A Cross Cultural Virtual Learning Environment for Students to Explore the Issue of Racism: A Case Study involving the UK, USA & SA.
Julian Buchanan, Stephen T. Wilson & Nirmala Gopal
This article draws upon the experiences of three academics who collaborated online to engage students from the three respective higher education institutions (the University of Wales, United Kingdom; the University of Washington, United States of America; and the University of KwaZulu Natal, South Africa) to participate in a Virtual Learning Environment using Blackboard software to examine the issue of racism (past and present). This article reflects upon the nature, context and format of the online learning environment, explores the staff and student experience of participating and engaging in the conference, and considers its effectiveness for learning and teaching. The article also highlights some of the cross cultural insights that emerged concerning language, culture, and social context in respect of the issue of racism and related issues of discrimination. The creation of a virtual learning environment across three continents raised interesting challenges and exciting opportunities in respect of academic collaboration and the development of learning and teaching strategies. The article concludes by suggesting that there is pedagogical merit in using both cross cultural and virtual learning environments which may be particularly well suited to enable students to grapple with subject matters that have historically been fraught with ignorance, prejudice and pre-conceived ideas.
Buchanan, J., Wilson, S.T. & Gopal, N. (2008 forthcoming) A Cross Cultural Virtual Learning Environment for Students to Explore the Issue of Racism: A Case Study involving the UK, USA & SA, Social Work Education the International Journal, Taylor and Francis Publishing.
Understanding and Engaging with Problematic Substance Use
Julian Buchanan
This chapter will introduce the reader to the complex issue of substance use. The term substance use rather than drug use includes all legal substances such as alcohol, tobacco, prescribed substances such as benzodiazepines and anti-depressants, solvents such as aerosols and glue, and the more commonly known illicit substances such as crack cocaine, heroin and cannabis. The knowledge and value base underpinning policy and practice in this area is not without with confusion, conflict and contradiction. These tensions will be highlighted throughout the chapter. In keeping with the focus of the book on addressing offending the primary focus of the chapter will be to examine substance use which is more commonly associated with legal consequences to the individual and or others. The chapter will explore the changing patterns of substance use over recent decades, types of substance use, the legal context, the nature of ‘addiction’, the links with crime, before finally exploring what can be done to help problem substance users.
Buchanan J (2008 forthcoming) Working with Substance Misuse, in Addressing Offending Behaviour – Context, Practice, Values. edited by Simon Green, Elizabeth Lancaster and Simon Feasey, Willan Publishing.
This paper explores the findings from a small-scale research project that analysed the impact of Family Friends – a voluntary agency that provides support to families under stress who have children aged between 5 and 11 years. The study, funded by Family Friends, evaluated service users’ perceptions of the support they received, specifically in relation to the significance and impact of the volunteer befrienders. The research identified that there are a proportion of families in need who fail to attract services from mainstream statutory agencies. It also identified that the Family Friends voluntary agency makes a particular contribution to service provision by offering a friendly, non-stigmatizing, caring and responsive service.
Understanding Problematic Drug Use: A Medical matter or a Social Issue?
Julian Buchanan
This paper questions the notion that problem drug use is essentially a physiological medical problem that requires coercive treatment, from which success is measured by way of drug testing to determine the abstinence from the drug. The article argues that the causes and solutions to problem drug use are as much more to do with socio-economic factors than physiological or psychological factors. In particular it explores the connections between the emergence and sudden rise in problematic drug use that occurred across the UK in the mid 1980s, with deindustrialisation and the decline of opportunities for unskilled non academic young people. Further the paper critically examines the notion of the ‘problem drug user’, in particular how those identified and labelled, are perceived and treated by wider society, and how this adversely impacts upon drug rehabilitation and social integration.
Drug misuse and safeguarding children: a multi-agency approach
Julian Buchanan and Brian Corby
This chapter will:
- Explore the social context in which ‘problem drug users’ and ‘inadequate parents’ are constructed.
