Equality and Diversity in Social Work Practice

This book is part of the highly successful Transforming Social Work Practice series and is written specifically to support students on the Social Work Degree. It is full of practical tips, case studies, activities and opportunities for students to critically reflect and explore theory and practice.

Social workers must develop a sensitive, yet informed approach when working with service users from different social and cultural groups. In many aspects of life, including the accessing of human services, people are marginalised due to aspects of their identity, such as age, sexual orientation, faith, gender, ethnicity, social class or disability.

This book helps students develop their understanding of these issues, while illustrating how the social work value base forms a central part of such understanding. Explanatory and analytic accounts of key aspects of diversity and social inequality in the UK are given. These accounts are then put into context with a detailed assessment of current and emerging anti-discriminatory legislation, policy and practice. The authors demonstrate how this thinking can be applied to everyday practice issues, while there are also specific chapters on race, gender and disability, as well as social class, sexual orientation and faith- all of which contain activities to aid critical and reflective thinking.

Chris Gaine is Professor of Applied Social Policy at the University of Chichester. He was formerly a senior teacher in a comprehensive school in Wiltshire and for many years he ran the University of Chichester's MA(Ed) programme. Chris writes extensively on the educational experiences of ethnic minorities outside the larger urban areas-a subject on which he has written three books, edited a further three and co-wrote the DCSF guidelines on countering racist bullying. He has a particular interest in making the complex social arguments about race and difference accessible to young people.
Professor Jonathan Parker is Head of Social Work and Learning Disability at Bournemouth University and, with colleagues, has developed the Centre for Social Work and Social Care Research. He is currently vice-chair of the Joint University Council Social Work Education Committee.
Greta Bradley is a senior lecturer in social work at the University of York. Her academic interests are in community care and workforce studies in social work. Her most recent research is on aspects of sustainable practice in social work. She is a former editor of Practice.