Social Work - Textbooks

This unique, holistic and radical perspective on participatory practice has been updated to reflect on advances made in the past decade and the impact of austerity. The innovative text bridges the divide between community development ideas and practice and considers how to bring about transformative social change.

The book combines social pedagogy theories, psychology, sociology and social work with a social constructionist perspective to help practitioners guide children and young people to cope better with the challenges they face as they grow up. 

This comprehensive, accessibly written resource, is designed to help students and practitioners explore partnerships in creating, contributing, consuming, commissioning or critiquing evidence in and for social work practice.

This much-needed textbook provides a fresh understanding of the radical tradition and shows how it can be developed in contemporary social work.

The challenges faced by those rationing scarce health care resources have intensified recently. In an accessible style, this book tackles this challenge by exploring the latest thinking and practice on priority setting methods.

This highly topical book explores the conflicting demands on social workers as they record information on case files, and will stimulate a debate on how to achieve more effective recording in social work.

This book examines how religion and related beliefs have varied impacts on the needs and perceptions of practitioners, service users, and the support networks available to them.

Research Ethics in the Real World highlights the links between research ethics and individual, social, professional, institutional, and political ethics. Helen Kara considers all stages of the research process and provides guidance for quantitative, qualitative, and mixed-methods researchers about how to act ethically throughout.

This brilliant book is a great guide for students undertaking their first piece of independent research. Regular critical reflection is an invaluable tool for helping you gain new insights, deal with practical issues as they arise and develop your understanding. This book gets you started in the habit of using a research journal.

This highly practical book, written by experienced practitioners and academics, is a core text about the practice of residential childcare, where workers and children share a common lifespace.

Combining re-examination of theory with practical tools and approaches, Chanan and Miller provide a new framework for local involvement strategy.

This book provides busy practitioners with a ready reference for the day-to-day problems relating to sex and sexuality that they are likely to face in key areas of engagement, such as promoting sexual health, preventing sexual violence, working with those subjected to sexual abuse, and engaging with the complexities of contemporary sexualities.