Understanding Social Work: Preparing For Practice

Description

Provides a superb introduction to the nature of social work: its legal and policy base, the knowledge, skills and values involved, and the challenges and pitfalls practitioners face. This new edition has been updated to include recent developments in the field.

Reviews

"'...successful in handling the complexity of the subject and remarkably free from jargon. It, undoubtedly, is a major resource for anyone involved with social work training and practice, especially beginners in the field.' - Wing Hong Chul, Journal of Social Work Practice 'This introduction to social work is written with a new generation of entrants to the profession in mind. Its strength lies in the author's willingness to begin patiently at ground zero, assuming that its readers will bring little or no prior knowledge with them.' - John Pierson, Community Care 'All in all, this book is a tour de force... Understanding Social Work is more than a resume of the current state of social work practice. It extends our understanding and, with subheadings such as Creativity, Resilience and Humility, reminds us of important qualities in social work as well as competences and skills.' - Mark Doel, Social Work Education 'An excellent book which deserves to become a standard text.' - Professional Social Work"

Author description

NEIL THOMPSON is a director of Avenue Consulting Ltd. He is the author of a number of highly successful social work texts, including Anti-Discriminatory Practice (4th edition), People Skills (2nd edition), Promoting Equality (2nd edition) and Communication and Language.

Table of contents

The Author Preface to the First Edition Preface to the Second Edition Acknowledgements Introduction Making Sense of Social Work The Legal and Policy Context The Knowledge Base The Skills Base The Value Base Achieving Good Practice Facing the Challenge Conclusion Appendix: Internet Resources References Index