Annotated Bibliography

Annotated Bibliography

Ambrose-Miller, W., & Ashcroft, R. (2016). Challenges Faced by Social Workers as Members of             Interprofessional Collaborative Health Care Teams. Health & Social Work, 41(2), 101-      109.

Ambrose conducted a focus group with Canadian social work educators, practitioners, and students to identify barriers and facilitators to collaboration from the perspective of social work. The participants all together came up with 6 different themes that act as barriers within their profession. These six themes included; culture, self-identity, role clarification, decision making, communication, and power dynamics. Even after discussing these six challenges, Ambrose concluded that there still remains a need for clarity in the roles of social workers that are working as part of a team. To maintain the profession’s integrity and traditional values, it’s necessary for all members of the team to to understand the unique perspective different people can bring to a case. Advocacy for patients and calling attention to social justice issues was one role that participants identified as having the potential to cause conflict among other members of the team. There were only 11 people that were used in this study but what Ambrose did was take those 11 participants from different spots within social work. Some were professionals in the field, professors, Masters students, and Bachelor students. She used a wide variety of people in different levels of social work. Together they all agreed on the same six limitations of their chosen profession.

Antonopoulou, P., Killian, M., & Forrester, D. (2017). Levels of stress and anxiety in child and    family social work: Workers’ perceptions of organizational structure, professional            support and     workplace opportunities in Children’s Services in the UK. Children &   Youth Services             Review,            7642-50. doi:10.1016/j.childyouth.2017.02.028

Social workers working with children and families tend to have high levels of stress in their field. These high levels of stress are often linked to a lack of drive to work and retention problems. Local authorities in the UK are under pressure to fix this problem. They came to the conclusion that a different organizational structure may reduce stress and overall increase the well-being of social workers. Working in the field with damaged families and children living in harsh environments can take a toll on the mental and emotional health of social workers. This academic journal explores how different areas in the UK may be linked to the amount of stress experienced by social workers.  The outcome of the General Health Questionnaire was in fact a high level of stress. This article suggests that organizing Children Services geared towards the social workers well-being, it may have positive effects. While focusing on the underlying relationship between organizational elements, workplace opportunities, and practitioner’s satisfaction, it may be easier to come up with a solution that will help social workers in high stress situations. It is suggested to local authorities to support the staff in a way that will motivate and support them to work productively in the stressful and challenging environment. The authors, professors of social work from the UK and the United States, are aware of the stress of being a social worker. After already working in the field of Child Protective services, they all understand how this job can take a toll on the emotional state of ones well-being. The authors create a study that will prove that their experiences will be similar to other professionals in the field from different locations from two different countries. The authors explain their reasoning for the study and after receiving their data, come up with a plan on how to improve the answers they received. Their well thought out study was produced in a timely manner and presented in an efficient way.

Arendt, V. (2017). Changing Areas of Practice: The Transferability of Social Work Skills. Social Work Career Connect.

There are many different fields of social work that all require some of the same skills. But there are also some skills that are only required for specific fields. A social worker who works in Child Protective Services will require different skills then a social worker who works with the military. This article explores the idea of social workers expanding their skills so one has the choice of moving to a different field of social work. A lot of social workers lack the skills that would allow them to be able to switch to a very different field because they wouldn’t be as successful. Besides licensure being a barrier to switch jobs, being able to articulate job specific skills is the second largest barrier. Arendt suggested working on personal skills such as listening skills, communication, self-awareness, problem solving, time management, and teamwork. Working on these transferable skills will let one be able to explore different career opportunities. Arendt did write like she was knowledgeable on the topic but the only credentials she provided was that she had a Masters in social work. It did not seem like she was still working in this profession and just wrote articles about a wide variety of topics that would interest social workers. People with higher credentials than her probably would deem her writing to not be a credible source to go by.

Caringi, J. C., Hardiman, E. R., Weldon, P., Fletcher, S., Devlin, M., & Stanick, C. (2017).           Secondary traumatic stress and licensed clinical social workers. Traumatology, 23(2), 186-      195. doi:10.1037/trm0000061

Caringi studied the levels of secondary traumatic stress and compared it to compassion fatigue, burnout, and compassion satisfaction in social workers in the state of Montana. Professionals in the field of social work are often working in high demand work settings. They are also working with families who have experienced a significant amount of trauma. Even though this is what social workers are trained for in the field, a lot of social workers are negatively impacted by the traumatic experiences of those that they are helping. This is found as a vocational health issue. The emotional well-being of social workers is critical when it comes to their ability to provide effective services. The three challenges listed above are what workers in the helping profession live through every day. Little research has been done on the extent to which these issues impact social workers and in what ways. Before Caringi jumped right into the results of his study, he first explained in great detail what secondary traumatic stress, compassion fatigue, and compassion satisfaction all meant. This then made reading the rest of his study a lot easier. He described his methods which was a credible study. One thing his study lacked was that his study was only on a small group of people in the state of Montana. Only half of the surveys were completed and returned and they were also dominantly female. I do not think this study could account for the entire population of social workers in Montana. Caringi did write in a manner that was easy to understand and summarized his findings in a chart that was also easy to understand. This study is the stepping stone to other researchers considering it has only been touched upon lightly.

Ferguson, H. (2016). What social workers do in performing child protection work: Evidence from             research into face‐to‐face practice. Child & Family Social Work, 21(3), 283-294.             doi:10.1111/cfs.12142
Little explanation of what social workers do in the field of child protection services has been said. This paper outlines what researchers found in an ethnographic study of face-to-face encounters between social workers, children and families, while mostly on home visits. This face-to-face practice is crucial for new practitioners of this field. The knowledge and skills needed to work in this field cannot be taught in a classroom. This is why real practice in the field is crucial for social workers to be effective at doing their job. Because of the high workloads and the short amount of time that social workers are expected to finish their work, this determines how effective their work will be. When more time to work on a case is available, they can develop a relationship with the children and families. These deep and meaningful relationships were reported that a therapeutic change had occurred within the family. There are many responsibilities that go into this profession. One may be in the office for half the day and at an initial house assessment for the rest of the day. The little time that social workers do have is in quick face-to-face home encounters. This is where they must make their best decision about whether the child is safe in the home. Sometimes these visits are so rushed that they don’t even get to be alone in a room with the child they are trying to assess. The author, Harry Ferguson went into great detail about what a social worker working in child protection might experience in a day at work. Ferguson writes to inform his audience about a topic that has not been touched by many authors. To back up his reasoning on why social workers do not have much time was with several charts that were quite helpful. The charts showed how children were seen on home visits, why children were not seen alone on home visits, length of the visit, etc. His recent study will be helpful in years to come and will help reform child protection systems.