This book draws upon the author's first-hand clinical experience as an Expert Witness in child and family legal proceedings to explore the success of psychotherapy assessments and interventions. Focusing on families who are seeking to be re-united after the removal of their children into foster care, Mike Davies discusses critical aspects of therapy which can help to identify and engage those who will benefit from additional support. Chapters combine heuristic, case studies, and narrative research methodologies, considering parents' stories, self-identity issues and assessment criteria, to uncover an emerging framework that illuminates an innovative therapeutic approach. Divided into three parts, the book develops a comprehensive overview of and thorough investigation into therapeutic assessment during childcare legal proceedings, including explorations into crucial issues such as how and why some families are granted therapeutic intervention, as well as the level of understanding and expertise that professionals and local services can provide in these contexts. Therapeutic Assessment and Intervention in Childcare Legal Proceedings will be of key reading for researchers, academics and postgraduate students in the fields of child and adolescent mental health, law, social work and psychotherapy. The book will also be of interest to social workers, expert psychologists, psychotherapists, family therapists, psychiatrists, and those specialising in public law.

This book is a study of contemporary spirituality as it is practiced in the world today, characterized by its secular and inclusive nature, and applied to art and art education. It identifies the issues facing a formal introduction of contemporary spiritual concepts into a secular and multicultural arts educational environment. Lander begins by separating the notion of "the spiritual" from the study of organized religions. She uses examples of art from different cultures in contemporary spiritual systems, making the study a reference book for contemporary spirituality and spirituality in art education, with usable definitions and practical examples suitable for scholars in art and visual studies, art education, and contemporary spirituality.

Scotland has changed, politically and culturally, in recent years, with persistent demands for independence culminating in a referendum in 2014. On this fluid political landscape, social welfare can be co-opted towards a wider 'nation-building' project. As a result, social work in Scotland is increasingly divergent from the rest of the UK. This book offers a comprehensive, critical and timely account of the profession in these changing times, charting its historical development, current practice and future directions. Bringing together a range of academic and practice experts, it considers social work as it is currently but also as it might be. Divided into three parts, the first part sets a context, identifying historical, philosophical, policy and legal influences on current practice. The second part picks up on current themes in policy and practice, addressing key issues of professional identity in an increasingly integrated policy context. The final part contains chapters on current domains of practice, identifying key areas of legislation, policy and practice. Social Work in a Changing Scotland is essential reading for social work students, offering an accessible yet critical overview of the profession. It will also inform current practitioners to understand better the changing contexts within which they practise, while prompting further academic debate about Scottish social work.

Child sexual abuse is a major public policy challenge. Many child protection measures were beginning to reduce its occurrence. However, that progress was impeded by online grooming, the downloading of indecent images of children and even their abuse online in real time. This now places major demands on national and international policing. The book brings together groundbreaking case studies from a wide range of settings. As well as family members and those near the home, offenders can also be found in religious, sporting and childcare settings. This extensive picture is drawn deliberately in order to highlight a split in the academic analysis of child sexual abuse. The mainstream or orthodox view, defended by the author, is that child sexual abuse is an under-reported crime. However, a minority view, presented but criticised, is that it is a moral panic created by public hysteria, child protection experts and campaigning politicians. By the end of the book, this division of academic opinion and its implications for public policy are explored in detail. The book is essential reading for anyone interested in preventing child sexual abuse and the dilemmas of responding to both victims and perpetrators. It will be of particular use to practitioners in social work, the police and in the mental health professions.

The Routledge Companion to Art and Disability explores disability in visual culture to uncover the ways in which bodily and cognitive differences are articulated physically and theoretically, and to demonstrate the ways in which disability is culturally constructed. This companion is organized thematically and includes artists from across historical periods and cultures in order to demonstrate the ways in which disability is historically and culturally contingent. The book engages with questions such as: How are people with disabilities represented in art? How are notions of disability articulated in relation to ideas of normality, hybridity, and anomaly? How do artists use visual culture to affirm or subvert notions of the normative body? Contributors consider the changing role of disability in visual culture, the place of representations in society, and the ways in which disability studies engages with and critiques intersectional notions of gender, race, ethnicity, class, and sexuality. This book will be particularly useful for scholars in art history, disability studies, visual culture, and museum studies.

