The Social Service Review

The End of Social Work: A Defense of the Social Worker in Times of Transformation explores the deeply flawed status quo of the social work profession. Its message is clear: it is not acceptable for social workers to labor under intolerable working conditions and financial strain because they work with the poor and oppressed. Steve Burghardt addresses why social workers no longer have the income and status once shared with nurses and teachers. He addresses the leadership failures that cause social workers to be blamed for not ending poverty yet expected to handle burnout through self-care rather than collective action. He looks beyond nostrums of social justice to the indifference to systemic racism in the profession's journals and programs and explores the damage caused by substituting individuated measures of unvalidated competencies for grounded wisdom in practice. It is thus no accident that a profession committing to "care for everyone" undermines the herculean work that so many social workers do on behalf of the poor, marginalized, and oppressed. Situating the work in the crises of 2020, Burghardt ends with a proposed call to action directed at a transformed profession. Such a campaign would be situated within the national struggles for racial justice, climate change, and economic equality so that social work and social workers regain their legitimacy as authentic advocates fighting alongside the poor and oppressed--and doing so for themselves as well. A rallying cry for social work itself, The End of Social Work is an ideal resource for social work programs and practicing social workers driven to enact meaningful change.

Billions of American tax dollars go into a vast array of programs targeting various social issues: the opioid epidemic, criminal violence, chronic unemployment, and so on. Yet the problems persist and even grow. Howard Husock argues that we have lost sight of a more powerful strategy—a preventive strategy, based on positive social norms. In the past, individuals and institutions of civil society actively promoted what may be called “bourgeois norms,” to nurture healthy habits so that social problems wouldn’t emerge in the first place. It was a formative effort. Today, a massive social service state instead takes a reformative approach to problems that have already become vexing. It offers counseling along with material support, but struggling communities have been more harmed than helped by government’s embrace. And social service agencies have a vested interest in the continuance of problems. Government can provide a financial safety net for citizens, but it cannot effectively create or promote healthy norms. Nor should it try. That formative work is best done by civil society. This book focuses on six key figures in the history of social welfare to illuminate how a norm-promoting culture was built, then lost, and how it can be revived. We read about Charles Loring Brace, founder of the Children’s Aid Society; Jane Addams, founder of Hull House; Mary Richmond, a social work pioneer; Grace Abbott of the federal Children’s Bureau; Wilbur Cohen of the Department of Health, Education and Welfare; and Geoffrey Canada, founder of the Harlem Children’s Zone—a model for bringing real benefit to a poor community through positive social norms. We need more like it.

One Hundred Years of Social Work is the first comprehensive history of social work as a profession in English Canada. Organized chronologically, it provides a critical and compelling look at the internal struggles and debates in the social work profession over the course of a century and investigates the responses of social workers to several important events. A central theme in the book is the long-standing struggle of the professional association (the Canadian Association of Social Workers) and individual social workers to reconcile advancement of professional status with the promotion social action. The book chronicles the early history of the secularization and professionalization of social work and examines social workers roles during both world wars, the Depression, and in the era of postwar reconstruction. It includes sections on civil defence, the Cold War, unionization, social work education, regulation of the profession, and other key developments up to the end of the twentieth century. Drawing on extensive archival research as well as personal interviews and secondary literature, the authors provide strong academic evidence of a profession that has endured many important changes and continues to advocate for a just society and a responsive social welfare state. One Hundred Years of Social Work will be of interest to social workers, social work students and educators, social historians, professional associations and anyone interested in understanding the complex nature of people and institutions.

Social workers have their hands in a lot of big sociopolitical issues. When it comes to the death penalty, their involvement is especially crucial. Social workers might support those receiving the sentence, engage with the families of those sentenced, participate in mitigation work, examine the critical discourse (psychiatric, psychological, and legal) leading up to and after the sentence, contribute to research surrounding mental health as it relates to the criminal justice system, or even use social advocacy and policy practice to examine the death penalty. In Social Work, Criminal Justice, and the Death Penalty, professionals with backgrounds spanning, law, forensics, academia, and social work combine and explain their experiences surrounding this prominent social justice issue. The book is broken into three sections: Criminal Justice Considerations, Sociopolitical Considerations, and Applied Social Work Considerations. Across each section, chapters provide explicit implications for the social work professional in a criminal justice setting. The resulting volume equips beginning professionals and students with a holistic overview of the intersection of criminal justice and social justice.

