Practising Social Work in a Complex World

by Adams, Robert; Dominelli, Lena; Payne, Malcolm

• ISBN13: 9780230218642
• ISBN10: 0230218644
• Edition: 2nd
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2009-05-15
• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan

Summary

This radically revised text is uniquely tailored to fit the needs of final year social work trainees. With an emphasis on refining and deepening professional skills, the text offers clear guidance on hot topics and higher order skills such as research-based practice and leadership.

Author Biography

ROBERT ADAMS is Visiting Professor of Social Work in the School of Health and Social Care at the University of Teesside.  He has a considerable writing and publishing track record. He is the author of Social Policy for Social Work (Palgrave Macmillan), editor of Foundations of Health and Social Care (Palgrave Macmillan 2007) and consultant editor for the Handbook of Postqualifying Social Work (Jessica Kingsley 2007).
 
LENA DOMINELLI is Professor of Applied Social Sciences and Head of Social and Community and Youth Work at the University of Durham.  She is an academician in the Academy of the Learned Societies for Social Sciences.  From 1996 to 2004, she served as President of the International Association of Schools of Social Work (IASSW).  She is widely published, with a number of important sole-authored books to her name, particularly in the areas of feminism and anti-racism.  These include: Social Work: Theory and Practice in a Changing Profession (Polity Press, 2004); Anti-Oppressive Social Work Theory and Practice; and Anti-Racist Social Work (3rd edition).
 
MALCOLM PAYNE is Adviser (Policy and Development) at St Christophers Hospice, London.  He is also Emeritus Professor of Community Studies, Manchester Metropolitan University, and Honorary Professor, Kingston University St Georges Medical School.  He is author of the global best-seller, Modern Social Work Theory, as well as numerous other books including Teamwork in Multiprofessional Care and The Origins of Social Work.
 

