Unaccompanied Young Females and Social Workers: Meaning-Making in the Practice Space

This article considers the role and importance of the intersubjective practice space created between social workers and unaccompanied young females (UYFs)—girls and young women under eighteen years of age, who arrive in a country, not in the care of a parent or guardian, and claim asylum in their own right. The voices of UYFs are under-represented in the literature and there is very little research which considers social work with this marginalised group. Through a study of how UYFs and practitioners in England experienced and constructed each other during their everyday practice encounters, we discuss the potential of the practice space for creating mutual understandings and enabling positive changes. Analysis revealed that their subjective and affective experience of their encounters and of each other, both as individual humans and as representations of particular categories (asylum-seeker/looked-after child and professional helper/agent of the state), influenced how they engaged, communicated, co-constructed understandings of each other and viewed the process and outcomes of the social work contact. We argue for the importance of practice encounter spaces, their distinctiveness from what is written in policy and law and their potential as a site for creativity and change.

Research in physiotherapy – selected problems

Research in the field of physiotherapy creates some controversy. This article seeks to explore and find out the solutions for this issue. Two aspects are discussed: the difficulties in reconciling the specificity of physiotherapy research with methodological standards and the concerns related to patients’ participation in the research. These problems affect the physiotherapists involved in the creation of ethically and methodologically valuable research project. Physiotherapists conducting research struggle to reconcile two sets of values: the role of a researcher and the role of a professional helper. This article discusses the possibility of creating a valuable research project based on the methodological standards within EBM paradigm in relation to the practical aspects of physiotherapy, such as therapy effectiveness and patient-therapist interaction.