Social Work Records

Describes & evaluates the task of recordkeeping for social work practitioners.

The latest edition of Social Work Records describes an approach to recordkeeping that is well-suited to contemporary practice. The authors encourage practitioners to seek a balance among accountability, supporting and improving practice, efficiency, and client privacy in selecting and organizing information in their records. They propose guidelines for improving agency-wide policies and procedures and include new material on demonstrating cultural competence, systematic assessment, managed care, computerization, and record security. The process of recording, as well as the record itself, are described and illustrated in ways that fit the realities of todays practice. Social Work Records is a single source that: introduces the 15 principles of good records and their usefulness to assess the quality, appropriateness, and impact of services; presents an overview of the content of social work records using the Service-Centered Record format; focuses on the structure of the record by describing and analyzing a wide range of approaches, formats, and forms that are used to select and organize information; offers solutions to issues in practice from both the direct-service and the administrative perspective; provides a thorough analysis of records and the law.

Recording is regarded by most social workers as a necessary evil. The research from which this book arises found that recording is a highly complex and demanding aspect of professional practice. Why has such a critical activity received so little attention, despite the concerns over social work records identified with successive inquiries into tragic deaths? This highly topical book explores the often conflicting demands on social workers as they record information on the case files, and will stimulate a long overdue debate as to how to achieve more effective recording in social work.

The advent of computerized data systems, the growth of managed care, the AIDS epidemic, mandatory reporting requirements for child abuse, workplace drug testing, and various laws requiring that social workers maintain confidential communications in some situations yet disclose them in others have made confidentiality a vital, changing area of the law. Practitioners, administrators, and those studying for these professions need to know how to use these laws to protect their clients, themselves, and their agencies. Mental health practitioners need authoritative guidance in these areas when working with clients -- children as well as adults -- in both individual and group settings. Administrators must be aware of the laws that protect worker and client privacy, and those that permit legitimate access to information.

This new edition has been fully revised and updated to provide over 1,800 A-Z definitions of terms from the field of social care, concentrating on social work as a significant area within this field. Covering social work theories, methods, policies, organizations, and statutes, as well as key terms from interdisciplinary topics overlapping with health and education, this is the most up-to-date dictionary of its kind available. It also provides extended entries on specialisms such as children and families, domestic violence, and residential care, and has been extensively updated to include new legislation. Useful appendices include a glossary of acronyms and a Table of Legislation, Regulations, and Codes of Practice, cross-referenced to Dictionary entries. Entry-level bibliographies and web links provide further resources and the web links are listed and regularly updated on a dedicated companion website. Written by two leading figures in the field, and a team of eleven contributors, A Dictionary of Social Work and Social Care is a must-have for students of social work, social care, and related subjects, as well as for qualified social workers undertaking continuing professional development programmes.

Social work practitioners spend a lot of time documenting services they provide, but many are ill-prepared for this practice responsibility. In Social Work Documentation: A Guide to Strengthening Your Case Recording, Nancy Sidell has written the perfect, practical, how-to book on developing effective documentation. Regardless of the practice setting, clinical specialty, and documentation format, this book will help to build better recording skills. In her book, Social Work Documentation: A Guide to Strengthening Your Case Recording, Dr. Sidell provides a clear, concise, and thorough justification of why documentation is important, the different styles used to record client information, and an array of valuable case exercises to work through. Particularly useful is the inclusion of current and relevant examples of documentation that represent a range of practice fields at all levels of social work intervention to include: micro, mezzo, and macro. Woven throughout the workbook are ethical, legal, and supervisory situations that occur in practice that require the reader to critically think about how they would respond. This book is suitable and highly recommended for undergraduate and graduate education, agency trainings, and continuing education courses.

This new practice text provides a series of readings focusing on case management in a number of fields and in a variety of settings with different client populations. Each chapter examines a major component of case management practice by presenting information about an innovative program from a different location around the country. In conjunction, these readings provide a road map to social work case management.In addition to offering up-to-date practice approaches and examining the functions and skills of case management in depth, the authors provide the policy information needed for putting this traditional form of social work practice into today's service delivery context.