- Outline key issues and difficulties involved in working with problem drug users whose children are considered to be at risk of abuse or neglect.
- Draw on research carried out with social workers, health visitors, drugs clinic workers and parents to examine the barriers of working together to assess children’s needs where parents misuse drugs.
- Explore blockages and strategies for better partnership approaches
Buchanan J & Corby B (2005) Drug Misuse and Safeguarding Children: A Multi agency Approach pp 163-179 in R Carnwell & J Buchanan ‘Effective Practice in Health & Social Care: A Partnership Approach’ Open University Press, Maidenhead
Indigenous People, Language and Criminal Justice: The Experience of First Language Welsh Speakers in Wales
Iolo Madoc-Jones & Julian Buchanan
This article examines the commitment of the criminal justice system (CJS) for England and Wales to respond to the needs of the largest territorially bound linguistic minority group in the UK – Welsh speakers in Wales. The article contextualizes the experience of the Welsh speakers historically, making links with the experience of other indigenous national linguistic minorities worldwide. The importance of language choice is discussed and the reality of linguistic choice within the CJS in Wales is explored in a small scale study with probation staff. Their responses to a brief questionnaire indicate that language choice is not a reality for the majority of Welsh speakers in Wales. The judicial and rehabilitative consequences of this lack of choice are explored. It is argued that a focus on non-discrimination in policy and practice at the international and national level, the vagueness of linguistic rights legislation and the centralization of the CJS in the UK leads to the oppression of Welsh speakers offenders in the criminal justice system in Wales. This article proposes that a passive approach to language choice for indigenous linguistic minorities like the Welsh is unacceptable and that a proactive commitment to linguistically sensitive practice should be adopted on the basis of social justice, equal opportunities and to effectively engage with offenders to protect the public. Nine principles for effective criminal justice practice with Welsh speakers in Wales are proposed which it is argued, have wider applicability with indigenous/substate national linguistic communities worldwide.
Madoc-Jones, I. & Buchanan, J (2004) Indigenous people, language and criminal justice: the experience of first language Welsh speakers in Wales in Criminal Justice Studies, Volume 17, Number 4 / December 2004 pp. 353 – 367
Missing links? Problem drug use and social exclusion
Julian Buchanan
In the late 1980s illicit drug use became a major social problem in the UK. Since then policy and practice has largely been shaped by psychological and medical perspectives that emphasize the physiological and psychological nature of dependence. Concerned by the limited impact in reducing the number of problem drug users, in 2000 the government shifted the emphasis away from voluntary treatment by the health and voluntary sector, towards coercive treatment, initially in the form of a Drug Treatment and Testing Order (DTTO). The Criminal Justice Interventions Programme (CJIP), a £447 million programme to ‘direct drug misusing offenders out of crime and into treatment’ (Home Office, 2004a: 29) further illustrates and reinforces this shift. This article argues that this shift in approach is also likely to founder, as it continues to be dominated by a narrow focus individuals and their drug dependence, and fails to adequately address the social context, nature and underlying causes of problem drug use.
Tackling Problem Drug Use: A New Conceptual Framework
Julian Buchanan
Abstract
Successful ‘recovery’ from long-term problem use has depended largely upon understanding and tackling the physiological and psychological nature of drug dependence: however, drawing upon research and practice in Liverpool, England, the author questions whether this discourse is sufficient given the changing nature, context and attitudes towards drug consumption in the twenty-first century. This article emphasises the importance of incorporating structural and social factors. Drawing upon qualitative data from three separate studies, the author illustrates how stigmatisation, marginalisation, and social exclusion are significant debilitating components that have tended to be overlooked. This paper contributes new insights into the damaging impact of political rhetoric and structural discrimination that has placed many long-term drug users vulnerable to relapse. In response to these findings the author offers a new conceptual framework for practice that incorporates and promotes an understanding of the social nature and context of long-term drug dependence.
