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…

Two focus groups, consisting of six participants each, were conducted to explore the training needs of therapists when working with clients reporting anomalous experiences (AEs). AEs are those that "depart from our own familiar personal experiences or from the more usual, ordinary, and expected experiences of a given culture and time"…

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…

Counsellor education in Britain is steadily turning into a multicultural environment. The limited relevant literature focuses on the challenges that "culturally different" and international trainees may encounter. The aim of this paper is to elucidate a rarely exposed aspect of international counselling trainees' training experience,…

This article contends that opposition to professionalization has been led by writers from the United Kingdom and Europe who tacitly assume the (continued) presence of institutions that were a feature of the British context in the 1970s and early 1980s, and that still exist in modified form today. Most of these institutions are absent in the…

This study examines the location of British health visiting in contemporary policy discourses concerned with public health and safeguarding children. It argues that professional identity and orientation can be understood through health visiting's long history of public health work with children and families, which has included an engagement with…

Recent Annual Courses of the Association of Educational Psychologists (2006-2008) have each focused on aspects of positive psychology either in keynote speeches or in workshops. This paper argues that whilst educational psychologists (EPs) are right to be positive about the future, the profession is currently undergoing a period of rapid change…

This paper presents and discusses the key findings from a study that considered significant issues that affect refugees and asylum-seekers, and explored beneficial counselling approaches relevant to this group. In-depth narrative interviews were conducted with three counsellors and three specialist children's support advisors. Data were analysed…

Much has been made of the advantages of active support and person-centred planning, both of which have gradually been evolving and changing over the last 25-30 years. The latter is now mandated in the UK as part of the "Valuing People" strategy on disability (Department of Health UK, 2001), and is also central to the follow-up policy…

This article presents the authors' response to Harman and Sanderson (2008) who address the important question of how person-centred active support is. The authors' intention is not to disagree with Harman and Sanderson's general point that combining active support (AS) with person-centred planning (PCP) is better than either approach being…

Barbara Wootton, a prominent British social scientist and educator of social workers, examined the status of social work in the 1950s. Wootton argued iconoclastically that the social work literature presented a profession that was arrogant and far removed from the common concerns of the populations served. In addition, Wootton felt that the social…

The establishment of positive relationships between home and school has long been recognised as a desirable state which can have a significant bearing upon the success of students both academically and socially. By contrast, when relationships between schools and parents or carers falter, the consequences can be detrimental to all parties and in…

Background: Active Support (AS) is an approach for promoting increased engagement in activities by people with intellectual disability (ID). Method: We critically reviewed the available research on AS, and added a commentary to help guide future research and practice. Results: Despite weaknesses in the research design of some studies, there is…

Background: Active support (AS) was developed to help staff organise and deliver practical support for meaningful client engagement in everyday activities. Both the amount and momentary effectiveness of staff support for client engagement have been found to increase following AS training. Training typically consists of a combination of workshops…

This article focuses on an investigation into the learning journeys undertaken by managers of a community education project in an area of urban deprivation. A constructivist interpretation of life history narrative revealed the positive effects of community workers' heavy dependence on experiential work-based learning, which resulted in the…