Abstract
The theme for the book reviews in this issue of Qualitative Social Work is Participatory Models in Practice, both in social work and in research. As a researcher and a practitioner, I endeavor to find new ethical ways of including the families I work with in decision-making processes and research-based activities. In addition, I am always looking for new models of practice that can help bring practitioners closer to those they are working with so that authentic respectful relationships are not only built between professional and service user but provided with the appropriate conditions to thrive. The two books that are reviewed in this issue do both of these things well by ensuring participants of both services, and studies are firmly placed at the heart of whatever processes they are subjected to.
Lorna Stabler begins with a review of Ethics in Participatory Research for Health and Social Well-Being: Cases and Commentaries by Sarah Banks and Mary-Brydon-Miller. Lorna is a doctoral researcher and particularly interested in exploring how families and young people can be better involved in children’s social care. In fact, she has recently been awarded a Winston Churchill Memorial Trust Fellowship to travel to countries in Asia (Cambodia, India and Japan) to explore approaches to foster and kinship care. Whilst Lorna’s research is focused on methods which improve the inclusion of participants her review begins by highlighting the barriers researchers can face when trying to be truly participatory.
Overcoming participatory difficulties and supporting the development of ethical awareness in social work practice are activities which are further explored in Jane Pye’s review of SHARE – A New Model for Social Work by Siobhan Maclean, Jo Finch and Prospera Tedam. Jane is a Senior Teaching Associate and has recently been nominated for two prestigious awards, the National Teaching Fellowship Scheme (NTFS) award and the Collaborative Award for Teaching Excellence (CATE). She is also a registered social worker with a particular interest in relationship-based practice and the application of theory to social work. Through her review, Jane reminds us that social work is a complex activity which involves a wide range of stakeholders, all of which is underpinned by different, and often conflicting, economical, socio- political climates and contexts.
The link between Participatory Models in Practice is a common theme for both reviews because of the similar value bases attached to social work and research. Being ethical and striving to practice in a co-productive manner are both values which many aspire to align their practice with. However, what both reviewers recognize is that in reality neither can be properly achieved without due consideration being given to the necessary ingredients required so that participants can feel at the heart of any process. They both identify that if the right outcomes are to be achieved, then those in positions of power need to be open, reflective and willing to take part in any form of critical debate if they are to properly share their power with others.
Banks S and Brydon-Miller M (eds), Ethics in participatory research for health and social well-being: Cases and commentaries. Routledge: Abingdon, Oxfordshire, 2018; 218 pp., ISBN 9781138093430, £110 (hbk)
Reviewed by: Lorna Stabler, Cardiff University, UK
Researchers who have worked in participatory research will be familiar with the problem – we want to truly share power with the community in this project, but it will never get past the ethics board. The very nature of carrying out participatory research raises ethical challenges unlike those faced in other forms of research. But while participatory research is well established, many of these ethical challenges have not been resolved, or influenced a change in academic ethics procedures. In part, this could be due to a lack of open debate, as this is an area fraught with discomfort. This is what this book attempts to address by supporting the development of ethical awareness in participatory researchers and encouraging them to learn from the experience (and mistakes) of others. Opening yourself up to potential criticism based on your actions is difficult, and potentially more so when those actions relate to ethical decisions made that can be seen to reflect so directly on your value base, or on who you are as a person.
The book is structured around key ethical issues, both those unique to participatory research, and those common in ‘traditional’ research applied to a participatory research context. The introductory chapter covers some contested terms and definitions, such as community, and indeed participatory research, making explicit the positions taken by the editors, and why. The book then presents seven substantive chapters, each exploring a topic, with case examples and commentaries to situate them within real-life research experience and practice. The structure of the book designed around common themes identified in a scoping review (Banks et al., 2013) lends a coherent structure in what otherwise might feel like non-distinct topic areas.
