We report on the evaluation phase of a study which developed questions to identify people who were affected by gambling harms for use in adult social care services and piloted them in three English local authorities. The questions were designed to identify those affected by gambling harms, including family or friends of those who gamble. The evaluation involved interviews with staff and service users (n = 28) assessing the acceptability, feasibility and appropriateness of asking about gambling harms in adult social care. Transcripts were analyzed using thematic analysis. We also assessed the feasibility of collecting question response data, and whether it was possible to determine if one of our two candidate questions could be recommended.Social work practitioners agreed that identifying and supporting people being harmed by gambling was an acceptable area of practice. They found it more feasible and appropriate to ask about gambling harms in welfare advice and debt support, integrated learning disability and multiagency safeguarding hub, rather than adult social care, single-point-of-access "front-door" services.Facilitators to embedding enquiry about gambling harms in adult social care were: funded staff training, ongoing support, and management capacity. Barriers were: staff perceptions about relevance to service users, staff discomfort with the topic, and competing demands. Based on our findings, two questions for identifying gambling harms to individuals/affected others are recommended: Is your gambling or that of someone else causing you any worries? Do you feel you are affected by any gambling, either your own or someone else's?
Summary Child sexual abuse research is understood as a “sensitive” field of study. As such, there are distinct challenges faced by researchers operating in this field. Namely, child sexual abuse researchers often confront complex ethical dilemmas alongside rigid ethical parameters. Drawing on nine narrative interviews with mothers whose children have been sexually abused and analyzed using narrative thematic analysis, and conducted as part of a larger study, this theoretical methodological paper presents an ethical framework to inform research in this area. The paper makes an original contribution as it explores the tensions that arise when balancing research governance alongside research deemed as “sensitive” and offers an additional ethical approach arising from a feminist ethics of care standpoint. Findings The research applies Fisher and Tronto’s and Tronto’s five phases or stages of care: caring about, caring for, caregiving, care receiving, and caring with, alongside Tronto’s four elements of successful caring: attentiveness, responsibility, competence, and responsiveness, and operationalizes a feminist ethics of care approach to enrich ethical practice in sensitive projects. Applications This article illustrates how such a framework can offer additional protections and ethical considerations for participants across sensitive fields of inquiry with applicability in England and comparable international contexts. Additionally, the article offers insights for social work and other disciplines engaged in ethically complex research.
Background Integrating digital technologies into social work practice has become increasingly significant, with new developments occurring in the artificial intelligence (AI) era, reshaping service delivery and interdisciplinary collaboration. This bibliometric-systematic review examines the scope and evolution of digital technologies in social work. This is a review that examines the body of knowledge as a whole, rather than focusing on the effectiveness of individual interventions. Specifically, the study addresses the following research questions: Which articles, journals, countries, and authors hold the most significant influence in the field? What research trends in this domain have been explored in the past decade? To what extent is digital social work a cohesive body of knowledge? What are the future directions for research in digital social work? Methods The study employed a bibliometric approach and analysed 767 articles from the Web of Science's Social Work category. It used CiteSpace for network analysis and visualisation. Results The findings reveal ten major research clusters, including foundational themes like the social worker–client relationship and emerging areas such as AI and telehealth. Implication The review highlights the potential for continuity and cohesiveness within the field while also identifying structural hurdles, the need for enhanced theorisation, the strategic importance of innovation, and the value of fostering cross-regional collaborations.
