Social Work and Community Development

This book offers a unique analysis of the challenges facing contemporary social work that considers the multi-faceted threats to the profession. It provides in-depth reflections on the future of social care practice and solutions for students and practitioners.

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.

Bringing 25 years of research and teaching in the sociology of death and dying to this important book, Tony Walter engages critically with key questions around this universal fact.

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.

From Margaret Thatcher’s first government to austerity politics, Ian Cummins traces changing attitudes to imprisonment and the social state. With fresh insights and critical thinking, he demonstrates how increasingly punitive approaches to crime and welfare have shaped the neoliberal economy and created stigma around those living in poverty.

Draws on in-depth research with marginalised young people and the professionals who support them to explore the implications of a ‘vulnerability zeitgeist’, asking how far the rise of vulnerability in welfare and criminal justice processes serves the interests of those who are most disadvantaged.

Based on ethnographic research conducted over a year, this book tells the story of twelve people, each living with illness. Focusing on everyday life, it explores ideas of care, vulnerability and choice. Juxtaposing text with illustrations, the book highlights the intimacies of visual sociology and demonstrates the value of sensuous scholarship.

The NHS and Community Care Act (1990) specifically emphasises the health and social care needs of disabled people from minority ethnic communities, urging local authorities to be culturally sensitive to individual needs. This report examines what a culturally sensitive service looks like from the users' perspective.

Users of social and health care services play an increasingly significant part within systems of local governance. This report examines the strategies user groups adopt to seek their objectives, and explores issues relating to notions of consumerism and citizenship. It should be read by anyone involved in health and social care policy and practice.

Understanding street-level bureaucracy gathers internationally acclaimed scholars to provide a state of the art account of theory and research on modern street-level bureaucracy, filling an important gap in the literature on public policy delivery.

This timely analysis sets out the full impacts of policy reform, austerity and marketisation on our country’s mental health services. Rooted in the experiences of service users and providers, it provides valuable perspectives on our evolving practical and organisational responses to mental distress.

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.