International Social Work

The historical strength of Latin American public pension systems and the changes many countries are making in the contemporary period warrant understanding attitudes about public pensions in Latin America. Data were examined for three countries: Chile, Uruguay, and Venezuela, to see whether commonly tested welfare state theories explain individual differences in attitudes in these countries. Using basic multilevel modeling techniques, we find both individual- and country-level differences in attitudes toward government responsibility for and spending on public pensions. Understanding what predicts these attitudes in Latin America will help improve approaches to social welfare in this region.

This study investigates social workers’ preferences regarding four main therapeutic orientations: psychodynamic therapy (PDT), cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT), client-centered therapy (CCT), and eco-systemic therapy (EST). In total, 679 social workers (528 Jewish and 151 Palestinian) reported their beliefs regarding the efficacy of the four therapeutic orientations, and 343 additional social workers (193 Jewish and 150 Palestinian) reported how often they apply the therapeutic orientations in their practice. The present study revealed similarities, but also some incongruence when comparing the social workers’ beliefs in the efficacy of the different therapeutic orientations and the frequency of their actual use in practice. Socio-demographic characteristics of the social workers explained a significant albeit small proportion of the variance in the frequency of use of the different therapeutic orientations. Finally, the results obtained demonstrated that social workers tend to prefer different therapeutic interventions when working with clients belonging to different ethnic groups. Implications for therapist training and practice are discussed.

This article reports on qualitative Australian research that was conducted with 32 workers from Job Services Australia and Emergency Relief agencies. Researchers investigated the operationalisation of assistance for unemployed people to illuminate the language, discourse and processes through which workers and unemployed people were constructed within the quasi-market culture. Findings included individualistic and behaviourist frames, paradoxical positions in relation to client choice and blame, and a metaphorical frame which reinforced position, status and difference. This study provides important evidence from the frontline of Australia’s deregulated employment services, adding to the growing body of international social work literature pertaining to neoliberal welfare reform.

Accompanying the diminishing voice of the client in cross-subsidized social work, the author makes an attempt to reveal the ambivalence and ambiguity of state-sponsored social work in Hong Kong. In light of the increase in quasi-welfare markets that promote an environment of competitive bidding on government subventions, this article addresses the contradictions between commercial and social work values after the commodification of welfare. Because frontline practitioners are becoming more reluctant to be involved in ‘typical’ social work interventions, reconsidering and recalculating costs are recommended under the pendulum of left and right ideologies in a postcolonial, neoliberal metropolis.

In this population-based cross-sectional study of women of reproductive age in Tehran, Iran, the social capital integrated questionnaire and socio-demographic questionnaire were used. The highest mean scores were related to social cohesion and inclusion dimension (55.72 ± 11.94) and the lowest mean scores to groups and networks dimension (31.78 ± 19.43). Stepwise multiple linear regressions showed the significant association between dimensions of social capital and certain socio-demographic variables, particularly family income. Policy makers should help low-income families by designing effective interventions for improving the status of social capital in this group, because it is considered one of the social determinants of health.

As social work is an international profession, it is necessary to establish the validity of assessment of the field practicum of students for the purpose of professional accreditation. This study calibrates an indigenous assessment tool, the Social Work Practicum Assessment (SWPA), developed in Hong Kong with a competency-based evaluation (CBE) tool popularized in North America, using data collected from 171 social work final-year undergraduates. The results demonstrate convergence between the SWPA and CBE when rated by field instructors and were greater when the student-assessed CBE was higher. Alternatively, the student-assessed CBE displayed greater convergence with the instructor-rated CBE when the indigenous assessment was higher. The positive results imply the generalizability of the assessments across places.

This article examines the challenges that superdiversity and complexity pose for social workers. Taking an ethnographic approach, we focus on the ‘knowledge-in-action’ of social workers in a small service organization in Belgium in order to access their experiences of being professionals in superdiverse contexts. The reflections of the social workers reveal the prominence of three inter-related issues: the social vulnerability of clients, the tensions that arise in coping with differences between personal and professional frameworks and identities, and the discontinuity that challenges the professional self-confidence of social workers. The findings raise important questions for the professional identity of social work.

The following article revises conditional cash transfers (CCTs) in Latin America, followed by an examination of the history of poverty reduction programs in Chile since the 1960s and the installation of CCT programs in the country with a particular focus on the role of social work in their design and implementation. The article concludes with a discussion of the challenges social work faces in actively participating in the redesign and implementation of the new CCT model from a human rights and social justice focus.

The analyses of the contesting moment social work faces in the United Kingdom bring to discussion many claims that appear familiar to the context and performance of social work in Chile. This note compares the UK assessment of social work education and professional practice with Chilean social work, concluding that rising demand, high vacancy rates and reliance on agency staff, quality of recruits and training, and low status of the profession are issues shared by both countries, raising the question of how to improve international standards of the profession.

In this contribution, a German probation officer provides some critical reflections and argues for an increasing need to enhance intercultural sensitivity among probation officers. If the probation service wants to avoid contributing to the social exclusion of its clients, changes on an educational, organizational and political level are necessary.