The Role of Reflection in Family Support Social Work and Its Possible Promotion by a Research-Supported Model

Abstract

Purpose: There is a prevailing controversy over the use of evidencebased practice (EBP) within human-service organizations. Since it is argued that it is a threat to reflection, proven experience, and tacit knowledge, we wanted to investigate the impact of the researchsupported, family-centered model Family Check-Up (FCU) on practitioners' use of, and opportunities for, reflection. Method: Focus group interviews with family support social workers trained in FCU (n = 19) were conducted. Results: The significance of reflection for social work practice is clearly indicated. It is crucial for providing quality care: for making progress, processing cases, and effecting change in client-related work. Described as a coping-mechanism, it is also crucial for practitioners. Since various elements of FCU require practitioners' reflective ability, it was argued that it promotes both reflection and professional learning. Discussion: Rather than constituting a threat to reflection, FCU was seen as promoting it, indicating an inaccuracy in prevailing assumptions about research-supported models. This implies the need for revising the definition of such models to promote their potential use and benefits. Working with FCU, however, demands sufficient resources. Conclusion: With an increased focus on "production" leading to changes in priorities, it is argued that resources and opportunities for reflection decrease. As FCU and similar models seem to allow for the incorporation of reflection into ordinary tasks, we propose that they be used to prevent reflection from becoming even more difficult. However, to gain from the benefits of both reflection and research-supported models, various external factors need to be considered.

Professional Learning in Family Support Social Work in Sweden

“…In fields like social work, various sources of knowledge are used for informing and guiding practice (Avby, 2018;Ponnert & Svensson, 2016;Messing, 2019;Ryding & Wernersson, 2019;Sichling & O'Brien, 2019). With the debate over EBP still prevailing 11 years after the call for an improved knowledge-base in Swedish social work (see SOU, 2008), there is a need for an improved understanding of how EBP is defined and implemented in clinical practice.…”

“…Ongoing changes in the Swedish public sector are affecting practitioners' everyday practice (e.g., Avby, 2018;Denvall & Johansson, 2012;Ponnert & Svensson, 2019). Previous studies describe how practitioners experience social work as becoming more production-oriented and a matter of people-processing rather than organizing work according to longer-term perspectives (Ryding et al, 2018;Ryding & Wernersson, 2019). Some researchers argue that this change has led to a decrease in both appreciation of and resources for "less measurable" elements in social work (e.g., Ingram et al, 2014;Ponnert & Svensson, 2016).…”

“…Social workers work in multifaceted, stressful, and dynamic work environments. Reflection is important for dealing with the complexity, intricate decision-making processes, problem-solving, and protecting oneself as a practitioner from the client's emotions and, sometimes, troublesome life-situations (Ryding et al, 2018;Ryding & Wernersson, 2019;Winter et al, 2018). In addition, reflection is often highlighted as enabling professional learning (Dewey, 1997(Dewey, /1910Kolb, 2015;Schön, 1991).…”

Real-Time Detection and Motion Recognition of Human Moving Objects Based on Deep Learning and Multi-Scale Feature Fusion in Video

“…Variable α used as a balance factor to balance the contributions of two terms in the loss function. During training, the classification loss function L cls (x, c) uses the softmax loss function, and its specific expressions are shown in equation (6) and equation (7).…”

“…At present, there are many models for monitoring and identification. The methods can be divided into: appearancebased models [5], motion-based models [6], space-timebased models [7], and deep learning-based methods [8].…”