This Website is Dedicated To:

Werner Boehm¹, Harriet Bartlett², and especially to Jim Karls³

Special dedication to the legacy of Jim Karls and all that he did without fanfare or remuneration in his retirement years to advance the cause of social work having its own classification system on par with sister helping professions.

Dick Ramsay & Jim Karls at the 2000 IFSW Conference in Montreal
Karin Wandrei PIE Resources.

Background Leading to Creating this Website

What is PIE (Person-In-Environment) and How Does it Relate to Social Work as a Profession and Its History?

"The person-in-environment" construct is generally considered a foundation piece for social work practice and is key to the development of the PIE system of social work classification. Harriet Bartlett was the first to modernize the concepts Person-Interaction-Environment in the 1970s to identify PIE as the common domain of social work anywhere in the world. In doing so she recognized the relationship-centered nature of social work and identified the primary focus of social work practice to be on the interaction between person(s) and environment(s). She built upon Werner Boehm's 1950s 13-volume redirection of social work education from its speciality bred history to a broad-based orientation that informs the repertoire of collaborative methods used by social workers. PIE as a unique system for social work was envisioned by Jim Karls and a task force of mostly California social workers in the 1980s. It was developed to reflect trends and new developments in social work at the time... Read More.

The PIE Information Collection

Most of the collection in the beginning will include my (Richard Ramsay) work on whole system conception of social work, Karls and Wendri’s development of the PIE classification system, student paper reflections, critiques of the whole system conception and use of PIE in practice situations.

We invite readers to contribute references to literature they recommend for inclusion including their own work (published or unpublished). As the collection grows we hope to expand the searchable groups to include geographic regions by continents, countries, states/provinces.

We will also include on the page some papers on a critique of modern crisis intervention theory and practice with a proposed alternative based on chaos theory and complexity science.

Above all, we welcome contributions, comments, critiques, suggestions for improvement from anyone.

Richard Ramsay & Pierre Tremblay

The PIE Information Collection is grouped under these broad headings:

1)    SW history, including the definition of social work

2)    Whole System Social Work

3)    PIE Classification of social work

Complete Bibliography For The Person-In-Environment Website

A Work in Progress, Additions ASAP: July 20, 2011

Biographies

What is PIE (Person-In-Environment) and How Does it Relate to Social Work as a Profession and Its History?

"The person-in-environment" construct is generally considered a foundation piece for social work practice and is key to the development of the PIE system of social work classification. Harriet Bartlett was the first to modernize the concepts Person-Interaction-Environment in the 1970s to identify PIE as the common domain of social work anywhere in the world. In doing so she recognized the relationship-centered nature of social work and identified the primary focus of social work practice to be on the interaction between person(s) and environment(s). She built upon Werner Boehm's 1950s 13-volume redirection of social work education from its speciality bred history to a broad-based orientation that informs the repertoire of collaborative methods used by social workers. PIE as a unique system for social work was envisioned by Jim Karls and a task force of mostly California social workers in the 1980s. It was developed to reflect trends and new developments in social work at the time.

If the truth be told, the primary impetus was the publication in 1980 of psychiatry's DSM-III. Karls was more than mildly convinced that social work would be come nothing more than a hand maiden to other human service professions if it did not have its own way of describing and communicating the contribution of social work services. When he and practitioner colleague, Karen Wendri, published the Person-In- Environment System in 1994, they proudly declared two major reasons for producing the book: "First, we are unabashedly ambitious for our profession. We want consumers and other professionals alike to recognize social work as the profession that can best help with the social functioning problems that befall us all. We are convinced . . . social work must acquire and use its own language to communicate the work it does and the role it plays in eliminating or alleviating problems in the human condition. We are clearly advocating that PIE be that language. . . . . Our second motive is a little less selfish. As social workers we want our clients to receive the help they need [period]. Since PIE project began, both case managers and managed health care have come into increasing prominence. We are convinced that for social work to meet the demands [of them] . . . there must be a uniform yet comprehensive assessment of the client's problems [individual and societal]. Along with this assessment there must be clearer intervention planning and implementation than generally occurs in human services. . . . We are convinced, or perhaps just hopeful, that the social work profession has reached a degree of maturity at which its educators, practitioners, administrators, and researchers, can see the importance of establishing a common language for communicating with each other and move into an era of closer collaboration" (p. xvii).

While there have been many strides forward over the years, the maturity that Karls and Wendri believed the profession had reached has yet to be attained and for many it is still but a hopeful wish that it ever will. That hope is still alive in us and we believe it to be true in most of the contributors we find for this website. We hope it will re-ignite the flame in others and bring new contributions into the discussion of social work's quest to have its own voice in the family of human service professions.

