The Potential of Mental-Health Social Workers - Article Example

Article Critique Course Name and Code Institution Name Faculty Name Insert Your Name Insert Your Number Instructor’s Name 28 March 2009 McCrae, N., Murray, J., Huxley, P. & Evans, S. (2005). The Research Potential of Mental-Health Social Workers: A Qualitative Study of the Views of Senior Mental-Health Service Managers, British Journal of Social Work, 35 (1): 55-71 The purpose of this paper is to explore research capabilities within mental health care contributed by the social workers. The main aim of the paper is to analyze the potential that social workers can contribute towards ensuring that research activities are championed in mental-health social work. The authors carried out a qualitative research in London boroughs bringing into consideration views of the senior service managers and other important people within the mental-health social area. The initial number of expected participants was 33 but later were increased to 51, bringing into consideration their diverse views towards social workers in health facilities view towards participating or been involved in research activities. The authors found out that economic, structural and academic constraints played a major role in preventing the development of social research work bringing into consideration three categories of respondents: traditionalist, eclecticist and genericist. Social workers play an important role in accomplishing and sustaining community development goals. It is paramount and crucial for the social health workers to understand means and ways to contribute towards fulfilling the requirements of mental-health patients. However, the authors have shown that research capabilities of the social workers towards their relevant fields are minimal. Social workers understanding their patients will improve the ways that they will offer their services and ensure that mental-health conditions are given paramount capabilities both in terms of academic, economic and structural propping. Literature review and background knowledge on the research topic plays an important role in understanding the requirements/ development of the problem. The authors have extensively divulged in which they trace academic training in mental-health social work to 1929. Moreover, they traced the development of psychoanalytic work conducted by psychiatric social work, which gave birth to the 1959 Mental Health Act. The authors further explain that by 1980s, introduction of Diploma in Social Work (DipSW) played a crucial role in preparing the social workers in their endeavors. Moreover, the authors explore the importance of the 1971 Seebohm Report, which shifted the responsibilities of social workers to the social services departments (SSDs), an aspect that its success was restricted. Thus, because of poor success of this approach, the government in 1999 developed a framework that transferred mental-health social workers into been a multi-disciplinary service. Nevertheless, the authors conquer through review of literature that mental health care contrasts sharply with social services. This is because health professionals carry out most research in mental health while contribution by social organizations is sparse. Moreover, it is evident that there are shortcomings in the field of academics and policies. The authors utilized the services of mental-health service managers within London region who were responsible for the social workers. The researcher utilized interview in collecting the views on the standards and development of research activities by mental health social workers. The open-ended interviews were recorded, and with the help of specialized software (N6 Software), helped in the electronically managing the data and sorting them to ensure that it is useful. However, the utilization of interviews is prone to bias by the way that the interviewer presents the questions, lack reliability, lack consistency and in most cases are not replicable. A total number of 50 people (participants) were interviewed. Originally, it was expected that 33 boroughs could participate but only 31 participated. Most of the participants had an understanding of the social work services. This helped improved the quality of results and gave a taste to the questions that were asked. Presentation of the data that were obtained defines and improves the understanding of the research question. The participants were grouped into six categories: social service manager, joint health and social service manager, social worker, director of social care, user representative and psychiatrist. The authors categorized the data depending on their prevalence in that the original 31 participants and the later 19 participants were grouped distinctively. The authors were then able to analyze this data bringing into considerations their (participants) specific perspectives towards importance of research conducted by the social workers. The authors were able to document some parts of their answers that they received from the participants and they used this information to explore the significance of research towards the social workers. Generally, the authors were able to pinpoint three attitudes that are evident in the integration of services of the mental-health social work. These attitudes are the traditionalist perspective that champions for the empowerment and advocacy towards the social workers. The eclecticist champions for multidisciplinary and merging on roles and the same time preserves the diversity of their relevant professional contributions. Lastly, genericist champions an inter-disciplinary framework in trying to overcome statutory and assumed roles and trying to achieve a generic mental-health approach towards fulfilling their relevant duties. This divergent view illustrates some of the complications and pitfalls that should be overcome by the society and other community development stakeholders. Moreover, the authors clearly state that there are certain reasons that prevents the development of the research aspect in the social workers in achieving and understanding the changing nature of mental-health complications. Some conditions that the authors elaborate that prevent incorporation of research with the social workers include lack of resources in social service departments and trust. This, the authors specifically pinpoints the lack of planning and consideration towards providing the relevant resources to the social workers to fulfill and carry out research. Other factors that the authors pinpoint as inhibiting the embracement of research by the mental-health social workers include poor academic culture and insufficient capabilities to provide research training. The authors view that the lack of proper culture and belief towards the benefits accorded to relevant academic and research training e.g. statistical methods or methodologies usually inhibit the success of any research. Nevertheless, the authors elaborate on the shortcomings associated with evidence-based practice, governance and multi-disciplinary in motivating the social works to research on mental-health care. Nevertheless, the authors provide guidelines towards reducing the negative impacts towards social workers carrying out research. In factor, the authors’ belief that change of culture, second thought should be given to the fast change