Undergraduate and Postgraduate Studies in Criminology and Social Work
E-mail: socialwork@lancaster.ac.uk | criminology@lancaster.ac.uk
Professor Sue White
Sue White worked in Applied Social Science until July 2010.
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Professor in Social Work
Degree: 1982 BSc (Hons)Sociology/Politics (Bradford) 1984 PG Diploma Applied Social Studies and Certificate of Qualification in Social Work (Leeds) 1993 MA Sociology (Salford) 1997 PhD Performing Social Work: An Ethnographic Study of Talk and Text in a Metropolitan Social Services Department (Salford, Sociology)
Associated research centres and groups: Child care, child protection and children in care, Child Welfare Research Unit CWRU, Health and Welfare Policy Analysis
Research Interests
Professor in Social Work
I qualified in social work at the University of Leeds 1984. I worked as local authority social worker and manager, mainly in statutory child care, until 1995, when following doctoral studies, I moved to an academic post at the University of Manchester , leaving in 2002 to become Professor of Health and Social Care at the University of Huddersfield . I joined the Department at Lancaster in January 2007.
Research
My primary research interest is in professional sense-making, and how science, formal knowledge, rhetoric, moral judgement and subjectivity interact in professional practice. My research has focused principally on the analysis of professional talk in a range of health and welfare settings. However, I have also undertaken evaluative and applied research for central and local government, NHS and non-statutory organizations. Currently I am working on an ESRC funded ethnographic study of electronic information sharing in multi-disciplinary child welfare practice and a further ESRC Public Services Programme study of 'error and 'blame' in child welfare practice. The latest study focuses on the relationship between performance management of public services responsible for safeguarding children, and the impact of anticipated blame within the decision making practices of those providing, supervising and managing these services.
Recently, I have become interested in developing, theorizing and researching embodied ethical practice, using insights from philosophy, sociology, psychology, social biology and neurology and also in thinking about how, through innovative curricula and by nurturing capacities for reflection and reflexivity, professional education may encourage, or sustain, 'humaneness' in students and hence in practitioners.
Selected recent publications
White, S., Fook, J. and Gardiner, F. (eds) (2006) Critical Reflection in Health and Social Care, Maidenhead: Open University Press.
White, S. and Stancombe, J. (2003) Clinical Judgement in the Health and Welfare Professions: Extending the Evidence Base, Maidenhead: Open University Press.
Taylor, C and White, S. (2000) Practising Reflexivity in Health and Welfare: Making Knowledge, Buckingham: Open University Press.
Peckover, S., White, S. and Hall, C. (forthcoming) Making and Managing Electronic Children: e-Assessment in Child Welfare, Information, Communication and Society.
Balen R. and White, S. (forthcoming 2007) Making Critical Minds: Nurturing 'Not Knowing' in Students of Health and Social Care, Social Work Education
Taylor C. and White, S. (2006) Knowledge and Reasoning in Social Work: Educating for Humane Judgement, British Journal of Social Work, 35: 1-18.
Hall, C. and White, S. (2005) Looking Inside Professional Practice: Discourse, Narrative And Ethnographic Approaches To Social Work And Counselling, Qualitative Social Work , 4: 379-390.
White, S. and Stancombe, J. (2005) Cause and Responsibility: Towards an Interactional Understanding of Multipartiality in Family Therapy, Journal of Family Therapy, 27: 331-352.
Bilson, A. and White, S. (2005) Representing Children's Views And Best Interests In Court: An International Comparison, Child Abuse Review, Volume 14,Number 4, July 2005, pp. 220-239.
White, S. and Featherstone, B. (2005) Communicating misunderstandings: multi-agency work as social practice, Child and Family Social Work, 10: 207-216.
Hearn, J. Poso, T, Smith, C. , White, S. and Korpinen, J. (2004) What is child protection? Historical research and methodological issues in comparative research on Lastensuuojelo/child protection, International Journal of Social Welfare , Vol. 13(1): 28-41.
Taylor, C. and White, S. (2002) What works about 'what works'? Fashion, Fad and EBP, Social Work and Social Sciences Review. 10, 2: 63-83.
White, S. and Stancombe, J. (2002) Colonising Care, the potentialities and pitfalls of scientific bureaucratic rationality in social care, Journal of Social Work Research and Evaluation. 3, 2: 187-202.
White, S. (2002) Accomplishing the case in paediatrics and child health: medicine and morality in interprofessional talk, Sociology of Health and Illness, 24, 4: 409-435.
Potential Doctoral Proposals
I am interested in hearing from doctoral students who wish to undertake ethnographic or discourse analytic research, particularly relating to professional sense-making and in the general area of child health and welfare and family policy
Journal Editorships
I am currently editor of Child and Family Social Work and welcome submissions of empirical or conceptual work relating to social work and family policy in this area.
To submit your article or to subscribe visit: http://blackwellpublishing.com/cfs
The leading international journal of research, policy and practice in social work with children and families
I am a member of the Editorial Boards of Qualitative Research; Qualitative Social Work and Social Work and Social Sciences Review
Other Professional Activities
I am currently Chair of the Association of Professors of Social Work
Associated Keywords: Applied Social Science, Child abuse and neglect, Child care, Children, children in care, Conversation analysis, Discourse analysis, Education, Ethics of humanity, Ethnography, Ethnomethodology, Family conferences, Family law and society, Institutional talk, Interdisciplinary communication, Interprofessional, Policy and practice improvement, Professionals
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