Background Leading to Creating this Website

I’ve had a long interest in the evolution of person-in-environment as the recognized domain of social work. This wasn’t clearly known when I started work in social welfare in the early 1960s nor do I remember much attention given to this construct during my graduate study days. The emphasis then was still largely on specialized methods of practice. I have no recollection of being introduced to the 1950s Boehm Commission1 on social work education that transformed the profession’s focus on method specialties and encouraged a more inclusive focus on the whole of social work. Equally, I have no memory of any reference to Bartlett’s leadership in developing a new (American) definition of social work2 in the early days of merging several specialty associations into a single National Association of Social Workers (NASW). I didn’t find her ground breaking 1970s “Common Base of Social Work” that addressed the history and significance of having a clearly articulated domain of practice until well into my practice career.  Bartlett’s formulation, from the work of earlier pioneers, that the domain of social work was Person-Interaction-Environment(s) (PIE) with a primary focus on the interaction(s) between environment and person/person and environment was a critical turning point in my understanding of social work. It was her work that crystallized my interest in PIE and its complementary constructs of methods, generic orientation and use of self. This interest stayed with me when I began my academic career in the mid-1970s. In fact my “obsession” with the concept in classroom dialogues with students grew into the endearing (I think!) moniker amongst students and faculty as the “PIE man”. So much so that a faculty colleague came back from a NASW conference in the 1980s and said I had to meet some one she heard in a conference presentation, as he was a PIE talker just like me. That was my first awareness of Jim Karls and Karen Wandrei’s work in developing the PIE Classification System for social work. Jim and I met in 1989 and became close friends and collaborating colleagues for close to 20 years until his death in 2008. Although he and Karen, and all who believe in the PIE system, haven’t seen the full emergence of a deeply embedded system in social work, the commitments toward advancing our understanding of the PIE domain of social work are continuing through the work of others around the world.

My connection with Bartlett’s work and the evolution of systems concepts, especially the notion of wholistic frameworks, in social work led to an interest in expanding Bartlett’s conceptualization of a common base into a conceptual framework that captured, if possible, the common whole of social work wherever it is practiced in the world. This resulted in a number of papers and publications on the work as it progressed in classroom discussions and practice applications. Over a 20-year span I collected a number of student papers that reflected their struggles, constructive critiques and applied tests of the PIE Classification System and the Common Whole of Social Work (CWSW) in practice situations. I have been very appreciative of the many contributions that students have added in my search for a framework that might be common to all social workers. I have often wondered how their brilliance and evidence of critical thinking could be shared beyond my eyes with others.

The answer, as it often does, surfaced in a somewhat circuitous and serendipitous manner. With the help a close colleague, Pierre Tremblay, on the importance of getting the literature and other information on suicide and GLBTQ easily accessible to interested audiences, we developed my Faculty of Social website at the University of Calgary. In setting it up we also set up an “under construction” page for the computer-assisted learning (CAL) project on the PIE system and CWSW that I was working on at the time. When I retired from the Faculty in 2004, the intentions to finish the page were good but the actions to make it happen were less productive. That changed when I received a call from a graduate social work program in North America several months ago wanting to know more about the CAL CD that had been produced because they were looking at introducing PIE into their graduate curriculum for the first time. My first reaction was shock that this could be true – introducing it for the first time! This changed to being pleased that a school was interested in growing beyond its current curriculum content. I shared one of my few remaining CDs, sent some PIE papers and included some student paper examples. This experience rejuvenated our web page intentions and desire to collect as much literature as we can (published and unpublished) and make it accessible to anyone interested – students, academics, practitioners, curious readers.

Richard Ramsay
Pierre Tremblay

• Personal/Professional Information: Teaching - Publications (Full Text Papers) - Research - Interests - Links.

• External Professional Activities: LivingWorks: Suicide Education & Prevention / Alberta Centre for Injury Control & Research.

• Whole System Social Work, Including PIE (Person-In-Environment).

• PIE Bibliography / Internet Resources.

Information On Other Websites:

• WebSite: Increasing Awareness of Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender, Two Spirit, Queer... Suicide Issues.

• Bisexual/Gay/Queer Male Youth Suicide Problems.

• Papers Available Online Related to GLBT Suicidality.

• "Attempted Suicide" Results For Homosexually Oriented Males & Females: More Than 150 Studies!

• Worldwide Sexual Minority Info-Pages.

• WebSite: The Two Spirited Information Pages.

• Aboriginal GBTT-s Males Are More At Risk For Suicidality Than Other Aboriginal Males & White GBT Males.

• American Indian Male (Female) Suicidality: A Higher Risk For Having Attempted Suicide.

• American Indian / First Nations Male/Female Youth Suicide Rates: A Higher Risk for Suicide.

• Information Excerpts on Terms Such as "Two Spirit" - "Two Spirited" - "Berdache" - "Winkte" - "Nadleeh" - etc.

• North American Aboriginal / American Indian / First Nations GLBT-s Internet Resources.

• Aboriginal & Sexual Minority Over-Representation In Street Youth Population.  Higher Suicidality Risk For Street Youth. Highest Suicidality Risk for Sexual Minority Street Youth.

• Vancouver's MSM Vanguard Cohort, Montreal's MSM Omega Cohort & Vancouver's VIDUS Cohort (Injection Drug Users): Aboriginal & Sexual Orientation Related Results... Suicidality, Sexual Abuse, Sex Trade...

