Social Work Assessment and Intervention - Softcover

"Helpful, given the pressure that can be felt by front line workers to consider assessment to be the completion of a form and a fixed task. Intervention can so easily be considered simply as something for which we don't have adequate resources... addresses overarching issues such as rationing of services and thresholds of need which are particularly pertinent in the "Big Society" of today. There is much that is useful in this book." --Rostrum

"Provides philosophical and practice guidance to practice dilemmas with the aid of activities that readers are urged not to skip as their responses will in themselves be a resource to practice... In having to resolve so many conflicts of accountability, social work is almost unique amongst professions." --Professional Social Work

The process of engaging in social work assessment should be therapeutic and perceived of as part of the range of services offered. This view acknowledges that assessment is more than an administrative task, a form of gatekeeping for resources, or a means of determining risk. It confirms the need for assessment and intervention to be conceptualized as part of a continuum of contact between social worker and service user. This essential book, acclaimed in its first edition, offers social workers an extensively revised, restructured, updated, and comprehensive guide to empowering practice for themselves and for the people with whom they work. Using case illustrations, evidence-based guidance, and practical activities combined with extensive references, this valuable learning resource will help students, practitioners, managers, trainers, and policy-makers synthesize their social work knowledge and theory, to provide holistic support and effective services. Based on UK legal regulations, this second edition is geared towards the needs of those in graduate training courses, as well as for a range of in-service training in voluntary or statutory social work and social care. It combines the practice elements of assessment and intervention in a uniquely integrated way, which is consistent with an anti-oppressive practice and the foundational values and skills of modern psycho-social practice.