This article is principally designed to examine social workers' retrospective views on their past educational experiences with case management in disability services to supply a deficiency that very little literature attention has been paid to how prior professional education shape their case management practice. Using qualitative methods, 13 social workers selected by purposive sampling were invited to participate in in-depth interviews. The qualitative data were analysed to generate some themes. Three themes found are "from 'rarely heard of it' to 'remember it being referred to'"; "buy a lottery ticket before starting a field placement"; and "Ambiguity". These themes indicate that social work education related to case management was lagging behind, which may exacerbate social work's polarisation and lead to social workers' confusion about their professionality. As a result, an urgent need for greater knowledge of case management in university education and in-service training should be addressed in Hong Kong.
[Copyright of China Journal of Social Work is the property of Routledge.]

Hong Kong is a self-branded international city in Asia. Culturally competent service delivery for ethnic minorities is a nascent arena in the social work profession within the territory. This article attempts to depict the ways in which ethnic groups are situated within local social work practice, reviews the Hong Kong context of a culturally responsive social work profession, and proposes a framework for a more inclusive social work curriculum. In this framework on culturally competent social work education, the authors argue that social harmony and social justice are not mutually exclusive, calling for a (re)conceptualization of social harmony inclusive of social justice.
[Copyright of International Social Work is the property of SAGE Publications Ltd.]

As social work is an international profession, it is necessary to establish the validity of assessment of the field practicum of students for the purpose of professional accreditation. This study calibrates an indigenous assessment tool, the Social Work Practicum Assessment (SWPA), developed in Hong Kong with a competency-based evaluation (CBE) tool popularized in North America, using data collected from 171 social work final-year undergraduates. The results demonstrate convergence between the SWPA and CBE when rated by field instructors and were greater when the student-assessed CBE was higher. Alternatively, the student-assessed CBE displayed greater convergence with the instructor-rated CBE when the indigenous assessment was higher. The positive results imply the generalizability of the assessments across places.
[Copyright of International Social Work is the property of Sage Publications Ltd.]

This paper analyzes the development of social welfare, social work education, and the social work profession against the background of Hong Kong's socio-economic and political development before and after the historic 1997 transfer of sovereignty. The change from a British colonial regime to China's Special Administrative Region has not changed Hong Kong's welfare regime, which provides the context in which the social work profession and education developed. The welfare sector has been increasingly subject to managerialist control by the government. Marketization in higher education in general has resulted in the proliferation of social work education programs. On the other hand, social work education has ventured new directions of development to face up with the challenges of increasing globalization.
[Copyright © 2010 Marshall Cavendish Academic.]

Service users' and carers' involvement in health and social care education has become a mainstream activity in Britain. However, members from black and minority ethnic communities (BME) remain under-represented in this area of participation. In this article, we will take the readers across the globe to explore the difficulties and opportunities of engaging such an under-represented group, the Chinese community. The journey will begin in Britain where barriers to engagement of service users and carers from the Chinese community will be discussed. We will then travel to Hong Kong, a cosmopolitan city, where successful engagement in work with Chinese service users and carers will be explored. Throughout the journey, we will highlight the importance of the consideration of cultural factors, particularly Confucian beliefs such as social harmony and collectivism, when working with Chinese people. We will also fully explore the issue of 'trust' as a culturally laden concept in Chinese societies and its significance for successful engagement in work with Chinese service users and carers in different parts of the world.
[Copyright of Roeper Review is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02615479.2010.491542]