Preparing social workers for child welfare practice: lessons from an historical review of the literature

Spurred on by national and local forces, there are currently an array of strategies underway between social work education programs and public child welfare agencies to educate current and future workers, improve agency working conditions and to develop competency-based education. These partnership efforts are frequently funded by Title IV-E and Title IV-B 426 funds. Although the majority of these efforts began in the last decade, they build on the historic connection between social work and child welfare. This connection had been weakened in the 1980s, but concerns about the need for a competent workforce and new policy and practice challenges have reinvigorated this linkage. This article examines federal support for preparing social workers in child welfare. It includes insights from almost forty years of dialogue between the education and service delivery communities on the struggle to create successful partnerships and the ongoing challenges of preparing social workers for child welfare practice.

[Bourneville's medico-social work]

Bourneville's disease is well known but his medical social work is particularly unrecognised. However, he provoked many shifts in hospital policy, medical and paramedical studies, regional organization providing for the welfare of mothers-to-be and infants. He has been at the avant-garde for the treatment of mental illness of infants or children.

[History of social services in Russia]

The paper have deal with the historical aspects of establishment and development of a social works in Russia. The brief information on normative and legislative bases in the field of medico-social care on a population, on professional background, education and functional requirement are given as well.

Paradigm for pluralism: Mikhail Bakhtin and social work practice

This article explores the work of the literary and cultural theorist and philosopher Mikhail Bakhtin and acknowledges him as a new voice to social work. In a larger context the authors argue that his ideas can help the profession negotiate the tricky and unsettling transition from modernity to postmodernity. In particular the authors explore two of his key concepts-dialogue and carnival-and suggest that they offer creative and innovative ways to think about three enduring issues in social work practice: (1) empowerment and social justice, (2) the creation of knowledge for practice, and (3) diversity and difference. Overall Bakhtin's thoughts provide the profession with a paradigm for pluralism that the authors believe will add new credibility and strength to the profession and its practitioners.

[Healthy, legitimate children: on marriage and social assistance in Argentina (1935-1948)]

This analysis of the forms of social protection available in Argentina during 1935-48 pays special attention to the distinguishing aspects of infant mortality and birth rates in urbanized areas along the country's coastline. Different government public health institutions -- such as pediatric and maternity institutes -- undertook assistance work among single mothers, where moral teachings played an important role and where marriage was encouraged for its regulatory role in avoiding high rates of illegitimacy. In this task, physicians, visiting nurses, and social assistants from government institutions agreed with the church hierarchy and Catholic intellectuals, since both sectors considered matrimonial legitimacy vital to limiting a decline in the national birthrate.

The missing relative: the home help service in England and Wales 1918-1974 part 2

Although recent work in social policy has illustrated how the work of home helps means that they straddle the health-social services boundary, there has been relatively little work on the earlier history of this service. In this the second of two articles, the author attempts to remedy this neglect, and considers the development of the home help service in England and Wales between 1918 and 1974, examining the overall evolution of this service. In the second article (to be published in the next issue of the journal), three themes are discussed in greater detail: the issue of training, regional variations in provision, and what home helps actually did for their clients. Although the focus is on England and Wales as a whole, in this second part the author illustrates particular themes through a case study of the Midlands city of Leicester, a local authority in which the home help service was particularly highly developed. Part one was published in the last issue of the International History of Nursing Journal (volume 5, number 1, Winter 1999 issue).

Monastic charitable provision in Tudor England: quantifying and qualifying poor relief in the early sixteenth century

Monastic charitable provision in the later Middle Ages through to the Dissolution has often been described as inadequate in terms of both quantity and quality. It has been accused of ineffectiveness because of its allegedly indiscriminate nature. This article suggests that in fact the religious houses and hospitals of England were providing a greater amount of poor relief in a more assiduous manner than has previously been allowed. The core of evidence comes from the 1535 national tax assessment of the Church, the Valor Ecclesiasticus. This contains details of the charitable provision carried out by most monasteries and hospitals as recorded by Crown commissions. After allowances have been made for the bias in the survey, a statistical analysis is carried out which indicates that an upward reassessment should be made of the quantity of monastic charity. Qualitative evidence from both the Valor Ecclesiasticus and from other contemporary sources also suggests that the pre-Reformation Church was providing genuinely beneficial poor relief.

Dismantling the Chinese mini-welfare state? Marketization and the politics of institutional transformation, 1979-1999

This article presents a systematic examination of the workplace-based welfare system in urban China. During the pre-reform period from 1949 to 1978, most welfare provisions in China were delivered and the majority of welfare spending was spent by workplace units. Since China's market transition started in the late 1970s, this workplace-based welfare system is no longer financially sustainable, and more importantly its functioning constitutes an impediment to the formation of an institutional configuration for a market economy in China. The Chinese government has therefore experienced increasing pressure to reshape this workplacebased welfare system into a genuine welfare state, so as to shift the responsibilities of welfare provisions from individual work units to government bodies. Some institutional arrangements characteristic of welfare pluralism, which emphasize that the state, employers, and individuals share welfare responsibilities, are also incorporated into the newly emergent social welfare system in urban China.