Whilst the body has recently assumed greater sociological significance, there has been less engagement in social work and social care on the bodily experience of health, illness and disease. This innovative volume redresses the balance by exploring chronic illness and social work, through the specific lens of autoimmunity, engaging in wider debates around vulnerability, resistance and the lived experience of ongoing ill-health. Moving beyond existing conceptualisations of vulnerability as an issue of mental distress, ageing, child protection and poverty, Price and Walker demonstrate the role that society has to play in actively engaging the physical body, rather than working around and through it. The book focuses on auto-immune conditions such as lupus, multiple sclerosis, rheumatoid arthritis and scleroderma. Conditions like these allow for an exploration of the materiality of illness which exacerbates social and economic vulnerability and may precipitate personal and social crises, requiring a variety of interventions and support. The risks and challenges associated with chronic illness include disruptions to a sense of self and identity, altered relationships and the renegotiation of roles and responsibilities in a variety of relationships in addition to an economic impact, with the potential for disruption to employment status and financial insecurity. This text opens up a range of debates around some of the central concerns of the social work profession, including vulnerability, ill-health, and independence. It will be of interest to scholars and students of social work, nursing, disability studies, medicine and the social sciences.

This international and interdisciplinary collection argues for the use of clinical-based practices and research in social work, bringing together critical psychoanalytic ideas into social work practice to help tackle contemporary issues. With a Foreword written by Stephen Webb, this book brings together specialists from the main areas of research and clinical practices in social work, ranging from psychoanalysis, sociology, clinical psychology, ethnopsychiatry and philosophy. Arguing for a movement away from evidence-based practice, chapters discuss the need for psychoanalytic thought in contemporary social work knowledge, how this can be integrated in social work practice and training, the challenges faced by training and practicing social workers and the ethical issues relating to clinical-based practice. Filled with case studies throughout, these diverse and rich contributions will make social workers think deeply about advocacy, ethics and the systemic changes needed in the field. This book will be invaluable reading to training and practicing clinical social workers and mental health professionals interested in social intervention. It will also be interesting to psychoanalysts as well as those studying sociology, clinical psychology and philosophy.

This book examines the prevalence of emotional and behavioral problems in youth and the implications of little or low-quality mental health services available for them. It describes aspects of Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports (PBIS) and school mental health (SMH) that work together to form a comprehensive service delivery model called the Interconnected Systems Framework (ISF). The term school behavioral health (SBH) is used to describe SMH and PBIS working together, as in the ISF. The book examines perspectives of key stakeholders through a series of research forums, during which participants identified critical themes for the advancement of SBH in South Carolina and the southeast region of the United States. Chapters address key themes of school behavioral health from these forums, such as collaboration, schoolwide approaches, quality of services, and support for specific populations, including military families and youth involved in the juvenile justice and child welfare systems. The book addresses barriers to providing behavioral health services at school as well as recommendations from key stakeholders for advancing SBH along these critical dimensions. This volume is a must-have resource for researchers, professors, and graduate students as well as practitioners, clinicians, and therapists across such interrelated disciplines as clinical child and school psychology, educational policy and politics, social work, public health, school counseling, family studies, juvenile justice, child and adolescent psychiatry, and child welfare and well-being services.

Evaluation is an essential element of professional practice. However, there is little in the literature that is designed to help students involve and support young people in evaluating the impact of youth work activities. This comprehensive book explores current thinking about evaluation in the context of youth work and community work and offers both theoretical understanding and practical guidance for students, practitioners, organisational leaders and commissioners. Part 1 provides underpinning knowledge of the origins, purpose and functions of evaluation. It charts the developments in evaluation thinking over the past 50 years, and includes an exploration of 'theory of change'. Concepts such as impact, impact measurement and shared measurement are critically examined to illustrate the political nature of evaluation. Findings from empirical research are used to illuminate the challenges of applying a quasi-experimental paradigm of evaluation of youth and community work. Part 2 introduces the reader to participatory evaluation and presents an overview of the histories, rationale and underpinning principles. Empowerment evaluation, collaborative evaluation and democratic evaluation are examined in detail, including practice examples. Transformative Evaluation, an approach specifically designed for youth and community work, is presented. Part 3 focuses on the 'doing' of participatory evaluation and offers guidance to those new to participatory evaluation in youth and community work and a helpful check for those already engaging. It provides valuable information on planning, methods, data and data analysis and processes for sharing knowledge. This essential text will enable the reader to reconstruct evaluation as a tool for learning as well as a tool for judging value. It provides a comprehensive reference, drawing on a wide range of literature and practice examples to support those involved in youth and community work to develop and implement participatory approaches to evaluating and communicating the meaning and value of youth and community work to a wider audience.

