How Does the Social Work?

Aleski Brandy-Williams’ book on “Preparing for First Social Work Placement” as an introductory guide for aspiring social workers in the children and young people service was featured. The book can be found here: https://brandy-williams.co.uk/shop/ols/products/preparing-for-first-social-work-placement

Jenni Guthrie - Autistic/ADHD social worker, writer, researcher and speaker currently working as a Principle Curriculum Lead on a social work Master's programme. Jenni is also the host of www.autisticsocialworker.co.uk

An interesting read from an article in the Community Care Newsletter suggests that ‘one in 10 social workers encountered racism from workmates at least five times, while almost 20% reported having increased anxiety as a result of their experiences, finds a poll of almost 2,000 practitioners.’ https://www.communitycare.co.uk/2022/03/18/one-third-of-social-workers-faced-racism-from-colleagues-or-managers-in-past-year-finds-survey/

Section 2.6 of the Social Work England Practice Placement Guidance has more on the roles and responsibilities of practice educators and can be find here: https://www.socialworkengland.org.uk/standards/practice-placements-guidance/

In this episode our students, Rathigga Pushparajah and Tienga Ngale interview Dr Sharlotte Tusasiirwe about her recent article titled Is it indigenisation or decolonisation of social work in Africa? A focus on Uganda. The article was recently published in the African Journal of Social Work and it can be found here:

https://www.ajol.info/index.php/ajsw/article/view/224731

Dr Sharlotte Tusasiirwe, born in Uganda, is an activist, social worker and educator. She gained her Master's degree in Social work and Human Rights and a PhD from Western Sydney University, Australia. Her PhD focused on decolonising social work education and practice. Sharlotte has researched how African knowledge and Obuntu/Ubuntu philosophies can inform social work, a topic discussed in the article. 

Rathigga and Tienga were particularly drawn to the article as it highlighted concepts critical to anti–racist social work practice, such as decolonization and colonisation. The author explains how colonisation affected social work practice in Uganda.

In this episode, our students Jade Blake, Rathigga Pushparajah and Georgina Georgina Ataa-Nyarko are joined by Solomon Amadasun from the School of Health and Social Development, Deakin University, Australia. The four discuss Solomon's work. 

Solomon is a widely published author and has extensively researched social work practice in Nigeria. He aims to shed light on the fact that though willing, upcoming social workers are ill-equipped to apply the anti-oppressive approach in Nigeria due to the social and political climate in the country. In his writing, he discusses where the difficulty comes from and provides suggestions/implications to the social educators in Nigeria to adopt the outlook of strengthening the depth of anti-oppressive discourse both in the classroom and on placement

Article:

https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108/JHASS-12-2019-0082/full/html

Further Work:

https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1946-0432

https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/brunelu/detail.action?docID=6234870#

Brief bio and overview of publications:

https://www.uj.ac.za/members/zibonele-f-zimba/

Dan Vale from Ginger Giraffe and Brunel MSc social work students, Reem Mahdi and Nikita Kahuhu interview Sarah Rose, a PhD candidate at the University of Edinborough and the author of the recently published article, Surviving or thriving? Enhancing the emotional resilience of social workers in their organisational settings

Dan Vale and Dr. Maryam Zonouzi from Ginger Giraffe together with Brunel University students, Ana Muqry and Mehwish Jahan interview Claire Brown and Dr. Michaela Rogers, the authors of Removing gender barriers: Promoting inclusion for trans and non-binary carers in fostering and adoption

Dan Vale and Maryam Zonouzi from Ginger Giraffe together with Brunel MSc social work students, Jo Vernon and Vishal Udaya Kumar talk with Prof Ray Jones about evidence-based practice and its limitations.    

Hele Casey is a social work educator working for the Open University.

In this episode, Dan Vale from Ginger Giraffe and Brunel social work students, Ruth Apula Mokakwa and Shumaila Asghar interview Dr. Davis Kiima, an experienced social work practitioner and the author of a recently published book (by Routledge) titled Assessing Culturally Informed Parenting in Social Work. 

What is the role culture plays in how parents raise their children, what happens when social workers come from a very different culture to that of the families they work with, and what should social workers know about these issues? These and many other related questions are discussed in this episode. 

Poetry as a means of creative reflection and learning in social work with Ariane Critchley and Autumn Roesch-Marsh

On this first episode in our new season, we will talk about a recently published book chapter about poetry as a means of creative reflection and learning in social work. 

Dan Vale and Dr. Maryam Zonouzi from the Ginger Giraffe Cooperative together with our Brunel MSc social work students, Jahmila John and Edward Essandoh, explore the how poetry can help social workers and the people seeking their support with the article's authors, Ariane Critchley and Autumn Roesch-Marsh 

Produced by: Dr. Yohai Hakak

Edited: Vimal Dalal

On this episode Ruth Bakialoge, Natasha Adatia and Yohai Hakak interview Warren Stewart who is a Senior Lecturer in Mental Health Nursing at the School of Health Sciences, University of Brighton. Warren worked in a range of clinical and managerial roles in health and justice settings before going on to lead service development, workforce and educational projects for various offender health services. He has maintained his clinical experience in secure settings and continues to lead elements of health and social care education. Warren is interested in social research with vulnerable and hidden populations using qualitative methods. Warren is the author of a recently published paper titled Intrapersonal and Inter-subjective Challenges of Researching Older and Vulnerable Males Convicted of Sexual Offences that we would like to discuss with him. We discuss with Warren some of the psychological and ethical challenges of conducting research with older male prisoners convicted of sexual offences. 

Prof. John Wodarski's webpage at the university of Tennessee 

The Journal of Evidence Based Social Work Practice

You can learn more about Raf and connect with him through his LinkedIn page.

Raf was recently featured in the Guardian, here. 

And you can also watch a short film about Raf, here.