This book is a detailed study of children’s everyday practices in a small, deprived neighbourhood of post-socialist Bratislava, called Kopčany. It provides a novel empirical insight on what it is like to be growing up after 25 years of post-socialist transformations and questions the formation of children’s agency and the multitude of resources it comes from.
What happens if we accept children’s practices as cornerstones of communities? What is uncovered if we examine adults’ co-presence with children in everyday community spaces? With a background in youth work, the author writes from the unique position of being able to develop in-depth insights into both children’s life-worlds, and practitioners’ priorities and needs.
Using student-friendly features such as case studies and a glossary, this textbook provides an introduction to the concept of agency and how it can usefully inform social welfare practice. It considers how agency and power inter-relate and how it can inform new ways of thinking about the individual and society.
Tracing the origins of agency and exploring the contributions of key thinkers from sociological and social policy perspectives, the book demonstrates a model of achievable change and in doing so represents an optimistic view on social work’s potential to contribute to this.
It is essential reading for students and professionals training in social welfare, social work and education.
Human development is about the growth of agency, which is developed in interaction with their parents and families but if parental agency is insufficient, agency in the form of child welfare will be required to fill the gaps.
This book provides an holistic view of how children develop agency, combining social, psychological and child development aspects, as well as examining child welfare structures and the roles of social workers. This focus will make a contribution to current debates about child welfare and child protection and the book will therefore be essential reading for academics and researchers in social work, childhood studies, children’s policy and social policy.
61 FOur agency, pathology and abuse introduction The preceding chapters have documented some important trends within social work, in particular the politicisation and institutionalisation of radical-based theories. Without disputing the insights and practical applications of such developments, the point was made that the discourse changed from one where people were seen as active subjects with the means to overcome their oppression, to one in which they were to be viewed with suspicion as they were – whether aware of it or not – likely to be oppressing
A robust guide for students to the leadership and management of inter-agency collaborative endeavours. It summarises recent trends in policy and uses international evidence to set out useful frameworks and approaches.
Multi-agency working continues to be a core focus in criminal justice and allied work, with the government investing significantly in training criminal justice professionals. This fully revised and expanded edition of this comprehensive text brings together probation, policing, prison, social work, criminological and organisational studies perspectives, and is an essential guide for students and practitioners in offender management and other managed care environments. The contributors provide critical analysis of the latest theory, policy and practice of multi-agency working and each chapter includes case studies, key points, exercises and further reading.
43 THREE The capability approach, agency and sustainable development Elise Klein and Paola Ballon Introduction For the past 15 years, there has been a coordinated effort by the international community to track countries’ progress for addressing extreme poverty, disease, lack of adequate shelter, and exclusion while promoting gender equality, education and environmental sustainability, in a quantifiable manner or ‘target’ as framed by the Millennium Declaration Goals – MDGs. However millions of people have been left behind by such ‘progress’. Many live in
Multi-Agency Public Protection Arrangements (MAPPA) are now one of the central features of government policy in the UK for managing the risk presented by violent and sexual offenders. Although there has been research and debate concerning the use of MAPPA with adult offenders, their application to young people has received relatively little attention until now.
Multi-Agency Public Protection Arrangements & Youth Justice extends the existing literature on public protection. It provides a detailed exploration of MAPPA policy and practice in order to prompt further debate about the implications of the risk paradigm for young people and youth justice practitioners.
In the book, key academics, practitioners and policy makers consider a range of theoretical and practical issues raised by the introduction of MAPPA including risk and children’s rights, the use of professional discretion by practitioners, alternative approaches to risk management and suggestions for future policy development. It will be of interest to both professionals and academics working with young offenders and in youth justice.
65 FIVE Leaving the UK: motives, agency and decision-making processes Introduction In the previous chapter I suggested that thinking with community and how – and to what – people construct belonging illuminates processes of social change and continuity from particular social locations or positions. Retirement migration was presented as a form and consequence of social change, involving both boundary spanning and reconstitution. The important role of nostalgia as a cultural resource in constructing belonging to different forms of community, evoking an
If we were solely to study the relations of alienation of workers, we would risk reproducing a dehumanized understanding of capitalism and its trajectory – at most accounting for only its internal interacting contradictory relations. It comes as no surprise that Adam Smith and Frederick Taylor dismiss the agency of workers, the former describing those laboring simple tasks as “stupid and ignorant as it is possible for a human creature to become” ( Smith, 1776 : n.p.), the latter arguing that it “would be possible to train an intelligent-gorilla so as to become
