En kvalitativ studie av berättelser om försörjningstagares hälsa - Biståndshandläggarnas perspektiv
This study is featuring six social welfare officer's stories about client's health and the organization’s resources regarding health. The aim of this study is to analyze how the social welfare officer´s describe their client´s health. We are using semi structured interviews and discourse analysis. Our theoretical point of view is social constructivism and street-level bureaucracy. The result of the study contains three different conclusions. The first one argues that the social worker divides the clients in to categories to make them manageable to the organization, furthermore ascribing them different identities. The second one is the social worker's furtherance of the client's health containing both possibilities and limitations. The possibilities are public assistance in the form of health care on prescription and working with the client's motivation to further their own health. The limitations are the subsistence level and the client's own priorities making it difficult to lead a healthy life. The third conclusion of the study concerns the social worker's ideas regarding changes in the organizations to further the client's health. The social workers are further describing suggestions to changes such as education, informative meetings, and granting more funds to activities just to mention a few examples.
Narrating Significant Experience: Reflective Accounts and the Production of (Self) Knowledge
Notwithstanding the rise of evidence-based practice, other tendencies within social work scholarship are also discernible. One of these is the study of the everyday, routine accomplishment of practice, drawing on microsociological methods and techniques. In this article, I apply techniques drawn from narrative and discourse analysis to the study of reflective practice accounts, which hold an important place in social work education. In particular, it is relevant to examine the form that reflective accounts take and the rhetorical and narrative devices deployed within them to accomplish a competent professional identity. My argument is not that such accounts of practice are untruthful, rather I propose that we would do well to move beyond taking texts (and talk) for granted and treating language as merely the medium for expressing inner thoughts and feelings. Social work should take seriously the need to explore its modes of representation and to cultivate a more self-conscious approach to the way professional and client identities are produced in practice.
Integrated land degradation monitoring and assessment: Horizontal knowledge management at the national and international levels
The need for improved horizontal knowledge management at the national and international levels is essential for monitoring and assessment of land degradation and desertification. At the national level, governments utilise scientific, socio‐economic and technical data and information for strategic planning, priority setting and national environment and development planning. However, challenges including the lack of capacity and lack of collaboration and sharing of information across governments affect responses to and the effectiveness of monitoring and knowledge exchange, along with the ability to effectively implement treaties. At the international level, a number of Multilateral Environmental Agreements (MEAs) share cross‐sectoral themes related to research and monitoring, information exchange, technology transfer, capacity building and financial resources. The need for increased synergies stems from the similarities between the issues they address. Challenges for improving knowledge management at the international level include insufficient interaction between the scientific bodies of the various MEAs; duplication of reporting, monitoring and assessment efforts; limited knowledge management between the various assessments addressing ecosystems and biological diversity during the past decade; and insufficient collaboration between the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD), the UN system and the international non‐governmental organisation (NGO) community. This paper examines these challenges and offers recommendations on how monitoring and assessment knowledge can be better managed at the national and international levels. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.