Editorial

Abstract

We started our last editorial on a note of hope and optimism regarding the arrival of the Covid-19 vaccine and the gradual re-opening of society. In the intervening three months, there have been many examples of progress as society musters its capacity to overcome the dangers posed by this virus. There have been setbacks also, and the perseverance on the part of society, the ‘us collective’, to adhere to new ways of behaving and interacting with each other, has been tested many times. Change is not easy. In particular, sustained behavioural, cognitive and emotional change is challenging, even at the best of times. The articles in this general issue address the psychodynamic processes surrounding change in a variety of contexts, not necessarily Covid-specific types of change, but change of various kinds in relational or family contexts. In the first article of this issue, Stan Houston and Calvin Swords consider how the application of a psychodynamic lens can aid social workers to assess the capacity of parents to change in contexts where child safety and protection concerns arise. To understand and measure this capacity to change must, they argue, take into account the intra-psychic and relational dimensions of a parent’s lived reality. The title of their article, ‘Analysing a parent’s capacity to change: towards a model for child protection social workers’, signals the aim of their article which is to strengthen the knowledge base of social work in child protection assessment and intervention contexts. On a similar theme, but in a different context, Louise Sims, delves into the changing processes in adoption practices and the potential negative implications for new family formation which can arise when such processes are rushed. She titles her article, ‘Encounters with liminality: transformative practices in the building of an adoptive family’, and, in particular, she highlights the potential for transformative practice during the matching stage, which she identifies as a ‘liminal hotspot’ in which intense psychosocial processes are typically at play. Katarina Glumbiková and Marek Mikulec’s article is titled ‘Reflexivity and strategies of emotions (re)construction in social work with families in the Czech Republic’. In this paper, the authors provide important insights into the ways in which social workers use reflective practice to manage the emotional and stress-inducing elements of their work. The authors consider how the suppression of emotions on the part of the social worker is a coping strategy that is sometimes adopted but which may diminish the social worker’s ability to connect with their personal feelings in the context of their work with clients. The implications of social workers not connecting with these dimensions of their experiences are discussed. The fourth article in this issue is titled, ‘Rural grandparenting through a family development lens: implications for social work practice’ by Tamara Woods. This is the first of two articles in this issue which specifically address social work in rural contexts. This article focuses on the experiences of grandparents who take on kinship care-type JOURNAL OF SOCIAL WORK PRACTICE 2021, VOL. 35, NO. 3, 229–230 https://doi.org/10.1080/02650533.2021.1960051