Dictionary of Social Welfare

Noel W Timms, Rita Timms

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9781138649255
• eBook ISBN: 9781317233398
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Medicine
• Subtopic: Health Care Delivery

First published in 1982, this dictionary offers a practical aid to students of social work and of social policy in their conversation about social welfare. It explains the meaning or range of meanings of common terms and explains their applications in welfare, legislation, policy and use by welfare practitioners. It helpfully cross-references terms with similar or related terms that might be considered alongside. In addition, most entries are concluded by references which introduce the reader to a more extended treatment of the term or an elaboration of its application in the language of social welfare.

Although first published in 1989, this book will be a valuable resource for students of social work, social policy and social welfare.

C

Care 'Care' is a term with wide-ranging reference¡ It is used in an occupational sense (as in care staff in residential work or as in 'caring professions', though this latter usage suggests that there are also non-caring ones); it is used to describe a status (a child may be in the care of a local authority – see care order); it describes an intention (to care) and an achievement (as a result of being in care and of caring efforts, someone flourishes and describes themselves as 'cared for'). The term is also used in the welfare argument concerning the possibility and/or desirability of combining 'care' with 'control' (see also social control and care and control). More recently the term social care has been coined, but it is unclear whether it is synonymous with all that is done towards rehabilitation or whether it marks out one kind of care from other kinds, such as medical, direct cash support, or the 'economic ways in which people look after each other directly or indirectly' (Barnes and Connelly).

Care and control This expression is used to point the debate about the function of the social services and of social work – to care through control or control through care (see Social control). More narrowly as a term, 'care and control' is used in relation to one of the main conditions to be met if a court order is to be made in respect of a child or young person. The court has to find not only that he or she is beyond control or guilty of an offence or describable in a number of other specific ways, but also that he or she is in need of care and control which is not likely to be given unless the court makes an order. 'Care and control' is also used in relation to divorce proceedings (Matrimonial Causes Act 1973 (SS. 424) deals with 'children of the family'). One parent may be given custody, care, and control, or a split may be made so that custody is given to one spouse and care and control to the other.

Care proceedings/Care order These belong to the juvenile court, which is a court of criminal jurisdiction, and refer to any child or young person from birth to 17 years of age. Care proceedings may be initiated by the local authority, police or NSPCC, if it is believed that there are grounds: i.e. neglect or ill-treatment, exposure to moral danger, being beyond control, failure to attend school, commission of an offence other than homicide. The court may make an order committing the child or young person to the care of the local authority if it is also satisfied that without such an order the child or young person is unlikely to receive the care and control required. Care proceedings suggest the likelihood of intensive social work with the child or juvenile, and the desirability of some measures of physical control (e.g. over where he resides). The care order combines earlier orders that no longer exist: the fit person order and the approved school order. It is now the local authority's responsibility to decide the best form of treatment in each case, though the present government (1981) may introduce a residential care order when resources allow.

Case conference A case conference is a formal meeting to discuss a case (i.e. a person or a family in a particular situation) with a view to reaching a joint decision; for instance the pattern of and responsibility for future work. Participants may all belong to the same discipline or come from the same organisation or the meeting may be of an inter-disciplinary nature (as, for instance, in relation to a possible case of a non-accidental injury to a child). Case conferences may be a feature of some kinds of social intervention or may be likely to be called at certain points in a person's 'career' in a particular service (e.g. a pre-discharge from residential care conference). Controversial questions arising from the widespread employment of case conferences include their effectiveness as joint decision-making or as decision-points, and the extent to which the client/s ought to be present.

Case history The case history, often known in a welfare context as the social history, attempts to report the historical understanding of a person or a family and their problems. The case history summarises what are seen as the influential events and relationships of a life with a view to contributing to a diagnosis and to decisions in relation to preferred forms of treatment or disposal. The case history was first systematically developed in welfare in relation to psychiatric diagnosis and care. At one stage psychiatric social workers saw themselves and were regarded by others mainly as compilers of case or social histories, often of a detailed kind. Wide-ranging historical exploration receives much less emphasis today, and in some forms of therapy and of social work intervention historical grasp of a case is not considered to be necessary (e.g. crisis work). The methods and the rationale of the case history have reflected by and large an emphasis on psychological or psychobiological 'causation'; the long-standing sociological technique of the life history presents an unused source of insight.

Case review/Case review system Cases are sometimes formally reviewed at regular intervals (as in the case of children in foster care) and in the course of staff and student supervision. The case review system is a means of the monitoring of social work developed as a piece of action research. It provides for the systematic use of designed records which show characteristics of the client and the problem, the social work activity and the aims, and the practical services provided. It also provides data that can be aggregated for management and research purposes. It is an important instrument in the development of priorities and of social work accountability.

