Social Work - Textbooks

This book examines youth justice in a UK and international context, highlighting the challenge facing all jurisdictions in balancing welfare and justice. It explores the impact of political ideas and influences on the structural and practical challenges of delivering youth justice.

A practical and accessible guide for students focussing on how inter-agency teams may be made to function more effectively, illustrated through real-life examples.

Working in group care (ie residential and day services) is a challenging and complex task, demanding great skill, patience, knowledge and understanding. This book explains how best practice can be achieved through the focused and engaged work of individuals and teams who are well supported and managed. 

This third edition looks at how several decades of feminist social action have changed women’s place in the world today and updates some of the perennial challenges facing women globally to engage with new issues, including digital exclusion, sustainable development and environmental justice.

This book demonstrates that all societies require a social work presence. It symbolises the importance of a community-near professional input to human flourishing and the development of social capital. It challenges economic and political trends that corrode deeply-held human and social values.

What is Professional Social Work? is a now classic analysis of social work as a discourse between three aspects of practice: social order, therapeutic and transformational perspectives. It enables social workers to analyse and value the role of social work in present-day multiprofessional social care.

There is a growing recognition of the importance of networking for the vitality and cohesion of community life. Now in its third edition, and substantially updated, this textbook combines practical experience and theory for people working with and for communities.

The political and economic landscape of UK social security provision has changed significantly since the 2008 financial crisis. This fully revised, restructured and updated 3rd edition of a go-to text book covers all the key policy changes and their implications since the elections of 2010 and 2015.

One of the few resources available to provide an overview of human need as a key concept in the social sciences, this accessible and engaging second edition models existing practical and theoretical approaches to human need while also proposing a radical alternative.

This engaging and accessible text, now in its third edition, provides a comprehensive introduction to health and social care. This new edition has been updated to cover recent developments, including the integrated care agenda, potential regional devolution and austerity.

This substantially revised edition of a highly topical text applies a critical approach to themes introduced in the first edition including economic development, heath and housing, and draws upon theory from Marx and Bourdieu to offer a clearer understanding of community in capitalist society.

This textbook provides a straightforward introduction to the concept of agency and how it can usefully inform the practice of social welfare. Demonstrating a model of achievable change, it traces the origins of agency and explores the contributions of key thinkers from sociological and social policy perspectives.