Textbooks

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.

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 updated edition, written by social policy and welfare experts, shows how the mixed economy of welfare links with the important conceptual and policy debates.

Current community care policies and increasing numbers of older people needing assistance mean that all social workers must be up-to-date in their knowledge, skills and attitudes towards people with dementia and their carers. This book, written by experienced social workers, provides guidance on best practice in a readable and jargon-free style.

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 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.

The book is a much-needed revised and updated edition of Elders and the law (PEPAR Publications, 1993). It describes the legal framework for working with older people following the National Health Service and Community Care Act 1990 and the modernising agenda in health and social care.

This book explores the sociological basis of contemporary society and shows how social workers experience tensions and contradictions in practice.

This book builds upon popular texts addressing anti-discriminatory frameworks but focuses specifically upon black perspectives in social work. It addresses new developments and charts the impact of social changes and new literature shaping social work theory and practice with black and minority individuals, families and communities.

Full of up-to-date case studies, practice examples and points for reflection, this exciting textbook explores theoretical frameworks for working with people with learning difficulties.

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.

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.