Welfare Reform on the Web (January 2011): Social care - overseas
Group work with populations at risk. 3rd ed.
G. L. Greif and P. H. Ephross (editors)
Oxford: OUP, 2011
This book provides practical guidelines for working with vulnerable groups facing such issues as cancer, AIDS, addiction, head injury, divorce, mental illness, and abuse. Each chapter describes the population and reviews the relevant literature, identifies themes and practice principles, presents a case illustration, provides evaluation guidance, and refers readers to key references and web resources. Each one is designed to stand alone for easy reference, and overviews of skill building and evidence-based practice make this a comprehensive resource for group leaders regardless of specialty.
New technologies and emerging spaces of care
M. Schillmeier and M. Domenech (editors)
Farnham: Ashgate, 2010
The book provides the latest practice-oriented qualitative research and innovative conceptual discussions of how health and health care systems are currently dealing with complex transformations and varied reforms. Exploring and analysing the social and cultural impact of new assistive technologies for elderly and disabled people, it examines the manner in which technological innovations configure and reconfigure institutionalized spaces of care. It addresses issues of social control, accountability, surveillance and disciplining; diverging patterns of inclusion and exclusion; new relations and subjectivities of patients and care givers; the relation between private and public forms of care and the practices; and concerns generated by new technologies at the individual as well as the societal level.
Social work in a globalizing world
L. Dominelli
Cambridge: Polity, 2010
This book confronts contemporary challenges facing social workers and addresses many of the forms of human, social and environmental degradation that arise from social problems, such as social work's own uncertain professional status, poverty, structural inequalities, migratory movements and armed conflicts. However, these challenges include newer problems rooted in the interdependent nature of the world. These issues centre on globalization, the worldwide recession that undermined fiscal sustainability in Western countries, environmental pollution, climate change and natural disasters, concerns which present fresh arenas for social worker involvement, and opportunities for innovation in social work theories and paradigms for practice. In exploring the tensions that globalization creates for practice, the author reveals the diverse and heterogeneous nature of social work as a profession even though it has many facets that are shared across borders. In a fluid global context where migratory movements and the internationalization of social problems mean that problems that began in one country have significant implications and require action in another, social workers must support practices that endorse human rights, social justice and citizenship for all of the planet's inhabitants. The book sets an ambitious agenda for social work and calls for international co-operation, alliances and action alongside local ones. Only then can its optimistic message of a viable end to the degradation of human beings and their physical environment be achieved.
Supervision: a force for change? Three stories told
G. Bradley, L. Engelbrecht and S. Hojer
International Social Work, vol.53, 2010, p. 773-790
Drawing on research, the authors describe the role of supervisors in child welfare settings in South Africa, England and Sweden. Exploratory frameworks and models of supervision illustrate how it has been influenced by the principles of New Public Management and the concluding discussion proposes an agenda for change.