The Liminal Worker examines the experience of work, employment, employment insecurity and precariousness in a context of high unemployment and welfare state crisis in modern Greece. A theoretically-informed, anthropological exploration of the notion of work in contemporary western society and its relation to processes of political decision making, this book challenges the mainstream conception of work as an economic or purely productive activity, presenting a comparative analysis of work as a social phenomenon. Drawing on original empirical research, it explores the key themes of the transformation, experience, meaning and narrative of work and its relation to attendant social policies. A unique examination of the complicated experience of work and labour relations within power systems, institutions and organisations, as well as the reactions and survival strategies of ordinary actors facing precariousness in their daily existence, The Liminal Worker elaborates upon the notion of the anthropology of work and investigates the connection between ethnographic data (and its critical analysis) and the formation of policy. As such, it will be of interest to anthropologists, sociologists, policy makers and geographers concerned with questions of work, labour relations and policy formation.

The social position of learning disabled people has shifted rapidly over the last 20 years, from long-stay institutions, first into community homes and day centres, and now to a currently emerging goal of "ordinary lives" for individuals using person-centred support and personal budgets. These approaches promise to replace a century and a half of "scientific" pathological models based on expert assessment, and of the accompanying segregated social administration which determined how and where people led their lives, and who they were. This innovative volume explains how concepts of learning disability, intellectual disability and autism first came about, describes their more recent evolution in the formal disciplines of psychology, and shows the direct relevance of this historical knowledge to present and future policy, practice and research. Goodey argues that learning disability is not a historically stable category and different people are considered "learning disabled" as it changes over time. Using psychological and anthropological theory, he identifies the deeper lying pathology as "inclusion phobia", in which the tendency of human societies to establish an in-group and to assign out-groups reaches an extreme point. Thus the disability we call "intellectual" is a concept essential only to an era in which to be human is essentially to be deemed intelligent, autonomous and capable of rational choice. Interweaving the author's historical scholarship with his practice-based experience in the field, Learning Disability and Inclusion Phobia challenges myths about the past as well as about present-day concepts, exposing both the historical continuities and the radical discontinuities in thinking about learning disability.

This edited collection examines the intersections between career guidance, social justice and neo-liberalism. Contributors offer an original and global discussion of the role of career guidance in the struggle for social justice and evaluate the field from a diverse range of theoretical positions. Through a series of chapters that positions career guidance within a neoliberal context and presents theories to inform an emancipatory direction for the field, this book raises questions, offers resources and provides some glimpses of an alternative future for work. Drawing on education, sociology, and political science, this book addresses the theoretical basis of career guidance's involvement in social justice as well as the methodological consequences in relation to career guidance research.

This book is designed to enable practitioners to help children whose emotional wellbeing is being adversely affected by troubled parents. These are children who live with the burden of having to navigate their parent's troubled emotional states, often leaving them with a mass of painful feelings about a chaotic and disturbing world. They can feel alarmed by their parent rather than experiencing them as 'home', and a place of safety and solace. The author explores the fact that when parents are preoccupied with their own troubles, they are often unable to effectively address their child's core relational needs, e.g. soothing, validating, attunement, co-adventure, interactive play. As a result, children are left self-helping, which all too often means drugs, drink, self-harm, depression, anxiety, eating disorders or problems with anger in the teenage years. This guidebook offers readers a wealth of vital theory and effective interventions for working with these children and, specifically, the key feelings such children need help with. Particular focus is given to the effects on children of: family breakdown, separation and divorce, witnessing parents fighting, and parents who suffer from depression or anxiety, mental or physical ill-health, alcohol or drug addiction. Readers will learn: the complexity of children's feelings about their troubled parents how to enable children to address their unspoken hurt, fear, grief, rage, and resentment about their troubled parent in order to move forward in their lives how to empower children to find their voice when they have been left in the role of impotent bystander effective parent-child intervention when parental troubles are adversely affecting the child and how to help a parent and child 'find' each other again.

