Qualitative Social Work

This study examines the experiences of treatment foster mothers. It is part of an ongoing longitudinal study of the use, implementation, and effectiveness of treatment foster care. The study sample is 43 treatment foster mothers. Study data are from in-person interviews with mothers in which each is asked to talk about the youth in her care and her experience of being the youth’s treatment foster mother. Mothers’ responses were analyzed through an inductive and iterative process. The analysis yielded six mutually exclusive categories of experience. Each category was labeled with a name that reflected a critical element of its definition: Strategic, Struggle, Satisfaction, Mothering, Rejection, and ‘Other’. Findings suggest wide variation in how treatment foster mothers experience their role and relationships with youth. Study strengths, limitations, and relevant theoretical frameworks for further work are discussed.

Social work practice with women who exchange sex for material goods dates back to the beginnings of the social work profession in the settlements, benevolent societies, and charity organizations. This article presents the theoretical frameworks, methods and findings of a qualitative, participatory inquiry with six adult female sex workers in Seattle, Washington. The study participants worked as street workers, dancers, and escort workers. The findings discuss how and why the women entered the sex industry, how they talk about and define what they do (with a significant focus on emotional labor) from their perspective, the intersections of race and class in their work experiences, and agency as it applies to their personal and professional lives. The article concludes with recommendations for social work practice from the study participants.

This article describes a methodology for studying the relationship between scientific theory (technical-rational or textbook) and theory generated in practice (knowledge-inaction or practical). It identifies the written and oral practice narrative as empirical sites for studying the use of technicalrational theory in practice. The strengths and limitations of studying the written narrative alone are discussed and a method for juxtaposing the oral and written narrative of the same practice event is described. By respecting both forms of knowledge as productive powers, identifying their empirical referents, and investigating in vivo practice events, it is argued that practice research will remain open to discovering its dual or holistic potential.

This article seeks to contribute to discussions about how narrative analysis might be undertaken. I do this by exploring one method of narrative approach to analyse personal stories. Before considering some of the issues associated with narrative research, I comment on the rise of the ‘narrative moment’. I then provide ways to conceptualize narrative research. In the final part of the discussion, I discuss ways to conduct narrative research. In so doing, I provide concrete details about how personal stories might be analysed line by line.

From 1993 until 1999, the author was engaged in a qualitative doctoral study that explored the issues that arise for social workers who make a transition from paid agency employment to private practice. The idea for the research study arose from her personal experience of this transition and of the ethical and professional issues this raises. The findings of the study have been previously reported (van Heugten, 2001, 2002, 2003; van Heugten and Daniels, 2001a, 2001b, 2002). This article focuses on tools the researcher employed to overcome some of the methodological dilemmas that emerged due to the insider nature of the research. The author proposes that intersubjective conceptualizations of countertransference that have emerged from the field of psychoanalysis, provide a useful additional aid to the management of potential insider bias. The other methodological issue explored in this article concerns the reliability of respondents’ retrospective self reports about decision making processes.