Canadian Social Work Review

Abstract:Seven child welfare practitioners from British Columbia, Canada were interviewed to learn about how they conceptualized and articulated what they were doing when working with families where neglect was a potential concern. Based on a constructionist...

Abstract: Social work practice with mixed-race individuals is a largely overlooked area in Canadian social work education. In 2006, 458,240 Canadians reported belonging to more than one population group and of this group 104 2 15 reported belonging to...

Bridging Education and PracticeTHE CONCEPT of competence and its usefulness for conceptualizing and defining professional practice, guiding the design and evaluation of educational programs and assessing student learning outcomes, has gained interest...

1 HAVE HAD the opportunity to work in three different countries (Australia, the U.K. and Canada) when major debates surrounding the competencies of social work occurred in each place. This experience has spanned some 20 years and now, as I begin a new...

In THE SPRING OF 2011, the Canadian Council of Social Work Regulators (CCSWR) invited feedback on its project to identify and define "social work competencies," with the aim of establishing a "social work competency profile." The initiative comes as...

Race and Well-Being: The Lives, Hopes, and Activism of African Canadians by Carl James, David Este, Wanda Thomas Bernard, Akua Benjamin, Bethan Lloyd and Tana Turner. Halifax and Winnipeg: Fernwood, 2010, 213 pp, 978-1-55266354-7.This book comes out...

AT THIS TIME in the history of the Canadian Social Work Review, the editorial board wants to acknowledge that volume 28(1) of the CSWR will be the last issue produced under the watchful eye of Valerie Kremer, our managing editor for the last 25 years....

Abstract: How do activists know when they're making a difference? Researchers partnered with nine diverse activist groups across Canada over a four-year period to see what they could learn together about effective practice in social justice work. The...

Abstract: Social work-along with its commitment to supporting the involvement of service users-was forged in the historical and institutional context of the welfare state and the social movements of the 1960s and 1970s. In relation to a relatively paternalistic...

Abstract: Alberta families living with low income are especially vulnerable due to the province's resource-based economy and its associated "boom-and-bust" economic cycles, as well as long-standing fiscal constraint with regard to social assistance spending....

HETEROSEXUAL and queer are not mutually exclusive groups or fixed categories. One's sexual practices, tastes, styles, desires, subjectivities, and identifications vary over periods of time, changing even sometimes by the hour. At the same time, teaching...

AS AN IMMIGRANT of colour, who self-identifies as a gay man, I often feel uneasy with the way in which queer bodies are constructed in social work literature. For many social work scholars, queers have only one colour: White. Race is often not in their...

La conscience du genreLES QUESTIONS de genre et de sexualités nous touchent droit au coeur. Difficile sinon impossible de les tenir à distance et de développer une posture d'impassibilité à leur égard. Pourtant, nous ne percevons paradoxalement qu'une...

Abstract: The hegemony of neoliberalism in Canada has contributed in several ways to the current diminished influence of feminism in social work. First, the shift from national to global power leaves no place for feminists to address claims based on...

Abstract: Calling oneself a feminist social worker suggests that one's professional identity is well-formed and identifiable in terms of characteristics that may be shared by others. In the context of contemporary feminisms, however, there are diverse...

PREPARING this commentary has provided me an opportunity to reflect on the influences that have shaped my approach and evolving philosophy to academic leadership, in the context of being a woman, a social worker, and a dean.Transformative and effective...

Abstract: Many Canadian social work programs, particularly at the undergraduate level, have adopted a framework of anti-oppression as the foundation for the curriculum. Nine graduates of such a program at the University of Victoria were asked to reflect...

Abstract: Social work educators are "gatekeepers" in that they have a duty to ensure that only students with the skills and values necessary to serve clients are admitted to professional practice. Like educators and licensing bodies in disciplines such...

Abstract: Despite the commitment of structural social work to hearing the voices of service users, these voices have not been evident in evaluations of structural social work as a model of practice. In this qualitative study, researchers interviewed...

Abstract: How well do we as social workers conceptualize structural change for social justice in daily practice? Based on their teaching and community and direct practice experience, the authors reflect on how social work education at the BSW level and...

IN THIS, our second forum, the Editorial Board has invited authors from across Canada to rethink, expand, and deepen the possibilities for cultural competence in social work. The authors challenge the individualistic approach to cultural competence,...

I RECENTLY travelled to Japan to attend my beloved grandmother's funeral. This personal and emotional experience stirred an awareness of my perceptions of culture, which I examine here in relation to cultural competence and anti-oppressive practice....

Tending the Gardens of Citizenship: Child Saving in Toronto, 1880s-1920s. By Xiaobei Chen. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2005This book provides a fascinating history of one of the first child protection agencies in North America, the Toronto...

Abstract: Child welfare policy has been likened to a pendulum that shifts between extremes. At one extreme, the pendulum focuses practice on supporting families at the expense of child safety; at the other, it focuses practice on child safety at the...

Abstract: Feminist social service agencies face serious challenges to maintaining their commitment to anti-oppression work in the current context of practice. Interviews with practitioners in feminist agencies in Toronto reveal the extent to which a...

Abstract: Bob Mullaly recently identified what he saw as a major shift in the 2005 social work Code of Ethics, in that reference to the social ideals of emancipation and humanitarianism had been removed. He interpreted this change as a retreat from the...

ON BEHALF of the Editorial Board of the Canadian Social Work ReviewRevue canadienne de service social, I am pleased to introduce the "Forum," a new section to appear occasionally in the journal to provide social work academics and practitioners space...

"...the radically contingent presence things have in the moment to moment passage of their happening." (Eamon Grennan, "Snap," New Yorker, July 30, 2001, p.30)THE MOST devastating condemnation of Enlightenment/modernity ever uttered is Nietzsche's depiction...

IF SOCIAL WORKs espoused values were to be used to formulate a social work vision, the nature and form of that vision would differ depending on whether a conventional or progressive view was used. For the past decade, I have been using the 1994 CASW...

Telling Tales: Living the Effects of Public Policy. By Sheila Neysmith, Kate Bezanson and Anne O'Connell. Halifax: Fernwood, 2005.Telling Tales: Living the Effects of Public Policy details the results of the "Speaking Out" project, sponsored by the Caledon...

Abstract:New Brunswick holds the unique distinction of being Canada's only officially bilingual province. Government services, including social welfare and education, are available to every citizen in either French or English. A research study explored...

Abstract:As Aboriginal peoples begin to take control of research within the social services area, many of us are basing our methodologies on Aboriginal world views within an anti-colonial framework. Conventional as well as other Western research methodologies...

Abstract:The history of social welfare shows longstanding public antipathy against those who rely on social assistance to meet their needs. With welfare comes the stigma of irresponsibility and laziness, labels that have persisted throughout the history...

Beyond Token Change: Breaking the Cycle of Oppression in Institutions. By Anne Bishop. Peterborough, ON: Fernwood Books, 2005.Anne Bishop's book, Beyond Token Change: Breaking the Cycle of Oppression in Institutions, is an in-depth analysis of the process...