towards embracement of inter-disciplinary model and the service users rather than the social workers carry out most of the social work. These three conditions posses the challenge towards the development of research capabilities by the social workers. Generally, the authors have gone deep in trying to understand why the social workers within London area are not interested in embracing the culture of research in the field of mental-health care. This exemplary research indicates the complications that are faced by the social workers in achieving the goals of their disciplines. The initial response rate (31 out of 33) indicates the dire need for reducing the challenges that are faced by the social workers in fulfilling their different tasks. Nevertheless, the authors did not provide alternatives or measures towards the improvement of the deteriorating capabilities of the social workers to carry out research. In every research, there are usually limitations and quality of the research that is carried. Interviews are prone to many shortcomings that include bias, inconsistency, lack of reliability and replicate and expensive. Thus, it is important that the interviewers should not show the effect of bias or any research complications to ensure that the research is within the given standards and solve a given problem. Another method that the study should have been carried out could be by a quantitative research. The main difference between quantitative and qualitative research is that in quantitative research, statistical and mathematical approaches are used to complete the study. Thus, the researchers could have used questionnaires to understand the social workers complexities in carrying out research. This is because the questionnaires are easy to use, accurate and can give a unique nature of a given situation because it avoids complications that are associated with bias. Consideration should be in place in formulating and implementing the research to ensure that the survey is successful and at the same time have an impressive response rate. The method that will be used to send the questionnaires to the audience/social workers is through e-mail and specifically to the different locations. Moreover, to improve the response rate, measures should be incorporated such as providing a cover letter that introduces the questionnaire and the envelope should be stamped and self-addressed. The success of the study should be pegged on the number of well filled questionnaires within the given deadline. Rather than sending the questionnaires to the management, the social workers themselves should be given the capabilities to express their views towards embracing the culture of research. The questions that will be within the questionnaires should not be ambiguous rather ensure that the question at hand is dealt with. For example, questionnaires such as “Can you be able to carry out a research work in mental-health care?” Other questions may include “What prevents you from carrying out a research” and “Do you see importance of social workers carrying research in mental-health care”. Such questions will ensure that the respondents can specially speak out complications that face them in carrying out research. With the help of technological, mathematical and statistical techniques will be utilized to analyze these diverge views. Other statistical methods such as t-test, ANOVA and Chi-distributions play an important role in ensuring that the data that was obtained is reliable, credible and valid. Moreover, understanding such data is easier when compared to the qualitative approach. From different perspectives, the two research methods fulfill requirements that it is supposed to accomplish. However, analyzing the data and ensuring that they are within the given standards plays a paramount role in the way each method will be used. Thus, the unique difference between these two research methods are their analytical objectives, forms of data that are produced, degree of study flexibility, the type of questions that are asked and the methods and instruments that are used to collect the data. These different research methods have different strengths and weaknesses towards the achievement of the goals of the research. In most cases, the advantages of utilizing qualitative method include culturally salient and meaningful to the participant, it produces more in-depth and comprehensive information regarding the issue at hand. Moreover, the method utilizes subjective information and observation of the participant to enable to understand natural setting, describe the context, and other interactions that shapes the entire situation. Additionally, the method is not limited to the rigidly that is associated with defining the variables, thus allows value-laden questions resulting in the development of new theories. However, the strategy (qualitative strategy) is subjected to various shortcomings. The method supports subjectivity, which may be the shortfall of the system. Because of the interview/inquiry, it may lead to difficulties in ensuring for validity and reliability of information and the entire approach. Moreover, the bias complication may not be prevented/ eliminated or detected resulting in inhibiting the results. Another unique shortcoming of the process is limited to the scope that is used to gather the data, due to limited approach towards gathering comprehensive data and in-depth of the information. The method is also associated with complexities associated with replicability of the same process. Nevertheless, the method requires a lot of labor, thus expensive and view researchers understand this method – the classical researchers do not understand it. Quantitative research plays an important role in an area that there are the dependent and independent variables and tries to link them. The main advantage of quantitative research is the reliability that it is associated. Thus, it has the capability of reliably determining and comparing certain scenarios or studies. Utilization of quantitative research methods, bringing into consideration the manner in which the results are displayed ensures that the “results are seen at a glance” thus people who do not have statistical or analytical knowledge may easy understand what was going on. Due to its nature of collecting descriptive data that are straightforward allows the researchers to control and measure variables of a given sample, which can later be extrapolated to represent the entire population. However, like qualitative approach, some shortcomings are associated with the approach that includes understanding the underlying concept or problem. This is to say that it does not explain why some things occur or how people think or act. This is because the questions that are used should be easily quantified and measurable. Moreover, the issues that are been studied are usually known before the study is carried out thus prone to researcher bias in selecting the variables and structuring of the questions. Nevertheless, authenticity of the person filling the forms or answering the surveys e.g. in the case of mail or online discredits the benefits that are associated with this method. Utilizing unauthentic participants may contribute to the reliability and validity of the questions that have been answered when compared to real life answering situation. Read More