Declassification of professional social workers: A personnel issue facing the human services
The author discusses the issue of declassification of professional social work positions within public service agencies. The manner in which declassification is occurring, the reasons for it, and some strategies to block the trend are presented. An underlying theme of the paper is that the core issue in declassificalion of professional social work positions is the profession's inability to define clearly its domain of expertise. From a personnel standpoint this relates to issues of job analysis and evaluation and the inability of professionals to establish the fact that their contribution to a social service agency is unique, and by implication superior, to that offered by individuals possessing different qualifications and/or experience.
The Diminishing Role of Social Work Administrators in Social Service Agencies
ABSTRACT The social service industry in the United States has experienced tremendous growth and change since the early 1970s. Unfortunately, the social work profession has not kept up with this growth and change. This article explores several issues that have emerged in social work administration that may contribute to the seemingly diminished role of social workers in administrative positions in social service agencies. They include the role that schools of social work play in educating social workers for administration, competition for administrative positions in social service agencies, and the differences which exist between administration in social service agencies and other types of organizations.
Introduction and experience with the primary mail services based on their names for students
Kyushu University provided mail service based on student IDs such as "1AB10123X" to the university students for many years. Using this model, we had problems communicating with the students who graduated from the University and enrolled in the graduate school. The students received new mail addresses based on their new student IDs such as "2AB12789Y". Faculty members were forced to change the student mail addresses in the mailing lists and in their mail client address book. Furthermore, students were forced to notify the e-mail address change to all of their existing contacts. We introduced a new mail system to provide addresses based on the student name, as well as student ID in April 2011. The new naming convention uses the following format: lastname.firstname.999 where 999 is a random number of 3 digits. Students can select some combination patterns of their first and last names for Japanese. We also consider the middle names for foreign students. In the system implementation, we did not have the formal information of alphabetical names for students. We generated alphabetical names from Japanese Katakana names. It is not easy for us to get the appropriate name in this manner. We implemented a confirmation stage of the alphabetical name at first use, and then students can select their mail addresses for their convenience. We paid much attention to the user interface in the system. Since April 2011, the number of users who use the mail address based on their own name has been increasing gradually. This paper will detail the usage status of the new system.