Caseload A caseload consists of those cases (individuals or families in particular, problematic situations) for which a worker or a team or an organisation carry responsibility. There is not an established convention concerning the point at which a contact or referral is to be regarded as a case or whether non-active or infrequently visited cases should be counted as part of the caseload. Sometimes a selection of the total of cases is referred to as the active caseload. Neither is it always certain who the case is – the individual or the household or the immediate family. Attempts have been made to establish case-weightings, so that all cases do not count as the same unit of 'load', and caseload management systems. Vickery's model of caseload management is a combination of decisions (e.g. definition of problem, goal to be achieved, people to be interviewed), specification of methods of influence, and a set of visiting frequencies (e.g. if the goal is change in behaviour, weekly contact is indicated). The term 'caseload' originated in the context of individual practitioner responsibility, but reference is now made to the potential load of a team's 'patch' and to caseloads shared between social workers and others.

Casework Originally, in the late nineteenth century, the term casework (and its related case-paper work) was work on individual situations, work case by case, as contrasted with statutory provision for categories of people or, as the pioneer American social worker Mary Richmond put it, retail rather than wholesale social provision. Grafted to this method and perspective, first in America and later in Britain, was the idea of a kind of specialised social work therapy. This conception was carried forward by what has been termed the psychiatric deluge. Casework is now seen less as a distinct therapy but as one of the methods constituting social work which includes treatment in its strong sense, and is usually described in brief as social work with individuals and families. Casework has been dominant in social work and most workers have been trained in casework but it is increasingly faced with problems and questions. These include its effectiveness as treatment, its place in effecting change in those social conditions that produce social problems, and its intellectual coherence. It is sometimes incorrectly assumed that a radical casework is not possible. One recent feature of social casework has been the multiplication of different modes of work (e.g. crisis intervention) and distinct theoretical approaches.

Central Council for Education and Training in Social Work (CCETSW) This council was created in 1971 through the amalgamation of the Council for Training in Social Work (concerned with workers in what were then the local authority health and welfare services), the Central Training Council in Child Care, and the Advisory Council for Probation and After-Care. It is an independent statutory body concerned with the promotion and validation of training of salaried staff in the personal social services. Students who have successfully completed courses approved by the council are recognised as holding the Certificate of Qualification in Social Work (the CQSW) or the more recent Certificate in Social Service (the CSS). Among other developments are the post-qualification programme and the study of several important aspects of the social work curriculum (e.g. Legal Studies in Social Work Education, CCETSW Paper 4). In 1974 the council was made responsible for day-care training, including that for teachers for the mentally handicapped.

Central Policy Review Staff This small, inter-disciplinary, staff group in the Cabinet Office was established in 1970 (Cmnd 4506). Its aims include the establishing of priorities, helping to work out the implications of basic strategy in particular areas of activity, and identifying areas in which new options could be exercised. Of special interest in a welfare context are two reports: 'A Joint Framework for Social Policies', 1975; 'Population and the Social Services', 1977. The former argued for greater attention to the inter-connectedness of social policy seen as the distribution of resources and opportunities among the community, and ... ways of changing that distribution'. The latter concluded that the public has not always taken account of demographic change particularly in relation to foreseeable reduction in the size of client groups and to the desirability of early switches of resources between policy programmes.

Centre An increasingly popular way of describing the place at which non-residential services are available – day centres; nursery centres, which combine nursery education and day care; law centres, which provide legal advice; housing aid and advice centres, run by local authorities. The term is also used of attendance centres and of detention centres (penal institutions for offenders aged 14 to 21 years).

Change Change is an alteration of some durability in a positive or negative direction. It has not always been recognised that alteration brought about through social provision of many kinds, including social work, can result in a change for the worse as well as for the better. From the point of view of welfare, change is important both as alteration in an individual's situation and as social change. There has been argument whether social work should aim at changes in the individual and/or his circumstances or whether the aim is to deliver services simply as requested by individuals. Sometimes a distinction has been drawn between social work as directed at change and social work as supportive. When change has been intended, this has been seen as concerned with present behaviour, with a person's self-image, or with his 'growth' along identified phases towards maturity. Social change can be a deliberate objective of social policy, as, for instance, in the attempt to redistribute life chances. Sociologists see change as the normal condition of society, but in a social welfare context 'change' figures primarily in explanations of the development of social policy and legislation (as in the social conscience explanation), of the genesis of social problems, and the inadequacy of policy and practice that falls short of change in the basic social structure. Recent explorations of systems theory have led to a view of social workers as essentially 'change-agents', but Davies argues that social workers are social maintenance mechanics. See also Elite.

Character disorder The term 'character disorder' originated in psychoanalytic theory. It was used by social workers with a clinical orientation. It is difficult to pin down with any confidence and it is often used synonymously with behaviour disorder, acting-out of a persistent kind, neurotic character, characterneurosis, personality disorder (the preferred...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Original Title
• Original Copyright
• Introduction
• Acknowledgements
• A
• B
• C
• D
• E
• F
• G
• H
• I
• J
• K
• L
• M
• N
• O
• P
• Q
• R
• S
• T
• U
• V
• W
• Y