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The Hong Kong Council of Social Service
Delegation Report
on
3rd International Conference on Practice Research
(9-11 June 2014, New York City)
Introduction to the Conference
The conference began in June 2008 in Salisbury, UK followed by the May/June
2012 conference at the University of Helsinki in Finland, mainly by a group of
scholars and some social work related professionals to bring new perspective to
research and practice in social work.
The first conference was organized by
SPRING - the Southampton Practice Research Initiative Network Group in
Salisbury, UK, to formulate an international statement on principles of
practice-research, constituting The Salisbury Statement.
Following the first
conference, the second conference attempted to champion social work
knowledge built on social work practice.
The Helsinki Statement was resulted.
This conference in New York tried to address the gaps and stressors between
practice organizations and research efforts, continuing the previous efforts on
exploring ways to build trustful and meaningful collaborations among
practitioners, service users and researchers/scholars.
Previous Conferences’ Outcome
Since the conference was founded in UK, outcome, in terms of values, principles
or major issues of concern to the participants, was resulted.
Based on the
introductory session in this New York conference, it was known that there had
been two statements released previously, giving emphases on issues or topics
that were deemed to be important to the participants in the two previous
conferences.
In the UK Conference, a Salisbury Statement was released.
The statement is
about “building knowledge from evidence derived from agency-based practice.”
The practice context of social workers was highlighted, calling for attention to
raise questions from a social work perspective really from the practice field and
build knowledge on practice.
The key champion organizing the conference and
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leading to the Salisbury Statement is Prof Jan Fook, who spoke in the New York
Conference as a plenary speak on how critical reflection could be a qualitative
methodology for social work practitioners to engage in practice-based research
and building social work knowledge for practice.
Following the Salisbury’s Statement, the 2nd Conference held in Helenki also
released a Helsenki Statement.
The Helenski Conference was organized by
Prof. Ilse Jukulen of the University of Helsenki. Built up the Salisbury Statement,
the Helenski Statement stresses on “negotiating collaborative structures
between practice and research to inform each other using multiple theoretical
frameworks and research methods.”
It was firmly grounded in the experience
which Finland had developed in forging programme and collaborative structure
between the field of practice and the field of research in the promotion of
practice-based research.
According to her as well as another scholar from a
Denmark speaking in the Plenary Session, collaboration between the practice
field and the academic institution is the feature of the Nordic practice-based
research.
Outcome of New York Conference
Foretold at the opening introductory session, an idea of having a New York
Statement was raised.
Towards the end of the Conference, a New York
Statement was worked out.
Continuing the collaborative tune in the Helsenki
Statement, the New York Statement focuses itself on “building bridges to span
the gaps between practice and research”.
What is more in the Statement is that
it tries to bring to the forefront that this kind of collaborations or bridges are not
without difficulties and tensions.
It stresses it has to be achieved by
“recognizing and addressing the differences and tensions emerging from
different perspectives.” As seen in the Conference, the Chair of the Conference,
Prof Irwin Epstein had tried to go beyond having a group of same-minded
participants speaking among themselves.
The Conference tried to bridge the
advocates of practice-based research and those of the evidence-based practice
scholars and forged a more effective dialogue between them.
It was without
surprise indeed that while both groups might a little be holding on to what they
had been championing, they did show not just respect but also appreciation of
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what each other had been doing.
The dialogue between Bruce Thyer and Jan
Fook, for example, had been an excellent demonstration of this.
The former is
known to the world a champion of golden standard research, giving so much
emphasis on Randomized Control Trial.
Yet, based on what he shared, he
actually had conducted a lot of practice-based research which were not based on
RCT.
He admitted publicly that he found practice-based research, even without
that level of sophistication can be extremely useful.
He truly appreciates the
practice-based research, so long as the claim is made prudently as not claiming
beyond the practice context.
Sharing like this can be of great value to
practitioners who are interested and committed to practice research.
Major Highlights of Discussion in the Conference
Gitterman made a powerful and critical intervention during the conference as a
Plenary Speaker, speaking about the social work profession’s obsession of
manual for practice and practice outcome.
He was critical of how the
evidence-based practice movement had created a professional culture in which
social workers as professionals could achieve high level of fidelity, based on the
proven and established manual, but fall short of the ability of making
professional judgment based on actual flesh-and-blood life situation of the
people in the community.
Working according to manual usually based on
proven evidence of cause and effect, he said, had made social work lose its
spontaneity and active attention and participation in the client’s situation.
Based on scientific evidences, social work practice focused more and more
heavily on symptoms without bothering the complex and chronic contexts of
disadvantage of the clients.
He spoke critically that social workers thus were
“more committed to the manual than to the clients.”
As a scholar himself, he proclaimed that “effectiveness (of practice) cannot be
assessed by clients' outcome.”
Based exclusively on the so-called proven
evidence, a notion of omnipotence was implied that so long as we have proved
evidence, we are omnipotent and our practice must be right and effective.