From the social cleansing of cities through to indigenous land struggles at the frontline of extraction megaprojects, planetary urbanisation is a contested process that is radically shaping social life and the sustainability of human civilisation. In this pioneering intervention, it is maintained that this turbulent planetary process is also a potent space for state-corporate criminality. Market manipulation, fraud, corruption, violence and human rights abuses have become critical spokes in the way space is being transformed to benefit speculative interests. This book not only offers investigative data that documents in detail the intricate ways state and corporate actors collude to profit from the built environment; it also establishes the tools for building a research agenda that can interrogate the crimes of urbanisation on a comparative, longitudinal basis. The author sets out an investigative methodology which can be appropriated to conduct probing research into the hidden schemas and forms of collusion that buttress state-corporate criminality in the urban sphere. Coupled to this, a theoretical framework is developed for thinking about the networks, processes and mechanisms at the heart of property market manipulation, and the broader social relationships that sustain and reward illicit speculative activity. This book concludes that researchers and civil society have a critical role to play in challenging a historical form of planetary urbanisation, marked by endemic state-corporate criminality, that poses significant threats to the sustainability of lived communities and the rich biospheres that they depend upon. This book will be of interest to criminologists, sociologists, human geographers, political scientists and those engaged with development studies, as well as civil society organisations and urban researchers.

Existentialism and Social Work provides a clearly-expressed and well-argued exposition of Sartrean existentialism as a theory base for social work practice. It introduces the key concepts and themes of the philosophy and relates them to social welfare theory and practice. Existentialism is a valuable means of making sense of many of the complexities, contradictions and dilemmas which social work staff encounter. The book explores the relationship between theory and practice and examines how existentialism can help to bridge the gap. A number of theoretical perspectives are evaluated from an existentialist perspective and links are drawn between Sartre's philosophy and aspects of commonly used theories and methods. But this is not simply a theoretical analysis. Neil Thompson also explores the use of existentialism as a guide to day-to-day practice and draws up a set of Principles for Practice . The ultimate aim is to present existentialism as a concrete philosophy of praxis.

Social justice is a concept which is widely touted and lauded as desirable, yet its meaning may differ depending on whether its focus is on the underlying values of social justice, the more specific objectives these entail, or the actual practices or policies which aim to achieve social justice. In the current global political context, we need to re-examine what we mean by social justice, and demonstrate that "making a difference" and contributing to human flourishing is more achievable than this context would suggest. The book aims to increase our sense of being able to enact social justice, by showcasing different ways of contributing to social justice, and "making a difference" in different settings and different ways. Part 1 introduces a fluid and contextual approach to social justice. Part 2 examines social justice and faith perspectives, such as Christianity, Judaism, Islam and community organisations. Part 3 illustrates perspectives on children, the family, sport and local government. Part IV provides perspectives of social justice in education. Considering concepts of citizenship and social justice from a variety of contemporary perspectives, Everyday Social Justice and Citizenship should be considered essential reading for academics and students from a range of social scientific disciplines with an interest in social justice, as well as those working in education, community work, youth work and chaplaincy.

Being socially competent is essential in late modern society. We expect people to find their own accommodation, partner, job, community and lifestyle and struggle to find answers for those who are not able or do not have the opportunity to achieve these things. By placing social complexity, social vulnerability and social efficacy within a framework of social policy and social practice, Complexity and Social Work argues that growing social complexity excludes more and more citizens from social participation. The book starts with exploring complexity, super-diversity, vulnerability and social efficacy. From there the book deals with the discourses of social policy, social work and social work research, pledging for social policy aiming at desired outcomes, for generic contextual social work, and for a research practice that recognises practical wisdom. Aimed at final year undergraduates, postgraduates, professionals, trainers and lecturers involved in social work, social policy, social care, mental health and allied fields who are committed to treating socially vulnerable people with respect and acceptance, this book, the first of its kind, offers new perspectives on social complexity for practice, theory and research in human services.

This unique volume is a case study of a successful and innovative program using case aide volunteers to deinstitutionalize mental patients. It will serve as an important reference for professionals, teachers, and administrators who are involved in the "business" of human services and require concrete information on how to develop effective volunteer programs to bridge the widening gap between services and needs. The authors use their particular program as an empirical blueprint for principles undergirding the successful use of volunteers as extensions of professional social service staff. The case-aide handbook appended to the volume provides a "quick prescription" formula for how this volunteer program was made viable and how these techniques can be adapted to other programs. In the new and enlarged edition of The New Volunteerism, the authors tell about "whatever happened to..." the case aides in their program, based on the responses to a questionnaire they designed and mailed to 100 of these men and women. Models for Volunteer/Professional Partnerships are defined and illustrated with creative and innovative volunteer programs reviewed by Feinstein and Cavanaugh. These programs serve many different populations, including: alcoholics, the elderly, the mentally ill, the retarded, abusive parents, and the terminally ill.

