Social Work Commons^™

A Holistic Perspective On Child Abuse And Its Prevention, David G. Gil

The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare

In recent decades, child abuse has come to be considered a social problem of significant scope and has, therefore, attracted intense public and scholarly interest. Yet, in spite of efforts by scholars, professionals, government agencies, concerned individuals and organizations, and the media of public communications, misconceptions prevail concerning the nature, sources, and dynamics of this destructive phenomenon and concerning effective approaches to its primary prevention. Such conceptual shortcomings, and a related persistent failure to design effective policies and programs for the primary prevention of child abuse, seem to be due to a number of obstacles.

Protective Services: Coercive Social Control Or Mutual Liberation, Alfred J. Fortin

The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare

Excerpt from the full-text article:

The area of protective services for children has always been a difficult one for social work. Protective casework has, and is now, both praised and condemned simultaneously from different elements of the community. The stakes in the protective field are usually high and players are subject to various episodes of the "emotional plague" as Wilhelm Reich would have called it. People in protective work exercise their role as worker in a variety of ways and these 'styles' range from being police-like and oppressive to radical and promoting social change. It is characteristic of this work …

Evaluating A Pilot Social Service Project For Widows: A Chronicle Of Research Problems, S. Roxanne Hiltz

The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare

The decade of the 70's has seen the appearance of a number of publications in the area of "evaluation research", the effort to systematically apply social science research methods to the evaluation of action programs set up for the purpose of helping to solve social problems. Evaluation research is thus one area in which social scientists can be of direct aid in setting public policy about social welfare services.

An excellent primer on the problems that are likely to arise in the course of an evaluation effort and the "conventional wisdom" that has been developed thus far is Carol Weiss' …

Social Work Practice And The Social Context, Jeffry Galper

The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare

Any effort to define appropriate tasks and directions for social work practice must necessarily come to grips with some analysis of the particular social-political-historical situation within which that practice is being formulated. Too often it seems as though we attempt to define practice abstracted from the particular period in which that practice takes place. It is true, on the one hand, that it is important to develop generic principles of practice. Similarly, it is true that the definition of the social work task is not a matter left solely to the discretion of the profession. In fact, the profession may …