He
thought, however, that this obsession with omnipotence was at odd with social
work profession.
He thought that our practice outcome is actually beyond our
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control because in reality it is determined by many factors.
From this, he spoke
particularly on the importance of worker-client relationship itself in creating
impact or outcome.
He commented that worker-client relationship was often
omitted in RCT research as the latter usually focuses on treatment and outcome.
He thought however that outcome does depend on worker-client relationship,
not just treatment.
But worker-client relationship is beyond specification in the
practice manual.
It’s always the spontaneous and active listening, and
participation of the worker that the worker client relationship is built, and
making an impact on the clients.
He quoted a research finding that in fact
“chance” and “client's positive attitude” constitute a majority part of the outcome
while the intervention/treatment is in fact constituting only 15%.
In light of this critique, he made 3 suggestions:
1. Using goal attainment scaling so that both process outcome and behavioral
outcome can be measured
2. Clinical data mining
3. Use of naturalistic qualitative
Savaya’s speech introducing a Japanese model, Nonaka Model, to talk how
agency’s effort in promoting practice-based research or agency-based knowledge
production.
Based on her experience and findings, she had found that in the
practice setting tacit knowledge has to be made into explicit knowledge.
But
more importantly, the explicit knowledge of the agency has to be made tacit
again, by which she meant that the explicit knowledge generated has to be
internalized. Similar to what Gitterman was describing about social workers’
obsession with manual, Savaya in fact touched on the issue of the ownership of
knowledge.
That is, even though practice research may be conducted at the
agency level, the value of the knowledge thus produced depends on whether the
process of knowledge production and the knowledge thus produced are owned
by the social workers themselves.
Like the case of manual, social workers who
do not own may just implement what it is prescribed by somebody.
What Savaya’s talk brings up therefore is an issue of alignment between the
sector’s knowledge, agency’s knowledge and the social workers’ knowledge.
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What’s considered as knowledge by the agency may not be seen as meaningful
by the social workers.
The implication is that for practice-based research
to
thrive is to build a practice-based research culture in which both practitioners
and the agency which they belong see the importance of practice research, and
that structurally there can be more support made available to the practitioners
as much as more support from practitioners gathered for the agency.
Speaking of practice-based research culture, it is worthwhile to explore a theme
which Lynette Jourberl talked about in his talk about facilitating collaboration
between agency and university.
She highlighted that in terms of practice
research, social workers prefer doing research in group to conducting it
individually, as the academic researchers usually do.
I think her observation is
truly an important one, though she made the point rather causally.
For the
work on promotion of practice-based research in Hong Kong, this verifies that a
“community approach” to practice-based research is extremely important for
practice researchers. It also got substantiated in another presentation by Sue
Cumming from Princess Elizabeth Hospital, with its initiative on “Clinician
Initiated SW Research Group.”
The Group was formed by a group of
like-minded social workers in the hospital setting to conduct practice research.
They meet once a month to talk about different issues and they seem to be
working very happily.
Being not academically trained to be researcher, not
being able to speak the language of the academic, social workers need to rely on
a collective force to be able and confident in conducting and sharing their
research.
This observation however has entailed an issue of the relationship
between the academic and the practitioner and their collaboration.
I shall go
into this issue in the latter part of the research. (Social workers being a
disadvantaged community.)
Politics of Practice-based Research
On the final day of conference, the Plenary initiated a topic which is really key to
the problematique of this conference.
The sharing of the Nordic perspective on
practice-based research opened up a series of political issues which deserve
deliberation in the promotion of practice-based research.
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The sharing of
practice research in China by Dr Tim Sim of The Hong Kong Polytechnic
University added further impetus to the discussion.
As said above, the Nordic practice-based research stresses a lot on
agency-university collaboration, which necessitates negotiation.
As the
conference features bridging, the two Nordic speakers were talking about the
difference and tensions between the agency and the university in the process of
negotiation of how those bridges are to be built.
Both got into the very
foundation of the involving partners in the collaboration (negotiation).
As far
as research is conducted, the partners started the negotiation on not just two
different sets of concerns, but were also positioned in the negotiation in a
knowledge production hierarchy.
They said that for genuine collaboration to
happen, both partners have to “accept” that their perspectives and concerns will
be disturbed.
They called for mutual respect that the scholars should respect
and acknowledge the constraints that the practitioners have while the
practitioners should develop their own research mind more.
In the session following the Plenary, a group of scholars spoke on different
subjects came back to this issue of collaboration again.
They raised a very
important question: In the collaboration, “who asks the research questions?”
Yet, as they were presenting research on children rights, LGBT group, whom they
said
usually
were
uninformed
counter-argument emerged.
among
social
work
practitioners,
a
If practice-based research is to restore the rights
of social work practitioners to raise their research questions, what if they
themselves are unaware of their inadequacy or their attitude.
