Safeguarding Month - Genomics for Children's Social Workers

Safeguarding Month – Genomics for Children’s Social Workers

September 17, 2025 admin

Date:

November 11, 2025

Time:

10:00 am - 11:00 am

So called ‘rare diseases’ collectively affect one in 17 individuals. More than half of those with a rare condition are affected in childhood and 80% have a genetic cause. If, as a social worker working with children and their families, you haven’t yet come across a genetic condition of relevance to your case it is only a matter of time. Genetic testing has increased exponentially and is now carried out in multiple medical specialties outside of genetics. Social workers need to understand how these changes are already impacting children in care and their families and consider the potential implications of future government plans to further expand genetic testing.

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About the Author

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Race & Inequality

How is racism understood in literature about the experiences of black and minority ethnic social work students in Britain? A Conceptual review.

Dr Dharman Jeyasingham and Dr Julie Morton (Social Work Education, 38 (5), pp 563-575)

Abstract

This article presents findings from a study which explored the everyday ways race works on social work programmes in England. The study focused on how race was spoken about and conceptualised, how people were categorised and ordered according to race and the social interactions where race was understood by participants to be significant. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with eight social work lecturers and nineteen black social work students at two universities in England, to explore the following topics: classroom-based and practice learning, assessment and feedback, interactions between students and between students and educators, and university and practice agency cultures. Data were analysed using thematic analysis and the following themes identified: the routine interpellation of black students and communities in terms of absolute cultural differences, black students’ everyday experiences of marginalisation, hostility and othering, and the racialisation of black students in judgements made about their academic and practice performance. The article concludes that social work education must engage more deeply with contemporary theorisations of race and culture, and that social work educators need a reflexive understanding of how notions such as diversity, equality and universal academic standards are put into practice in ways that marginalise and devalue black students.

Link to Research Article:
https://usir.salford.ac.uk/id/eprint/64217/?template=banner

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Children Social Work and Agile Working

Children’s social workers agile working practice and experiences beyond the office

Dr Dharman Jeyasingham, The British Journal of Social Work, Volume 49, Issue 3, April 2019, Pages 559-576, https://doi.org/10.1093/bjsw/bcy077

Abstract

Agile working (flexibility around practitioners’ roles and the location and time of work) is increasingly common across local authority social work in the UK but there is little evidence about the practices it entails, with the small amount of existing research concerned largely with its impact on office environments. This article presents findings from a qualitative exploratory study of eleven social workers’ practices and experiences when engaged in agile working away from office spaces. Data were generated through practitioner diaries, photographs elicited from practitioners and semi-structured interviews, and were analysed using a grounded theory approach. The study found practitioners engaged in agile working in a wide range of domestic, leisure and formal work environments across the public–private continuum. This gave them superficial control over how they worked, in particular the freedom to work in solitude and establish distance between themselves and perceived demands from service users and other practitioners. However, agile working also involved a wider range of material practices and affective experiences for practitioners. These changes provoke questions about data security, increased visibility and unanticipated encounters in public spaces, and the shifting relationship between information-management work and elements of practice involving face-to-face interaction with others.

Link to Research Article: Seeking Solitude and Distance from Others: Children’s Social Workers’ Agile Working Practices and Experiences beyond the Office | The British Journal of Social Work | Oxford Academic (oup.com)

Dr Dharman Jeyasingham of University of Manchester was the lead the ESRC funded project “Becoming agile in local authority children’s safeguarding social work services: examining organisational and individual change in public sector social work”. Details on this project can be found here: GtR (ukri.org)

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