• Searching The Internet For Free Papers / Reports / Presentations / Articles.

 
Searching for Free Papers & Abstracts / Reports / Presentations / Articles on the Internet

Search Engines & Directories: - Google.com. - Google Scholar. - MSN Search.- Proteus Search. - Wikipedia Listing of Search Engines. - All GLBT Resource Directories. - Google's GLBT Directory. - Yahoo's Directory. - DMOZ: Open Directory. - BGLAD. - Wikipedia. - GLBTQ: The Encyclopedia of Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender & Queer Culture.

Directories for Open Access Resources: - The Directory of  Open-Access Journals. - Registry of Open Access Repositories (ROAR). - Yahoo Theses Access Directory. - Google Directory: Free Access Online Archives.

Open Access Collections From Multiple Sources: - Australian Research Online. - hal: articles en ligne (French / English Version). - Archive Ouverte INRIA. - Hispana. Directorio y recolector de recursos digitales. - Red de Revistas Científicas de América Latina y el Caribe, España y Portugal.  - Pacific Rim Library. - OAIster: a union catalog of available digital resources. - OpenPDF.com. - OpenJ-Gate: Open Access. -  findarticles.com: many free full text articles and papers. - Scribd.com. 

Search for Free Papers / Book Reviews: - All Papers are free at BioMed Cental (Open Access) & PubMed Central. - HighWire Press (Numerous Free Papers).  eScholarship Repository:  University of California, e-books, journals and peer-reviewed documents. - DSpace Eprints: Australian National University. - DSpace@MIT. - Virginia Tech: Digital Library / Archives. - eScholarship: U of California. - University of Southampton CiteBase. - Eprints: University of Nottingham. - T-Space at The University of Toronto Libraries.  - NTUR, National Taiwan University. - Allacademic: Some free papers to either read online or download as PDFs. -  UNESCO: Articles, Report, Dissertations, Films, etc. - Kyoto University Research Information Repository. - Doctoral dissertations and other publications from the University of Helsinki. - E-LIS: eprints in Library & Information Services. - CogPrints: eprints. - RePEc: Research Papers in Economics. - DiVa: Scandinavian University Documents. - The International Gay & Lesbian Review (IGLR): Book Reviews & Abstracts. - InterAlia, a peer-edited scholarly journal for queer theory. 

Search for Free Articles, Papers or Reports:  FindArticles.com - The Free Library. - France Queer Resources Directory. - Séminaire gai. - The QRD. - GLBTQ: The Encyclopedia of Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender & Queer Culture. - Human Rights Campaign. - IGLHRC: The International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission. - ILGA: The International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Intersex Association. - ILGA-Europe: International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Intersex Association of Europe. - Magnus Hirschfeld Archive for Sexology, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. - Kinsey Institute Staff Publications. - Sexual Policy Watch Working Papers. -  NAZ Foundation International: Primary aim is to improve the sexual health and human rights of marginalised males who have sex with males, their partners and families in South Asia and elsewhere.  The World Health Orgazization. - The Body: The complete HIV/AIDS Resource. - POZ Magazine: Archive dates back to 1994.

Search for Papers, with Abstract Available (Some May Be Free): The National Library of Medicine (Free papera are highlighted). Abstracts from searches are available at: ERIC: The Education Resources Information Center (Many Free Documents). - Informaworld. - Oxford Journals (Some Open Access Content). - Springer Journals (Some Open Access Content). - ScienceDirect Journals. - University of California Press Journals on Caliber. - IngentaConnect. - Project Muse. - JSTOR: The Scholarly Journal Archive. - Wiley Interscience. - Cambridge Journals Online: Follow Link. - Sage Journals. - Palgrave Macmillan Journals. - Emerald E-journals. - University of Chicago Journals. - Lippincott Williams & Wilkins Journals. - HeinOnline (Access Free Content, Law Papers). - SSRN: Social Science Research Network.

Search for Free Theses / Dissertations, May Include Papers: Library & Archives Canada, Electronic Free Theses Download. - Virginia Tech: Electronic Theses and Dissertations. - DSpace@MIT. - Electronic Theses & Dissertations BYU. - OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations (ETD) Center & Worldwide ETD Index. - Australasian Digital Theses Program (Abstracts Given & Free Downloads). - Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations (Abstracts). - PQDTOpen Dissertations (Abstracts & Free Downloads: ProQuest). DART-Europe: Free Access to European Doctoral Theses. - The British Library's EThOS service (British Doctoral Theses Abstracts). - DORAS: Free Theses,  Ireland. - TEL (thèses-en-ligne). - DiVa: Scandinavian Theses / Other Documents. - BORA: Open Archive, University of Bergen, Norway.  - Doctoral dissertations and other publications from the University of Helsinki. - LUP: Lund University Publications. - National Cheng Kung University Institutional Repository. - HKU Scholars Hub. - Biblioteca Digital de Teses e Dissertacoes (BDTD), Brazil. - OAIster: a union catalog of available digital resources. Free papers also available - OpenThesis.org.