Social Work in the Community: Making a Difference

Description

Social work in the community offers practice guidance to students, practice assessors and practitioners within a political, theoretical, methodological and ethical framework. The book is written from an experiential learning perspective, encouraging the reader not only to understand the ideas and methods but to test them out in their own practice, which additionally provides an element of problem-based learning. The book is written within the framework of the practice curriculum for the social work degree, including the National Occupational Standards and an extended statement of values for practice. This will enable students to use the book to make sense of their practice in relation to the knowledge, skills and values of social work practice in its community context.

Barbra Teater is Senior Lecturer in Social Work, University of Bristol, UK, where she teaches social work theories and methods and community practice. Barbra's research interests include social work in the community, measuring the social impacts of community/community arts programmes, and the implementation and evaluation of social work theories and methods. Mark Baldwin is Senior Lecturer in Social Work, University of Bath, UK, where he teaches social work with adults, community profiling and race and racism. Mark's research interests include innovation, policy implementation and the part played by front-line practitioners in determining policy outcomes, radical social work practice, the use of participative action research methods and service user involvement. Mark is a founding member of the South West Social Work Activists' Network.

"The essence of good social work is the 'social' - seeing, relating to, and supporting people in context. This book is key to help make that happen. Exploring the theory, practice, values and future of social work in the community it's invaluable for reconnecting social workers with good practice." --Peter Beresford, Brunel University