Includes sections "Book reviews" and "Public documents."

In the context of multiple forms of global economic, social, and cultural oppression, along with intergenerational trauma, burnout, and public services retrenchment, this book offers a framework and set of inquiries and practices for social workers, activists, community organizers, counselors, and other helping professionals. Healing justice, a term that has emerged in social movements in the last decade, is taught as a practice of connecting to the whole self, what many are conditioned to ignore -- the body, mind-heart, spirit, community, and natural world. Drawing from the East-West modalities of mindfulness, yoga, and Ayurveda, the author introduces six capabilities -- mindfulness and compassion; critical thinking and curiosity; and effort and equanimity -- which can guide practitioners on a transformative and empowering journey that can ultimately make them and their colleagues more effective in their work. Using case studies, critical analysis, and skill sharing, self-care is presented as an act of resistance to disconnection, marginalization, and internalized oppression. Healing justice is a trauma-informed practice that empowers social practitioners to cultivate the conditions that might allow them to feel more connected to themselves, their clients, colleagues, and communities. The book also engages critically with self-care practices, including investigation into the science of mindfulness, cultural appropriation, and the commodification of self-care. The message is clear that mindfulness-based practices are not a panacea for personal, inter-personal, or political problems. But, they can put practitioners in a more authentic and powerful place to work from, which is particularly important in a world where there is more connection to technology, ideologies, and people who share one's beliefs, and less connection to the natural world, people who are different, and the parts of oneself that one tends to reject. The book also offers suggestions for how to share self-care practices with community members who have less access to wellness.

Essential Skills of Social Work Practice, Third Edition presents the basics of effective social work practice and helps students develop competence in assessment, intervention, and evaluation. Its broad coverage explores the counseling, case management, and research skills necessary to implement evidence-based practice in contemporary social work. Part I of the text includes three chapters that address the core foundations of social work practice: how assessment, intervention and evaluation are linked; the role of theory and research in practice; and a chapter on ethics. Part II, in addition to explaining how to conduct sound assessments and treatment planning, also examines client supportive/engagement skills, cognitive-behavioral skills, and case management skills. Part III focuses on integrating these skills into evidence-based practices with common mental health disorders and problems-in-living with adults, children, and families. Case studies, inspired by real clients, are accompanied by a psychosocial assessment, intervention, and evaluation plan. Appendix B, "The Comprehensive Service Plan," is incorporated throughout the text.

"Moral injury is defined as the sort of harm that results when someone has perpetrated, failed to prevent, or witnessed acts that transgress deeply held moral beliefs. Social workers and other human services professionals are well versed in the ravages, symptoms, and treatment of the complicated forms of posttraumatic stress that accompany moral injury, and the issue has been gaining attention. The purpose of this book is to provide in-depth discussion of the concepts of moral injury, moral distress, and moral demoralization; common causes; the ways in which moral injury, moral distress, and moral demoralization are manifested; the causes of moral injury, moral distress, and moral demoralization; secondary trauma, including the ways in which moral injury, moral distress, and moral demoralization affect practitioners; ethical/moral dilemmas; prevention strategies; the role of advocacy and moral courage; and practitioner self-care and resilience. The book includes extensive case examples (clinical, administration, policy practice, advocacy) drawn from the author's experience in and consultation with practitioners employed in public welfare offices, mental health agencies (residential and nonresidential), child and family services programs (residential and nonresidential), substance use programs (residential and nonresidential), housing and homelessness programs, prisons, schools, hospitals, military settings, private/independent practice, immigration and refugee resettlement programs, nursing homes, HIV/AIDS programs, disabilities services programs, hospice programs, and parole/probation offices, among others"--