Recent political changes in the field of social work have sought to incorporate values of independence and client participation into social work practice. Such an ideological shift stresses user roles, agency, and clients' responsibility to play an active role in their rehabilitation and participate in decision-making processes. This reflects a move away from traditional paternalism, dependency, and professional control. Based on a single case of a prerelease conference in prison, this article investigates the complexity of social work practice in relation to user engagement in the social interaction between the inmate, his parents, and frontline professionals from prison and various welfare institutions. We explore how the participants negotiate the inmate's identity and find that the professionals' intention of engaging the inmate as a user and accentuating his responsibility creates a process in which different identity positions are at stake. The aim of engaging the inmate as a user conflicts with the two other identity categories, namely “client in need of support” and “victim of ADHD,” demonstrating how different discourses are drawn upon by professionals and parents in talk. Despite the professionals' attempts to set the stage as client empowering, the analysis shows that the inmate is frequently presented as a dependent individual. This creates an ambivalent situation for the inmate, who responds with resistance against the situation. The findings discussed in this article highlight the complexity of engaging clients as users.
Berger, Nichals Permin; Johansen, Katrine Schepelern (2016). 'Jagten på en ADHDdiagnose: Analyse af situationer og kontekster, hvor det bliver attraktivt at vaere psykisk syg' i Tidsskrift for Forskning i Sygdom og Samfund, nr. 25,
In 2016, the Danish Prison and Probation Service introduced the Canadian tool GPPM (Generic Program Performance Measure for Correctional Programs) as part of MOVE, a cognitive-behavioural program for prisoners recently developed in Denmark. The tool measures the performance and progress of participants in correctional programs and allows the rating of offenders' skill development, motivation levels, attitude changes and program participation. Furthermore, GPPM output is used to give structured personal feedback to the individual participants on their performance during and after the completion of the program in order to support prisoners' developmental improvement. Using Danish correctional program data (LS/RNR) and GPPM results from 50 prisoners, we examine the different dimensions of the GPPM tool and discuss the possibilities of improving its applicability. First, we identify three separate dimensions of participant performance and argue that they provide a more detailed and accurate measure than the two dimensions identified by the original tool. Second, we find that the use of LS/RNR data in combination with GPPM data increases the likelihood of correctly identifying which prisoners will benefit from specific rehabilitation programmes thereby contributing to overall program effectiveness. Third, we note that an overemphasis on high-risk prisoners may distract from the fact that program participation for lowrisk prisoners can prevent an increase in their risk levels over time.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.