Best Practice in Social Work: Critical Perspectives

What is social work at its best? Social work has laboured too long under a 'deficit' model that focuses on failings and problems of practice. This ambitious book seeks to redress the balance, with its emphasis on best practice, strengths and collaborative partnership. Each of its 16 chapters provides a detailed account of practice, offering a series of vivid windows onto day-to-day social work at its best, framed by concepts and ideas drawn from critical theory. The resulting text combines theory, illustration, evidence and analysis in a way that promotes reflection on what makes good practice and why. Undergraduate and post-qualifying social work students alike will benefit from the insights offered by this rich, wide-ranging and multi-facetted text.

HARRY FERGUSON is Professor of Social Work at the University of West of England. He previously held the Chair in Social Policy and Social Work at University College Dublin, and has worked at University College Cork and Trinity College, Dublin. He has a PhD from Cambridge and is author of Protecting Children in Time: Child Abuse, Child Protection and the Consequences of Modernity (Palgrave 2004). KAREN JONES is Senior Lecturer in Social Work in the Faculty of Health and Social Care at the University of West of England. Her research interests lie in social work education, social work theory (particularly postmodern theory) and social work with older people. BARRY COOPER is also based in the Faculty of Health and Social Care at the University of West of England.