Social Work: Introducing Professional Practice

Patricia Higham

Feb 2006 · SAGE

About this ebook

′Comprehensive and user-friendly. The book is helpfully constructed around a number of key themes, starting with a good attempt to define social work from historical and international perspectives and moving on to address key issues concerning the practice, knowledge, values and skills required from contemporary social work in the UK. I believe social work students, newly qualified and experienced social workers will find ths a valuable resource, especially when one is confronted by challenges in practice′ - Professional Social Work

′Social Work is a good overview that should refresh learner and tutor alike. Pratice assessors may find this book a useful update for their work with students and also a neat refresher. It is a well-written and up-to-date text, with a good sense of where future challenges lie for the social work profession in the UK. Higham is confident enough to voice the profession′s uncertainties as well as mapping the changing organisational landscape that social workers might populate. [This book] is likely to appear on many social work reading lists. [It has] the potential to provide good learning opportunities for post-qualifying as well as pre-qualifying training′ - Health and Social Care in the Community

`The unique aspect of this book which distinguishes it from other competitors is that it is constructed explicitly around the key roles and benchmark statements... this book will offer something new and interesting to the growing field of social work education literature and is likely to be relevant to both students and practitioners in the UK and elsewhere′ - Dr Caroline Skehill, Queens University Belfast

What is the role of social work? What does it mean to be a social worker? What are the changes affecting social work training?

Social Work: Introducing Professional Practice addresses these questions and provides an understanding of the knowledge, values, and skills requirements of professional social work. The author has played a key role in constructing the subject benchmarks for the social work degree and offers a reflective and thoughtful commentary upon training, education and practice. Written in a lively and readable style, the book captures the essence of the changes sweeping through social work and engages the reader in these debates.

Key features of this book include:

- Comprehensive content structured around the guidelines for training and practice

- Bridges the gap between theory and real-life practice

- Student-friendly features such as case-studies, discussion questions, further reading and a glossary

This exciting publication will be a core textbook for trainee social workers as they progress through the qualifying social work degree, or as they begin their practice as newly qualified workers seeking to consolidate their learning.

About the author

Patricia Higham is a registered social worker and an independent social work consultant. She is a non-executive director of an NHS primary care trust and emeritus professor at Nottingham Trent University. She has been appointed Visiting Professor of Social Work at the University of Northampton. She has written Social Work: Introducing Professional Practice (SAGE, 2006).