The long list of contributors from a diverse range of countries and backgrounds demonstrates the universal applicability of the topic, and the effort that the editors have gone to in order to draw together a representative selection of experiences that speak to the topics and the readership. Moreover, the contributors take care to situate themselves within the case study, and in many cases reflect on how their position impacted on the research conducted, showing an understanding of the role of critical reflexivity (Sultana, 2007).
While the title indicates a focus on research in the area of ‘health and social well-being’, the breadth of topics included – from preserving community relations amongst migrant workers in Canada or how hospital staff can work with children visiting ill relatives in the NHS in the UK to the conflict between the need for conservation and the need for local inhabitants to make a living in rural Kosi Bay – also manage to give a rich overview of the applications of participatory research across social science disciplines and contexts. This in and of itself is an interesting read and could have been emphasised more in the introduction (although is perhaps beyond the scope of the book).
Chapters 2 and 3 in particular highlight some of the inherent issues and discomfort involved in succeeding or failing to break down the boundaries between ‘researcher’ and ‘researched’ and give live examples of how the position of the researcher can change in relation to participants through interaction (Merriam et al., 2001). These chapters explore some of the uncomfortable challenges that are often quietly acknowledged but rarely resolved, such as the power differential between academics, practitioners and service users and community members and the prior and developing relationships between the community and community based researchers. While the cases presented here do not resolve these issues (nor do they claim to), they represent an honest and open discussion of the very real dilemmas and mistakes that can be made. In chapter 3, Catherine Wilkinson and Mieke Cardol both address the very human relationships that can develop between participatory researchers and research participants, and the difficulty then of drawing the distinction between ‘data’ and conversation. Perhaps, as Cardol reflects, this is a potential issue in all research projects; however, it seems possible that nature of data collection in participatory research can make the lines harder to draw. However, as the commentary suggests, the participatory design can allow for these reflections to take place with the community to ensure that lines are drawn together to create shared understanding. The commentary after these case studies by Anne MacFarlane and Brenda Roche is useful in both not seeking to highlight ‘mistakes’ but also to offer suggestions for how this can be approached differently.
Chapters 5 and 6 explore the ownership of the ‘products’ of research alongside the need to maintain confidentiality and anonymity – and how these two can conflict. Many academic researchers feel the pressure of ‘career development’ through high impact publications, but when the community carries out the research, it may be assumed that the positive benefit from the research is felt automatically by the community, and that is sufficient. However, what if a community researcher is also pursuing an academic career? Or if members of an advisory community group want to be identified by name, or some want to be paid while others are not, how can this be navigated? The case studies give examples of unanticipated challenges between the core of participatory research as enacting social change, and the pulls of research processes and practicalities.
I was pleased to see the inclusion of chapter 7 after the discussion of field research, which brings together under the commentary of Adrian Guta, a clear and detailed summary of the institutional ethics review process in relation to participatory research, and highlights the key contradictions and challenges felt in bringing the two together. The chapter offers a fair and balanced view of the challenges from both sides and includes examples of ethics review boards and participatory researchers working together. It is refreshing to have reflections from ‘the other side’, with a frank discussion of the requirements and rationale behind ethics review processes and criteria from the perspective of an ethics board member. The examples of researchers challenging ethics boards can serve as valuable advice for PhD students and early career researchers to resist dropping core participatory elements of their research to meet narrow ethics review requirements. I hope reading this book will give students ideas on how to work with ethics boards, rather than feel forced to acquiesce. While the commentary touches on some ideas for bringing these two areas together (such as ethics boards inviting participatory researchers to teach them about participatory methods), I would have liked more radical proposals of how to shift the ‘ideals’ held within institutional ethic review processes (the preference towards the disinterested researcher for example) can change to meet the ideals of participatory research. By embodying these ideals in the ethics review process, researchers who do not meet these ideals in practice can feel unable to be open about what is happening, being left with insufficient support or guidance to deal with ethical issues. This can put the researcher and participants at risk – exactly what ethics procedures should be designed to mitigate.
