Introduction

In this chapter, authors from Ireland, Australia and Hong Kong illustrate how social workers can use research not only to build evidence about health inequalities but as a form of intervention. A variety of models of research enable researchers to make links between policy makers and the experiences of people who are both excluded from direct access to policy-making processes and unequally treated in social and health care provision. A key consequence of employing a research-based approach is a shift in perception by social workers from the individual case to the population as the focus for analysis and intervention.

In Section 13.1, Quin and Clarke, lecturers in social work and nursing, describe a multidimensional national study of the experiences of families with children who have life-limiting conditions. Social workers participated in the study as respondents and by making it possible for the researchers to access families facing this situation. This revealed the need for social workers to effectively challenge the status quo in order to secure adequate services and equality of provision for families in different situations, including across a rural–urban divide. This research informed the national government strategy document, but changes in practice will be the real test of success.

Section 13.2 describes the research approach known as ‘data-mining’, in which existing documentary sources, such as social work records, are analysed to explore a key practice issue, in this case the engagement of hospital emergency department social workers in the human consequences of crimes of violence. While social workers are widely aware of their involvement with victims of crime such as domestic violence and child abuse, an initial trawl of records, backed by national evidence, found that the largest group presenting with injuries from assaults were young men, including men in prison. These men did not fit the profile of ‘victims’ and so remained hidden as a population requiring a strategic service response until revealed through research.

In Section 13.3, the case study again focuses on a minority ethnic population which is liable to be excluded from mainstream provision. The Pakistani population in Hong Kong is a small group which has been adversely affected by the reversion of the former British colony to Chinese control, because of their lack of social status and resources and enhanced language barriers.