Social Work in Health Settings: Practice in Context, Second Edition - Hardcover

Widely used in social work and health care education courses, Social Work in Health Settings is the most comprehensive text of its kind. It introduces social work students to a range of clients and provides an overview of many social work settings and services in the health arena. If you're a practitioner, you'll find the book useful for examining and evaluating your practice. This second edition features 18 new chapters and chapter subjects and rewritten and updated versions of the 14 chapters which were part of the first edition.

As a casebook, Social Work in Health Settings provides you with an excellent opportunity for understanding particular techniques and interventions. You'll find examples from expert practitioners in a variety of health settings and a thorough integration of social work theory and practice that eliminates the need to assign other supplements for undergraduate/graduate sequences in health care. The book will also help you promote discussions of issues that arise when working in particular settings and with certain populations.

Social Work in Health Settings presents a framework called “practice in context,” developed as a tool for teaching and evaluation, that addresses the three dimensions of context thought to have the most direct consequences for the relationship between social worker and client--policy, technology, and organization. The framework is applied to 32 settings (ten more than the first edition!) drawn from services to children and/or families; acute and high-technology care; rehabilitation, long-term intervention and advocacy; mental health care; and care for the frail elderly and hospice care.

Social Work in Health Settings enables you, as a social work professional, to understand the context in which your work with clients occurs, in order to interpret and influence the important dimensions of your client contact. This thought-provoking volume will also encourage educators and students to understand the decisions that affect the helping relationship so that the needs of clients can be evaluated and met properly. In this era of managed care, downsizing, and cost-cutting, the approach in Social Work in Health Settings proves more salient than ever before.