My one criticism of the book itself is how it left me. It would have been great for the editors to draw the book to a close with some reflections on the case studies, and how researchers can seek to create change within the systems that are so eloquently illustrated to be often inadequate to meet the real ethical dilemmas posed in participatory research. Although each case in and of itself gave an opportunity for the reader to reflect on their own practice, and perhaps how to design approaches in the future, there was little steer on how we can shift ethics processes and systems in a way that can fit better with participatory research, or how it all fits together.
Rather than a ‘how to’ guide, the book offers brave, open dialogue about ethics in participatory research which opens up for debate, an area that many researchers have privately grappled with. Importantly, it is a text that can show students and early career researchers that no one gets it completely right, but that ethics is a ‘live’ process that requires reflection and adaption throughout a project and a research career.
References
Maclean S, Finch J and Tedam P, SHARE – A new model for social work. Kirwin Maclean Associates: Staffordshire, 2018; 341 pp., ISBN: 978-1-912130-70-2, £20 (Pbk), £22 (Spiral bound)
Reviewed by : Jane Pye, Lancaster University, UK
SHARE is an acronym for ‘Seeing, Hearing, Action, Reading and Evaluation’, the five components of a new model for social work practice which is also said to be applicable to social work education. The authors state early on that the SHARE model directly opposes the current individualistic notions of social work. In doing so, the authors suggest from the outset that the present political climate permeates social work and that SHARE as a model may be able to thwart this from taking place. The word SHARE implies the need for all associated with social work to adopt a collaborative way of working to counteract some of these destructive ideas about social work and civil society. The authors successfully capture how intertwined social work is with political agendas from the start of this text, thereby always reminding the reader of the need to think sociologically about social work.
The book is written in an open and accessible style. It contains images and has areas, whereby the reader is encouraged to directly engage with and literally contribute to the text by adding their own thoughts and reflections – sometimes called ‘my share’. The authors write in a way which talks directly to the reader and this feels as if you are being invited to contribute to, and be part of, a sharing social work community. In addition, the three authors share much about themselves thus model the concept of sharing throughout the book.
The book is divided into 11 chapters – the first chapter is relatively short and gives a valuable overview of the concept of SHARE and the final chapter offers a brief conclusion. The first four chapters provide some foundational thinking to support the SHARE model which is explored in much greater depth in chapters 5 onwards. As referred to above, chapter 2 gives depth to the idea of the model and locates it in the current political climate along with exploring the reasoning behind the development of the model.
The third chapter starts with a helpful suggestion about how to make sense of theory and the differences that exist between: theory, model, approach and method. This chapter explores current popular theoretical approaches in social work and again explores how SHARE is aligned with these. Chapter 4 discusses the perceived gap between social work education and practice. By neatly exploring theories of adult learning, this chapter reminds us of the need to share learning across practice and educational settings. There is no question that these first four chapters cover a whole range of issues, concepts and theories that both individually and together provide the foundational principles for social work practice and education. However, at times, the link with SHARE is not as explicit as it could be, which might potentially leave the reader wondering what the relevance of SHARE is.
Chapters 5 to 9 explore the five components of SHARE in five separate chapters and in doing so provides the reader with much more clarity about SHARE. Chapter 5 is the first that directly addresses one of the components of the SHARE model – ‘Seeing’. It starts with the importance of observation and observational skills in social work practice but also moves to explore the concept of seeing more conceptually – visual thinking, creativity, intervision, invisibilisation, colour-blindness and normalisation. This stimulates thinking around these issues by using the idea of ‘seeing’ as a frame rather than focusing solely on the literal of ‘seeing’ or ‘sight’.
