Faculty of Science
Social Work Lecturer awarded Doctor of Social Work status
Fri, 19 Oct 2012 14:33:00 BST
John Crossland, Senior Lecturer in Social Work at the School of Health Sciences and Social Science Work, has successfully completed his Doctor of Social Work at the University of Sussex.
John’s thesis used a case study of an older person's case management service in Berlin to explore the question of 'comparability', i.e. the extent to which it is possible to compare case management services across countries in the context of different legal and policy contexts. Case management (also known as care management in the United Kingdom (UK)) is a method that has been adopted internationally to address problems of coordination in complex health and social care systems.
John found that the German example was significantly shaped by its specific policy and legislative context but also that key problems they experienced, e.g. differentiating between formal case management and other types of case work, were in fact reflected in the UK care management literature. His research also found that the adoption of English words or expressions in German social policy and social work professional jargon did not necessarily help to establish 'equivalence' for comparative purposes as their meanings and usage subtly shifted in relation to the new language context. Methodologically, the study suggested the notion of 'functional equivalence', rather than formal equivalence may be more useful in comparative cross country social research.