Social Work - Theses
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ItemThe predominance of American influences on the establishment of social work education at the University of Melbourne 1920-1960( 2015)This dissertation examines the period 1920-1960 during which social work education in Melbourne, the capital city of Victoria , was first established outside its local university, the University of Melbourne, then later adopted by the University when judged to have reached a suitable academic standard. It explores the extent to which its founders drew on British and American expertise using Everett Rogers' theory of diffusion of innovations through communication in networks as its theoretical underpinning. There is a widely held belief , among older social work alumni, that the course at the University of Melbourne originated from British medical social work. An examination of archival material both in the city of Melbourne and internationally has found that from the outset Victoria's social work proponents actively chose to follow American social work educational models, while drawing to a lesser degree on British expertise. The dissertation traces the emergence of social work education in America and Britain and discusses the reasons for their divergence in the early twentieth century. It outlines the parallel development of social work education in three Australian capital cities, Sydney, Melbourne and Adelaide in all of which social work education commenced outside the local universities. The influence of the traditional precursors of social work education, particularly the Charity Organisation Society, are investigated. The role of Jocelyn Hyslop, the founding Director of the Melbourne social work programme (which began outside the University in 1933) and her Melbourne employers and supporters who achieved success in 1940 in having the University take over social work education from the inaugural voluntary management committee is documented. The dissertation then traces the Department of Social Studies' fortunes throughout World War II and the period of post-war reconstruction tracking the way in which the standards of the course were guarded and an increasingly American approach was adopted. It shows how despite the subsequent University of Melbourne course losing some impetus in the 1950s the establishment of a range of national Australian networks and the emergence of new opinion leaders saw social work education continue to flourish. This American influenced Melbourne course made a crucial contribution to the establishment of social work education in Melbourne and nationally.
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ItemTerror, taboo and transformation: the undergraduate nurse's and midwife's experiences of patient death( 2012)Part of the early learning experiences for undergraduate nurses and midwives is their exposure to patient death while on clinical placement. Given the nature of the work, patient death is an integral and essential aspect of their ongoing professional role—an aspect with which all nursing and midwifery students must come to terms. The experience of patient death can cause personal distress, emotional and spiritual anguish for the student, creating a toll on their mental health and wellness. Such a cost is borne not only by the student, but also by patients, patients’ families and other members of the healthcare team, as the student’s ability to participate in the provision of quality care is compromised. For some undergraduates, there are also positive outcomes of their patient death experiences, from which we may learn in order to potentiate the learning of others. Undergraduates’ experiences of patient death, their subsequent responses, and the resulting impacts and consequences on them have received little attention. Most research relating to patient death has tended to focus on qualified nursing staff and framed the experience in terms of a grief response. This study was designed to explore the experience of patient death from the undergraduate nurse’s and midwife’s points of view in order to further develop understanding of their experience. A second aim was to investigate how these experiences of patient death have an impact upon and shape the development of the professional values and beliefs of the student nurse and midwife. The third aim was to analyse the undergraduate’s experiences in the light of Terror Management Theory (Solomon, Greenberg & Pyszczynski, 1991). Twenty undergraduate nurses and midwives were recruited from a Victorian university and interviewed for this study. Data were collected by semi-structured interview. Analysis of the data was achieved through matrices, which revealed emergent themes. The findings indicate that there is potential for a positive experience of patient death, positive reactions to patient death, and for positive outcomes and growth for the undergraduate’s development of values and beliefs. However, negative perceptions of patient death, negative reactions to patient death in the form of terror responses, and negative outcomes relating to the development of values and beliefs, were the more common, and disturbing, experiences for the undergraduate. The findings contradict and extend earlier literature by concluding that the most common and primary response to patient death for the participants was that of terror when exposed to traumatic experience, rather than that of grief when exposed to loss.
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ItemLives unseen: unacknowledged trauma of non-disordered, competent Adult Children Of Parents with a Severe Mental Illness (ACOPSMI)( 2012)This theoretical thesis attempts to make visible the needs of adult children of parents with a severe mental illness (ACOPSMI), a population which has attracted little scholarly attention to date. It employs a methodology in which established trauma and alternative grief theories are applied to existing multidiscipline, scholarly and lay ACOPSMI literature. The thesis attempts to broaden the definition of ACOPSMI to include non-disordered, competent individuals. It argues that the unique, trauma-based needs of ACOPSMI are not being adequately met within existing family-focused policies and practice, which focus on the needs of parents with an SMI to the potential detriment of their adult offspring. Limitations, implications, and recommendations of this research are outlined.