Chapter 6 explores ‘Hearing’. Again, this chapter starts by considering the skills involved in listening, hearing and active listening in social work and offers a helpful consideration of barriers to hearing in social work. The authors acknowledge the need to avoid over complex language in social work and commit to strive for accessibility. This is linked to the power of language and its role in othering. This chapter also sees an acknowledgement of the power, possibilities and dangers of using humour in social work. Many student social workers will be pleased to see this acknowledgement here as finding an appropriate and respectful way to harness the power of humour in social work is a source of uncertainty for many. The chapter also explores feedback and gives some useful guidance and structure to thinking through feedback by considering how it will be received (‘heard’). This chapter concludes with a focus on ‘voice’ in social work. The reminder here that social workers have a responsibility to use their position to ensure everyone is heard. Ensuring that they use that responsibility to ensure others use their voice is a welcome concept and connects well with chapter 7 – ‘action’.
In chapter 7, the authors explain that ‘Action’ is the central point of the SHARE model – literally (A is the centre of SHARE). This chapter includes a very brief overview of the history of social work which is beneficial, as it provides an important context for the social work profession and why social workers must remember its political nature. The requirement for social work to be rights based is made here in its actions. This chapter also highlights the problems with a managerialist approach to practice and in doing so, reminds us of the power of collectivism and associated radical social work and activism. The chapter ends by exploring the concepts of stress, burnout and resilience in social work and how the SHARE model can be used to promote self-care.
Chapter 8 moves on to the ‘Reading’ component of SHARE, making the point again that we should think widely about this topic. The chapter explores the value of reading generally, barriers to reading and what can be read about social work in the media. It includes a helpful discussion about records and case notes in social work practice – encouraging the reader to consider carefully the purpose of such records.
The final component of SHARE ‘Evaluation’ is explored in chapter 9. The authors honestly share earlier in the text that they had some questions about whether E should represent the emotional context of social work rather than evaluation. However, they conclude that evaluation is essential as part of the model, making the important point about how good evaluation includes the consideration of emotions. The chapter focuses on the importance of reflection and critical analysis, and although these are key aspects to evaluation, this chapter could perhaps have made these links more explicit.
Chapter 10 draws the previous chapters together by offering clear examples of the applicability of SHARE. This is a very helpful chapter and demonstrates the breadth that the authors suggest this model has. Throughout the preceding chapters, it is not always completely clear how and when SHARE could be used, so having such clear examples draws the text to a close well. The final chapter is a short conclusion which contains honest reflections about the future of the SHARE model. It is refreshing to read that the authors are not sure themselves what might come of their invitations to use SHARE in practice. But what is appreciated is that there is a genuine suggestion that this might be the start of the development of a model rather than a complete, static and inflexible approach to social work.
SHARE – A New Model for Social Work covers a vast array of material. This is perhaps unsurprising given that the concept of SHARE is to provide a different way of thinking about social work as a whole – which is an enormous task for anyone to undertake. In this ambitious aim the book, on occasions, lacks coherence and at times its breadth has been to the detriment of depth. That is not to say that the text does not cover extremely important issues in social work in an accessible way. There has been a real commitment to accessibility by the authors and this should be whole-heartedly applauded. Readers will find it enjoyable to read from cover to cover without being overly challenged by unnecessary complicated language and/or confusing concepts. The book, therefore, covers the basics of social work well (although not as in depth as it could have) and it is for this reason that the text will be attractive to social work students.
The balance between accessibility and maintaining a level of ‘seriousness’ is, however, a tricky line to tread and, at times, some of the content in the book was too basic which in turn meant that some of the complexities in social work were not given the depth of discussion they require or deserve. One way the book counteracts this limitation, to some degree, is the wide array of people (‘stakeholder voices’) that have contributed to the text. The method in which this has been done captures well just how many people have a connection with social work. This not only reminds readers they are, in fact, part of a social work community but also part of the wonderful richness the social work community has to offer.
SHARE – A New Model for Social Work will undoubtedly appeal to social work students. Here they will find many important concepts, issues, dilemmas and insights to social work captured in one very accessible text. SHARE offers something different than other books that are on offer for students beginning their social work journey in that it frames social work around a model for practice. It includes a vast array of important information related to social work and, as a result, will be a useful for students to use and refer to when gaining an initial understanding of social work.