Summary

The COVID-19 pandemic continues to affect the general population, and the extent to which it affects Master of Social Work (MSW) students is unknown. This study therefore aims to examine resilience, attachment, and other mental health constructs among MSW students during the COVID-19 pandemic. Electronic surveys were emailed to United States MSW program directors to distribute to their MSW students. We evaluated the bivariate relationship between the variables and conducted a multiple hierarchical regression to predict resilience. The findings suggest that individuals with higher levels of resilience have lower levels of depression and PTSD. Furthermore, attachment avoidance, attachment anxiety, and self-efficacy were found to be statistically significant predictors of resiliency in the hierarchical regression. This study contributes to the literature on how COVID-19 stressors have impacted MSW students and the role that resiliency, self-efficacy, and attachment styles play in terms of mental health outcomes during the pandemic. These results are important when considering interventions to assist Master of Social Work (MSW) students during and after the pandemic, especially in reducing stress and promoting student success.

Keywords (separate with commas)

MSW students, pandemic, resilience, self-efficacy, attachment, stress, depression, anxiety, posttraumatic stress disorder

Summary

Social support plays a key role in wellbeing, yet one of the major preventative efforts for reducing the spread of COVID-19 involved social distancing. Financial, health and family stressors further complicated typical support networks. Much of the disaster response literature emphasizes social support as a coping mechanism and contributor to recovery. However, given the long-term nature of the pandemic, social supports, and life adjustments may have complicated feelings of isolation and connectedness. The purpose of the study was to understand the impact of COVID-19 on loneliness and well-being. A cross-sectional anonymous survey was conducted; participants (N = 318), ages 18 and over, volunteered to complete a brief 10-minute survey with items on isolation, COVID-19 impact, and well-being.  The survey was administered electronically using Qualtrics and participants were allowed to skip any questions they did not feel comfortable answering. Results revealed that a high percentage (77%) reported that COVID-19 affected their interactions with others.  Further, both social isolation and COVID-19 impact was correlated with respondents’ well-being (ps < .001).  Additional analyses are being explored. Findings suggest that social support is an important consideration for understanding pandemic recovery.  This presentation will identify methods to help to understand changes in social support and identify efforts that may help improve connectedness, which can buffer prolonged feelings of loneliness and isolation. 

Keywords (separate with commas)

post pandemic, wellbeing, loneliness, isolation

Summary

The readability and accessibility of online materials play an important role in not only encouraging readers to engage with the contents\ but also in enabling them to readily absorb and digest complicated information. As a result, a\ number of systematic reviews determined that online information should be written at a level that users of all educational levels can understand and access. In the United Kingdom, more and more service users, carers, and families are turning to the Internet for critical information, including how to refer a social worker to their regulator. This study investigated the readability and accessibility of fitness to practice-related\ information available online in four social work regulating organisations in the UK to establish how simply they are written and presented to service users, carers, and their relatives. In terms of examining readability total 33 documents from websites of four social work regulatory bodies were evaluated by using six readability formulas Flesch Kincaid Reading Ease, Flesch Kincaid Grade Level, Gunning Fog Score,\ Simple Measure of Gobbledygook Index, Coleman Liau Index, Automated Readability Index. Also, thematic content analysis was utilised to examine the content of documents. Furthermore, interviews (N=12) and focus group discussions (N=02) were conducted with the public including to explore their needs and expectations. The study's findings revealed that the means scores of four regulatory organisations range from 50 to 57%, indicating that these resources require an adult reading age of at least 16 to 17-year-old children, which is higher than the average adult reading age in the UK. Similar conclusions were made in terms of accessibility, as none of the regulatory organisations' websites met the compliance criterion for accessibility. Two regulatory bodies do not have enough information regarding fitness-to-practice matters. We present recommendations for improvement based on discussion of the results with the regulators.

Keywords (separate with commas)

Accessibility, fitness to practice, readability, regulators, social work.

Summary

It is reported that the term professional curiosity (PC) is key with regards to safeguarding children. It first entered into social work in 2013. The majority of serious case reviews done in the UK relating to child protection stressed the importance of professional curiosity in child protection and recommended children's social workers to develop this competence. Although there is no agreed definition or characteristics of professional curiosity as of yet, some local authorities in the UK perceived PC to be about not taking things at face value and asking critical and challenging questions respectfully and sensitively to understand the social realities of children and families without being intrusive or threatening. Some believe it is about delving deeper into the needs of children and families by employing communication, negotiation, interpersonal, and persuasion abilities.\ The aim of this study was to determine if a virtual reality simulation support the development of professional curiosity for social work students in a distance-learning university in the UK.\ A descriptive qualitative study was conducted on social work students in their last year of education, using semi-structured pre and post-questionnaires. This research was carried out at a distance-learning\ university in the United Kingdom. This study included the participation of 26 social work students.\ According to the findings, the VRS encouraged students to become more open-minded, detect dangers and vulnerabilities in children and families, and become more open-minded themselves. They felt more capable after utilising the VRS with children and families to analyse difficult and contradictory evidence.Although the simulation was developed for social work discipline it can be used to train health workers and students in both health and social care discipline. This simulation can also be customised to train and assess both front-line and senior managers’ knowledge and skills in risk assessment and management.\ 

Keywords (separate with commas)

Child protection, risk assessment, and management, safeguarding, social work, simulation, and virtual reality simulation\