keynote audioMichael Ungar
Michael Ungar, Ph.D. is both a Social Worker and Marriage and Family Therapist with experience working directly with children and adults in child welfare, mental health, educational and correctional settings. Now a Professor at the School of Social Work, at Dalhousie University, Halifax, Canada, he continues to supervise and consult extensively with mental health professionals in Canada, the United States and overseas. Dr. Ungar holds numerous research grants from national funding bodies and is a collaborator on several international research projects as well. Currently he leads a study of resilience that includes researchers from 11 countries on five continents. He is very interested in how resilience is realized by children and families when faced with adversity across cultures and contexts. Internationally, he has conducted many workshops on resilience-related themes relevant to the treatment and study of at-risk youth and families and has published dozens of peer-reviewed articles on this topic. He is also the author of five books: Too Safe for their Own Good: How Risk and Responsibility Help Teens Thrive (McClelland & Stewart, 2007) and Playing at Being Bad: The Hidden Resilience of Troubled Teens (reprinted by McClelland & Stewart, 2007), two books for parents; Nurturing Hidden Resilience in Troubled Youth (University of Toronto Press, 2004) and Strengths-based Counseling with At-risk Youth (Corwin Press, 2006), books for family therapists, social workers and educators; and an edited volume, Handbook for Working with Children and Youth: Pathways to Resilience Across Cultures and Contexts (Sage Publications, 2005). In addition to his research and teaching, Dr. Ungar maintains a family therapy practice in association with Phoenix Youth Programs, a prevention program for street youth and their families, and since 2002 has sat on the Board of Examiners for the Nova Scotia Association of Social Workers. Dr. Ungar lives in Halifax with his partner and two children.
Keynote abstract - Nurturing resilience across cultures and contexts: A discussion of how research informs practice
For over five decades, researchers have examined the protective processes that help children and families overcome adversity. However, the study of resilience, as the field has come to be known, has been narrowly focused on individual aspects of adaptation under stress rather than the ecological perspective of person-in-environment favoured by social workers. In this presentation, I will review the methods and results from an international study of resilience with over 1500 youth in eleven countries on five continents: the International Resilience Project. The IRP was designed with partners globally to better understand the nature of both individual and environmental protective processes. Results show that our understanding of resilience has been biased by western conceptions of positive development. Furthermore, we have failed to understand the culturally and contextually specific ways in which children navigate their way to health-sustaining resources, and negotiate for those resources to be provided in culturally meaningful ways. A more contextually and culturally sensitive understanding of resilience will be offered. The implications of this understanding of resilience to practice with at-risk populations of children will also be discussed, linking the results of the research to the work of frontline social workers.Keynote handouts Keynote audio