The Structural Approach To Direct Practice In Social Work

This classic text introduces students to the structural approach of social work practice, which assumes that many clients' problems arise from harmful social forces. By focusing on the construction of such realities as poverty, racism, and domestic violence, the structural approach counters the focus on individual change that is so common in our age of managed care and corporatization. For this edition Gale Goldberg Wood and Carol T. Tully have recast the text from the perspective of contemporary social constructionism without altering its main message and organization. They have added six new chapters, covering ethics, the role of the social worker as therapist and community organizer, learning and working within the organization, and the paradigm dilemma. In addition, case studies now include greater detail about the client's social context. Though much has changed since the first edition of this book was published, the need for well-trained, compassionate social workers remains. The Structural Approach to Direct Practice in Social Work continues to be an essential resource for practitioners who wish to help their clients confront oppressive social realities and affect system change through political action.

"Colleen Lundy has created a wonderful synthesis of social work practice in a social justice context." - Lawrence Shulman, University at Buffalo School of Social Work

And social workers

Covers all major topics relevant to clinical social work. Discusses social work practice, multicultural and diversity issues, and research, as well as assessment and measurement.

The need for an alternative to conventional social work is more obvious today than ever before. Given its acceptance of our present social order and its emphasis on reform of the individual and limited social reform, conventional social work appears powerless to deal with the increasing socialproblems that have already overloaded a diminishing welfare state. By continuing to recycle mainstream theories of social work practice that do nothing to change the present order, conventional social work actually contributes to the ideological hegemony of patriarchy, classism, racism and otheroppressive thought structures. The New Structural Social Work reveals the shortcoming of welfare capitalism as a social system and shows how conventional social work has failed to respond to systemic social problems. Mullaly presents a coherent and consistent theory of progressive social work, with oppression as its centralfocus, and examines elements of its political practice. It is shown how this practice is carried out within the social agency, outside the agency, and within the personal lives of structural social workers. This third edition has been extensively revised and updated, and includes.DT an expanded discussion of the political paradigms that influence social work in CanadaDT a new chapter on feminist, antiracist, and postmodernist critiques of the neo-conservative, liberal, social democratic, and Marxist paradigms that dominated the nineteenth and twentieth centuriesDT a new chapter that assesses the influence of the 'Third Way' and the role that social work plays in Third Way jurisdictions such as the UK.DT improved pedagogical aids to make this book more accessible to the mid-level university market.

Using concrete examples, this optimistic book illustrates the ways in which structual social work theory is being successfully implemented in social work practice. By providing examples of what does work in structural social work practice, it offers hope to others that this work is not only possible, but that it is happening, it is effective, and the rest of us can do it too.

"Social workers take pride in their commitment to social and economic justice, peace, and human rights and in their responses to related inequalities and social problems. The urgency of this kind of commitment increases as economic globalization, armed conflict, and ecological devastation continue to undermine human rights and the possibilities for social justice. The second edition of this popular social work text more fully addresses social justice and human rights and includes a discussion of the role of social work in promoting peace and responding to the environmental problems facing humanity. New chapters have been added on human rights, social work with immigrants and refugees, social work and mental health, and supporting couples and families. Detailed case studies throughout demonstrate the integration of theory and practice."--Publisher's website.