For example,
social workers usually jump quickly to the protection of child welfare using the
perspective of an adult.
They might easily render the children’ evidences less
serious or not accurate, without even aware of their being patronizing.
In that
case, letting social work practitioners to ask their questions in a patronizing way
may reinforce subordination of the children.
In other words, promoting or
restoring the rights for social workers to ask their research questions from a
social work perspective is important, but that social work perspective itself
should be treated as something self-evidently true.
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Other stakeholders,
including the scholars, should have a role in shaping the research questions to
make them stay both relevant and critical.
Insights and Questions to Further Discuss
The delegation started with a concern on the promotion of practice research
among practitioners in the practice settings.
However, after 3 days of
conference, the concern was found to be quite marginalized among the
participants, who mainly come from the academia.
By inspection, over 90%
were academic scholars working in the universities.
Their notion of bridging
therefore has a very particular meaning as far as practice-based research is
concerned.
It is not primarily the promotion of practice-based research among
practitioners, but more the bridging of the scholars and practitioners for
practice-based research.
There have emerged therefore 3 major types of imageries about practice-based
research:
1. Practice-based research as practice research by practitioners
2. Practice-based
research
as
collaboration
research
on
practice
by
practitioners and scholars
3. Practice-based research as research about practice by scholars
As far as the observations in this conference are concerned, practice-based
research has somehow become a subject or a research interest of a group of
academic scholars.
scholars.
At most, it is a methodology championed by a certain
It's for the academia to discuss.
It is not a practice issue, by which I
mean it is not a practice problem that the participants of the conference are to
discuss, address and hopefully resolve for the social work agencies and
practitioners.
Being aware of the constraints of the practice setting, for
example, is more about to explore how scholars should pay attention to them in
the process of conducting research with them or on social service, than to
explore how those constraints can actually be removed to facilitate practitioners
and agencies to conduct practice research.
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Being a subject of scholars’ interest, social work practice researchers may risk to
be rendered as a “disadvantaged group of clients” themselves appearing in the
social work literature.
This may not be a big problem if our concern is not to
promote social work practitioners to engage in research.
Yet, if this is one of
our concerns, then we need to think about this matter from the social workers’
perspective: Why should they subject themselves in that way to become a
disadvantaged group of clients, when they can have more of their agency by
concentrating themselves on practice?
Reading from this perspective, the imagery of “bridging” has to be carefully
qualified.
While the participants were talking more like it is a bridging
“between”, they paid little attention to the real issues of bridging “up or down.”
The power relation between the academic sector and the practice sector, as far
as research is concerned, has been taken for granted.
It is extremely important to deliberate how the element of practice is to be added
into the conference, if it is meant to be an effective platform for not just talking
about but advocating practice-based research.
It goes back to some
fundamental issues of what makes this conference relevant to social work
practitioners.
Why they should join, if they, unlike the scholars, are not
required to make presentations and write papers?
Would there be other
meanings (of practice) that social workers could acquire by participating in the
conference?
The other major lingering issue in my mind is: Why did the discussion on
practice-based
research
in
this
conference
focus
practice/research in health and mental health settings?
mainly on clinical practices?
predominantly
on
And why did it focus
This question reveals an even bigger issue of
concern, after I talked with two delegates, one American working in the
Silberman School of Social Work and one Vietnamese scholar working in another
school of public health in the United States.
The latter indeed shared my
observation, and she referred to Vietnam and said that talking about
practice-based research in the social work context in Vietnam seems irrelevant
as there rarely found social work in health and mental health.
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Rather, there are
a lot more community development work.
In this conference, about 7 out of 10
presentations were about health and mental health.
If practice-based research
is meant to be related primarily with practice, it should have more regard to the
field of service.
So why?
The question was answered by the American delegate.
In the health and mental
health setting, resources designated for research purpose is available though
highly competitive that may not be obtained by social workers.
Also, culturally,
of course, in the health and mental health settings in the US, everybody there are
conducting research.
resource.
This answer further illustrates the importance of
To promote practice-based research in a practice setting, striving for
building a funding structure is a very important task to accomplish.
Follow-up Works
To be led by Dr Tim Sim, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, the 4th
International Conference on Practice Research will be held in Hong Kong in 2017.
The Council has been invited to help organize the Conference.
From a
practice-based perspective, it will be great to have this International Conference
hosted in Hong Kong, so that we can ride on this conference to promote
practice-based research in Hong Kong.
The major concerns however are:
1. How to increase the agencies’ and practitioners’ presence in the Conference?
2. How practitioners’ voices can be facilitated and be raised in the Conference?
3. How should the local conference organized by the Council previously strive to
work towards working with the International Conference productively so that
practice-based research can really thrive in Hong Kong NGO sector?
4. What from this process of organizing the forthcoming conference can the
local NGOs and practitioners be able to gain for the advancement of
practice-based research agenda in Hong Kong?
Prepared by Delegate:
Anthony Wong
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