Table of Contents

List of figures and tables	p. ix
Notes on the contributors	p. x
List of abbreviations	p. xiv
Introduction	p. xv
Developing integrative practice	p. 1
What does 'integrative' mean to us?	p. 1
How does research contribute to practice?	p. 3
What do we mean by complexity?	p. 5
Complexity thinking	p. 6
Thoughtfulness in practice	p. 8
How do social workers engage with management and leadership?	p. 11
Uncertainty and complexity in practice	p. 13
Introduction	p. 14
Encountering complexity and uncertainty	p. 15
Starting points	p. 15
Understanding what we mean by uncertainty	p. 16
Understanding what we mean by complexity	p. 18
Understanding boundaries	p. 21
Delving further into the ambiguities of boundaries	p. 24
Persistent oppressions: the example of domestic violence	p. 33
The persistence of domestic violence	p. 34
The failure to offer women effective help	p. 35
Rediscovering social work skills: a way forward?	p. 36
Risk and protection	p. 42
Understanding risk and protection	p. 42
Risk, protection and the law	p. 44
Risk, protection and rights	p. 46
Risk, protection and responsibilities	p. 46
Risk, protection and values	p. 49
Risk, assessment	p. 51
Risk, management	p. 53
Checklist for good practice	p. 54
Troubled and in trouble: young people, truancy and offending	p. 57
From 'welfare' to 'minimalism' to 'interventionism'	p. 58
Young people who engage in antisocial behaviour	p. 60
Young people who do not go to school	p. 62
Young people who commit sexual offences	p. 63
Young people who persistently commit offences	p. 65
Sexuality	p. 70
Introduction	p. 70
A 'discourse' approach to sexuality and social work	p. 71
The 1970s	p. 72
The 1980s	p. 75
The 1990s	p. 78
The 2000s	p. 80
Frailty and dignity in old age	p. 85
Frailty and dignity: an example from practice	p. 87
Communication	p. 88
The final scenario ...	p. 92
Care management and early intervention: systems and individuals	p. 93
Older people as carers	p. 94
Coordination and collaboration between agencies, professionals and service users	p. 94
Social workers need particular skills	p. 95
Reconsidering frailty and dignity: the human rights agenda	p. 95
Risk, rights and anti-discrimination work in mental health	p. 99
The risk to others: care staff, service users, the wider public - and cats	p. 99
Discussion: is risk approached fairly?	p. 101
What can be done to challenge discriminatory approaches to risk?	p. 106
Challenging the stereotypes that underpin unfair risk-thinking in mental health	p. 108
Implications for social workers and other mental health professionals	p. 110
Social work with asylum seekers and others subject to immigration control	p. 114
A history of discrimination	p. 115
Controlling welfare	p. 117
Postwar welfare	p. 118
Entering the asylum	p. 120
Implications for social work	p. 122
Legal and illicit drug use	p. 127
Contextual factors	p. 127
Research and policy	p. 130
Agency responses and practice issues	p. 133
Management, leadership and change	p. 141
Introduction	p. 142
Management and managerialism	p. 143
Introducing management and managerialism	p. 143
The meaning of management	p. 146
Ideas about management	p. 148
Service management and the people served	p. 152
Organisational structure and culture	p. 153
Work, management and social divisions	p. 155
Managing the workload	p. 158
(Mis)managing the workload?	p. 158
Workload, values and practice	p. 160
Organisational responsibilities	p. 160
Individual responsibilities	p. 163
Management responsibilities	p. 164
Critical practice	p. 165
Partnership working	p. 167
Partnership working: the political context	p. 168
Dimensions of professionalism	p. 170
Making it work: social work practice in the interprofessional setting	p. 173
Strategic planning and leadership	p. 179
What is strategy?	p. 179
Ideas about strategy	p. 182
What is leadership?	p. 183
Continuity and change	p. 184
Areas of strategic thinking	p. 185
Supervision and being supervised	p. 188
Uprooting the roots of supervision	p. 189
Experiencing supervision	p. 190
Using provocations to question how supervision might be different	p. 192
Regrowing supervision for critical social work	p. 193
Managing risk and decision-making	p. 196
What is meant by risk?	p. 197
What are the societal contexts of the concern with 'risk?	p. 198
How are risks to be assessed?	p. 199
The use of risk assessment instruments	p. 200
Is a critical risk assessment possible?	p. 200
Limitations of evidence-based practice	p. 201
What approach to risk management is to be taken?	p. 202
Managing finances	p. 204
Poor clients	p. 204
Turning the screw	p. 207
More than a sticking plaster	p. 208
Developing skills	p. 209
Cash not care?	p. 209
Cash and capacity	p. 211
Quality assurance	p. 213
Quality is a matter of debate and controversy	p. 213
Policy and legal context	p. 213
Concepts of quality and quality assurance	p. 217
Methods of assuring quality	p. 217
Four main approaches to quality assurance	p. 220
Implications for critical practice	p. 226
Change and continuity in social work organisations	p. 228
Introduction: social work in the context of change	p. 228
Change in the UK context	p. 229
Constancy throughout change	p. 230
Organisational links	p. 231
Researching social work	p. 239
Introduction	p. 240
Social work research: contested knowledge for practice	p. 241
What is social research?	p. 244
The distinctiveness of social work research	p. 248
Becoming more research literate and responding to controversies in social work research	p. 251
Power and subjectivity in the processes of social work research	p. 253
Planning research and evaluation projects in social work	p. 257
The nature of research and evaluation	p. 258
Practitioner research	p. 258
Applied, action, participatory and emancipatory research	p. 259
Issues of philosophy and values	p. 261
Clarifying stakeholder expectations	p. 263
Negotiating ethical issues	p. 265
Doing literature searches and reviews	p. 271
Literature searches and reviews: their importance	p. 271
Literature reviews in social work education	p. 272
Search methods	p. 273
The search process	p. 277
The review process	p. 278
Experiencing research as a practitioner	p. 284
Meeting the methodological challenges in social work research	p. 286
Experiencing and practising research	p. 287
The concept of transformation	p. 291
Critical reflection and transformation	p. 292
Evaluating practice	p. 296
Evaluation as a form of practice	p. 296
Issues, tensions and controversies	p. 297
A creative evaluation practice?	p. 301
Examples of methods of evaluation in practice	p. 303
Utilising and integrating evaluative evidence: the RIPE model	p. 305
Critical social work research	p. 308
Introduction	p. 308
Social research as a moral and political activity	p. 310
Critical social research	p. 311
From margin to centre	p. 312
Subjugated knowledges	p. 312
Talking back	p. 314
Reframing knowledge	p. 316
Developing social work research	p. 321
What is the purpose of social work research?	p. 321
Making use of research	p. 322
Trends in social work research	p. 323
Research as knowledge production	p. 324
Research as process	p. 326
Partnership working	p. 328
Concluding comment Robert Adams, Lena Dominelli and Malcolm Payne	p. 331
Integrating critical practice	p. 331
Continuing professional development	p. 332
Managing uncertainty, complexity and tensions	p. 333
Moral hope for practitioners	p. 333
Critical practice is transformational	p. 334
Bibliography	p. 336
Index	p. 359
Table of Contents provided by Ingram. All Rights Reserved.