About
Cal began their career as a social worker over 30 years ago. They have worked as a frontline practitioner, supervisor, consultant, researcher and policy developer, in Australia, England and Canada. They have taught at the University of British Columbia School of Social Work and many professional training sites, and have trained as a family mediator and suicide intervention educator. Immediately prior to joining Douglas College, Cal led research, policy and development work at one of Canada’s largest urban Indigenous child welfare agencies, ran their own social work consulting business.
Cal is the author of Strengths-Based Child Protection: Firm, Fair and Friendly (2018) and multiple academic and practice publications relating to child welfare, inter-disciplinary practice, research, and the scholarship of teaching and learning. Passionate about child welfare, social justice and Reconciliation, Cal continues to do community social work projects that build individual and organizational capacity in sustainable, strengths-based ways.
Education and credentials
- PhD, University of British Columbia
- MSW, London University
- BA, Oxford University
Publications and other research outputs
- Oliver, C. (2020) Inclusive Foster Care: How foster parents support cultural and relational connections for Indigenous children. Child and Family Social Work, 25, 3.
- Kensington-Miller, B., Oliver, C., Moron-Garcia, S., Manarin, K., Abrahamson, E., Simmons, N., Deshler, J. (2019). An international interdisciplinary writing group: Perspectives on building partnerships and developing community. In N. Simmons and A. Singh (Eds.), Critical collaborative communities: Academic writing partnerships, groups, and retreats. (p. 228-241). Boston: Brill.
- Oliver. C. (2017). Strengths-based child protection: Firm, fair and friendly. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
- Oliver, C., Jones, E., Rayner, A., Penner, J., Jamieson, A. (2017). Teaching social work students to speak up. Social Work, 36, 6.
- Oliver, C. & Charles, G. (2015). Which strengths-based practice? Reconciling strengths-based practice and mandated authority in child protection work. Social Work, 60, 2, p.135-43.
- Oliver, C. & Charles, G. Enacting firm, fair and friendly practice. A model for strengths-based child protection relationships? (2015). British Journal of Social Work. 46, 4, p. 1009-1026.
- Oliver, C. (2014). The fundamentals of strengths-based practice. Relational Child and Youth Care Practice, 27, 3, p. 46-50.
- Charles, G., Alexander, C., Oliver, C. (2014). Overcoming isolation: Making the case for the development of blended service learning and social work interprofessional field education experiences to improve university-community engagement. Currents: Scholarship in the Human Services, 13, 1
- Oliver, C. (2014). Including moral distress in the new language of social work ethics. Canadian Social Work Review 30, 2.
- Oliver, C. (2014). Critical realist grounded theory: A new approach for social work research. In A. E. Clarke and K. Charmaz (Eds.), Grounded Theory and Situational Analysis. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications Ltd.
- Simmons, N., Abrahamson, E., Deshler, J., Kensington-Miller, B., Manarin, K., Moron-Garcia, S., Oliver, C., Renc-Roe, J. (2013). Conflicts and configurations in a liminal space: SoTL scholars' identity development. Teaching and Learning Inquiry, 1, 2, p. 9-21.
- Oliver, C. (2013). Social workers as boundary-spanners: Reframing our professional identity for interprofessional practice. Social Work Education, 32, 6. p. 773-784.
- Oliver, C., Kelly, N. & Nesbit, S. (2013) Dissolving dualisms: How two positivists engaged with non-positivist qualitative research. International Journal of Qualitative Methods, 12, p. 180-194.
- Oliver, C. (2012). What does strengths-based practice mean for relationships between child protection workers and their mandated adult clients? Relational Child and Youth Care Practice, 25, 4, p. 5-12.
- Kelly, N., Nesbit, C. & Oliver, C. (2012). A difficult journey: Transitioning from STEM (Science, technology, education and math) to SoTL. International Journal for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, 6, 1.
- Oliver, C. (2011). Critical realist grounded theory: A new approach for social work research. British Journal of Social Work, 42, 2, p. 371-387.
- Oliver, C. (2011). The relationship between symbolic interactionism and interpretive description. Qualitative Health Research, 22, 3, p. 409-415.
- Oliver, C. (2008). Child welfare work: A life choice, not a life sentence. Relational Child and Youth Care Practice, 21, 4, p. 70-78.
Courses taught
Projects
2025-2027: Principal investigator on grant-funded research study into Specifications Grading.