Working In Social Work

This popular career guide has been completely revised and updated to reflect current accreditation standards, core competencies, and licensing requirements. It also highlights new opportunities for social workers that have been created as a result of health care reform and the passing of the Affordable Care Act.

This text provides graduate students going into the social work field with real world and practical information about what it is really like to work as a social worker. Each chapter presents a true picture of what to expect as a front-line social worker in the given practice setting.

Focusing on the roles and functions social workers perform in various areas, this book highlights the dynamism and vitality of the profession. It offers practical information about jobs available and career opportunities.

The Social Workers' Toolbox aims to bring order to the diversity of tools which are so characteristic of social work: assessment tools, practice tools and outcome-measurement tools. The tools described in this Toolbox can be directly put into practice and adapted to the social workers’ personalized approach with their individual clients and their environments. The underlying meta-theory for Sustainable Multimethod Social Work is the ‘PIE-Empowerment Theory’. This theory defines social work practice in terms of the partnership between social worker and client and is aimed at enhancing quality of life through systematically and sustainably addressing human needs and human rights. The multimethod model promotes the flexible combination of well-written evidence- and practice-based tools. Packed full of useful checklists, the Toolbox is ideal reading for both inexperienced and more practiced social workers. The book provides a solid basis through the use of practical examples. For the more experienced social worker it offers a substantial resource and the means to legitimize a chosen course of action and social work intervention. Schools of social work will be able to use the book as an easily accessible resource for social work assessments, interventions and quality social work management.

The social work profession calls on its members to strive for social justice. It asks aspiring and practicing social workers to advocate for political change and take part in political action on behalf of marginalized people and groups. Yet this macro goal is often left on the back burner as the day-to-day struggles of working directly with clients take precedence. And while most social workers have firsthand knowledge of how public policy neglects or outright harms society’s most vulnerable, too few have training in the political processes that created these policies. This book is a concise, accessible guide to help social workers understand how politics and policy making really work—and what they can do to help their clients and their communities. Helping readers develop sustainable strategies at the micro-, meso-, and macro-levels, this book is a hands-on manual to contemporary American politics, showing social workers and social work students how to engage in effective activism. Stephen Pimpare, a political scientist with extensive experience as a social work practitioner and instructor, offers informed, practical grounding in the mechanics of policy making and the tools that activists and outsiders can use to take on an entrenched system. He distills key research and insights from political science and related disciplines into a practical resource for social work students, instructors, and practitioners looking to deepen their policy knowledge and capacity to achieve change.

Multi-agency working is a dominant characteristic of emerging policy and practice across the range of social care settings. While this challenging activity places considerable demands at both practice and policy levels, when done well, service users agree it offers enhanced service provision. When delivered ineffectively, it can be frustrating and disempowering. This stimulating introductory text explores the challenges and opportunities for social-work education and practice within the context of multi-agency working. It brings together leading experts from across a range of disciplines, including criminology, mental health, child protection, drugs and alcohol, and education, to give the reader insights into different social care settings. It includes perspectives of those using services as well as describing the relevant legal and policy context and offering an overview of key research findings and contains trigger questions and a recommended resources section within each chapter. With an emphasis on identifying learning that can inform future practice, this text will be an essential text for both qualifying and post qualifying social workers who will go on to practice in diverse and assorted settings.

One of feminism's key contributions to improving social work practice has been to expose the gender-blindness which has characterized social work policy and literature. Working with Men extends and diversifies this contribution by presenting a controversial collection of essays written by feminists about men. In what has been a previously unexplored area of social work, the contributors to Working with Men, feminist academics, researchers and practitioners, explore the issue of feminist practice with men highlighting the dilemmas which they have encountered in undertaking this work. They contend that for too long feminists have ignored the issue of direct work with men. The argument that men must take responsibility for their own reconstruction they assert is no longer sustainable: feminists must generate their own discourse about the nature of men and masculinity derived from their own experience of critically engaging with and challenging men. The contributors conclude that direct work with men is a legitimate feminist activity; that it is one important strand of a broader strategy whose ultimate goal is the empowerment of women. This book will be valuable reading for all students of social work and applied social science as well as social work practitioners and managers.