This qualitative interview study explores how parents and special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) case officers understand the term informed preference for placement decisions following an education, health and care (EHC) needs assessment in England and examines how these preferences are constructed. Semi-structured explorative online…

Social workers are constantly predicting the future. In England and Wales there is a legal duty on them to do so, as the 1989 Children Act requires workers to assess not only whether children "have" suffered significant harm, but also whether they are "likely" to do so. Similarly, in Northern Ireland social workers are required…

Background: Social workers play a central role in service delivery for parents with intellectual disability (ID). Within Israeli Muslim society, men with ID are likely to marry non-disabled women and create families. This study adds to scarce research on how social workers view these families, and how they might better serve their needs. Method: A…

Integrated data systems are often used to inform decision making at the top tiers of local or state government. Policymakers use analyses based on large numbers of integrated data system (IDS) records (from which personal identifying information has been removed) to understand the overlap between cases that receive services from different systems…

Following on from the article "Building Capacity in Social Care: An Evaluation of a National Programme of Action Learning Facilitator Development" (Abbott, C., L. Burtney, and C. Wall. 2013. "Action Learning: Research & Practice" 10 (2): 168--177), this article describes how action learning is being introduced in Cornwall…

This review summarises the research literature on children's and parents' involvement in social work decision making, which is regarded, in policy terms, as increasingly important. In practice, however, it tends to be messy, difficult and compromised. Different individuals or groups may have different understandings of participation and related…

No Child Left Behind (NCLB) legislation is an important policy intervention aimed at changing school, district, and state department of education policies and practices to improve student outcomes. These efforts are compromised because NCLB does not prioritize the conditions necessary for improving academic outcomes. One such necessary condition…

The importance of giving young people a say in casework has received much attention in recent years. Little attention, however, has been given to the question of how to educate youth workers as a way of ensuring young people's involvement in such professional practices. This paper reports on a model for preparing youth workers for participatory…

This article reports on an effort to explore the differences between two approaches to intuition and expertise that are often viewed as conflicting: heuristics and biases (HB) and naturalistic decision making (NDM). Starting from the obvious fact that professional intuition is sometimes marvelous and sometimes flawed, the authors attempt to map…

As schools become increasingly diverse through immigration and growth of minority groups, it is important that school counselors incorporate culturally sensitive ethical decision-making in their practice. The use of Western ethical theories in the application of professional codes of ethics provides a specific perspective in ethical…

One of the few truly reassuring features of not-knowing among youth workers is the realization that not-knowing cannot last forever. Eventually, some feature of the situation shifts, and youth workers move back into the capacity for action. This chapter describes the last of five themes associated with youth workers' experiences of not knowing…

The implications of the practitioner's personal values are explored in relation to the professional issues of child and youth care practice. Values are inevitably a component of decision-making and therefore are integrally connected to ethics in the field. The prevalence of subjectivity over objectivity is emphasized in relation to in-the-moment…

A gap exists between research and practice within the field of intellectual disability. In particular, researchers suggest that personal choice enhances quality of life. Following Bourdieu's suggestion to focus on improving the practice of theory rather than the theory of practice, this paper is a reflexive ethnography detailing my struggles to…

"Substantiation" denotes child welfare system (CWS) services' official decision about the validity of maltreatment allegations. This decision is an important one, with implications for how much a child and family are involved with the CWS, what services they receive, and how child maltreatment is counted in state statistics. Despite the importance…

Presents an advocacy practice model which analyzes and interrelates the components of the process. Lists 12 major variables in case advocacy together with 10 key questions which may guide the advocate's decision-making process and shape advocacy activities. (BR)