Event Spotlight
Why the Affirmation Model is Important for Social Work Practice - CSWIR Seminar with Dr Colin Cameron (Northumbria University)
Date: Friday 25 October 2024, 1-2:30pm
Colin Cameron has been active in the disabled people's movement since 1992 in various roles in disability arts, inclusive living and collective advocacy organisations. He has had quite a few things published, including 'Controversial Issues in a Disabling Society' (2003, with John Swain and Sally French), 'Disability Studies: A Student's Guide' (2014), and 'The Routledge Handbook of Service User Involvement' (2020, with Hugh McLaughlin, Peter Beresford, Helen Casey and Joe Duffy). He is the vocalist in a punk band called Filth and has had his Stuckist nose-picking paintings exhibited at The Royal Academy. His first degree was in social administration from Brighton Polytechnic in 1986.
“In this presentation I shall explore the view, asserted by the Union of the Physically Impaired Against Segregation almost 50 years ago, that disability is a form of social oppression, and ask why much social work practice seems to have had difficulty with this understanding. I shall consider the disability definition in the 2010 Equality Act and why this establishes in law a way of looking and thinking which makes it difficult to think about disability other than as unfortunate individual limitation. I shall outline the affirmation model, an idea that has emerged from the creative practice of the disability arts movement, which offers a way of understanding disability rooted in ideas of pride and respect, and conclude by reflecting on the affirmation model in the light of a number of statements made by disabled people, drawing out its implications for anti-oppressive social work practice.”
Dr Cameron is currently based at the Department of Social Work, Education and Community Well Being, Faculty of Health and Life Sciences, Northumbria University, Newcastle upon Tyne, UK.
Watch Colin's presentation below:
View our full list of events here: CSWIR Events 23/24
Welcome to the Centre for Social Work Innovation and Research (CSWIR)
Located within the School of Education and Social Work, CSWIR has been established to advance the international profile and impact of research and innovative interdisciplinary approaches in social work. Our aim is to bring together social work scholars, professionals, and students, and provide a distinctive ground for research and innovation focusing on the changing nature of social relations of social work and other social action interventions.
As an innovation and research centre, CSWIR aims to:
- promote social justice and rights
- support protection and development of vulnerable populations under new global conditions of austerity and inequality
- strengthen the re-articulation of social work as a distinctive mode of collaborative and participatory relationship-based social action.
In CSWIR, we benefit from cross-disciplinary internal, national, and international collaborations and links, and aim to extend and advance our partnerships with scholarly, professional, and governmental bodies.
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Welcoming our current Visiting Research Fellow!
Dr Chia-Lee Yang (Taiwan's National Center for High Performance Computing)
Dr. Chia-Lee Yang is a Principal Engineer at Taiwan's National Center for High Performance Computing (NCHC) and an interdisciplinary researcher blending social and computational sciences. Her work focuses on integrating data-driven approaches, including big data mining, Multi-Criteria Decision Making (MCDM), and machine learning, to delve into public responses to disaster crises like COVID-19 and environmental pollution, with a particular focus on vulnerable populations. Dr. Yang is the principal investigator for several gender and technology research projects funded by Taiwan's NSCT. She played a pivotal role in developing the "COVID-19 Pandemic Map," a widely used open database with over 36 million views, maintained entirely by volunteers. She founded the Women in High-Performance Computing (WHPC) Taiwan chapter. Currently, she is engaged in research on gender and age bias in large language models. Watch Dr Yang's CSWIR seminar here.
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The Social Work with Older People research project thas just published its findings
The project shadowed social workers in Local Authority adult social care services for 6 months, and interviewed older people, carers and professionals. This was the first comprehensive and detailed look at what social workers do to support older people and the difference they make.
"The research comprehensively demonstrates the positive impact that social workers can have on older people’s lives, and on unpaid carers and families. However, ageism, lack of investment and pressured services are undermining the potential to promote wellbeing in later life. Simple changes could make a huge difference."
To find out more, visit SWOP's Findings page Research findings – Social Work with Older People Research (wordpress.com) and view their Main Findings report, Summary Report and Policy Briefing.
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Kitbag: A playful resource for serious work
Check out this podcast in which Professor Gillian Ruch is in conversation with Dr Margaret Hannah, Director of Health Programmes at International Futures Forum, a Scottish charity that has created Kitbag, a resource for building children's emotional and social literacy.