The first philosophical exploration of undercover policing Undercover policing has received a lot of attention in the media and is surrounded by controversy and confusion Clarifies many of the key moral dilemmas at the hear of undercover policing

First published in 1998, this study investigates the effectiveness of services for helping women who are survivors of domestic violence. Looking at a sample from Western and Central Oregon, it examines the utilization and perceived effectiveness of resources for survivors and, in doing so, it systematically assesses the efficacy of community and professional services. This book will be of particular interest to social work students and practitioners, but will also be helpful to those studying healthcare and law.

Diversion in youth justice is a subject of enduring interest. It concerns the processes by which decisions are made about whether or not to prosecute young offenders, and this book explores the continuing debates and historical developments which shape these processes. The treatment of young offenders is a contentious subject, and this book provides a comprehensive review of out of court decision-making in the context of wider arguments about how we should deal with the crimes of the young. This book follows a broadly historical structure, exploring the development of ideas and approaches to agency decision-making at the point of prosecution. This leads to the identification of a number of distinctive 'models' of diversion, reflecting both specific periods of time and particular philosophies of intervention with young people in trouble with the law. Based on this classification, this book explores the implications for wider debates about childhood, crime and punishment and how these relate to theories of social control. This, in turn, leads to the conclusion that diversionary ideas and practices act as a kind of barometer for wider developments in the governance of youth. This is one of the very few books that focuses exclusively on diversion as a feature of youth justice, and it provides a range of original and contemporary insights into this subject area which remains of considerable interest in this field, both academically and in practice. The ideas outlined here will contribute to new thinking in youth criminology, as the discipline responds to a prolonged period of apparent liberalisation in the treatment of young offenders which has yet to be fully understood or properly theorised.

Concise, empowering, and inspirational, this introduction to promoting change offers practical knowledge, and features more than 150 guidelines brought to life with down-to-earth, often humorous language. Replete with the wisdom of more than four decades of experience in the field, Mark S. Homan demystifies the community change process by providing nuts-and-bolts rules for success, including eight essential steps for building an organized change effort. Homan's outline for community change is invaluable in any setting, from grassroots organizations to governments or community agencies. Writing in a conversational, informal style, Homan leads readers through the basic things they need to know about themselves, about others, and about the change process itself. As they put these ideas into action, they will identify skills, attitudes, and choices important to their success as a change agent in the community.

The terms 'wellbeing', 'empowerment' and 'agency' are common parlance in policy and practice with children, young people and families (CYPF), yet are often misused or not fully understood. Further, there is a disconnect between these abstract concepts and tangible practice with CYPF. This book bridges the theory-practice divide, offering a clear and definitive guide to concepts and practical ways to develop CYPF wellbeing. It examines the concept of wellbeing and its intrinsic relationship to social justice both theoretically and through case study material, and locates these practices within critical pedagogy. The book highlights a range of practice with CYPF of various ages, in formal and non-formal learning situations, engaged in a range of different programmes including learning, reduction from offending, social action and tackling targeted needs. Each chapter highlights relevant policy, research and practice examples to ensure that the book is relevant to a variety of readers. This book will benefit students and practitioners who work with young people to realise wellbeing and to embed critical pedagogy in their practice. It also provides a frame of reference to critically engage in policy analysis and is essential reading for social workers, teachers, police support officers and anyone working to support CYPF to become empowered.

Social work deals with the heavy end of human difficulties such as cruelty, self-destructiveness, and severe and enduring mental health problems. How do social workers make sense of the emotional difficulties which come with the realities of practice? Understanding our clients is the best way of dealing with complex situations and avoiding burnout and stress. The contributors to this book argue that psychoanalysis provides a theory of development and behaviour capable of formulating a realistic model for understanding emotional difficulties and disturbances in both clients and ourselves. The chapters demonstrate a way of thinking for the practitioner that can be used in all situations. The book examines in detail some of the difficult and disturbing conversations that social workers have with clients of all ages. It provides a psychoanalytic framework for understanding circumstances which may be puzzling, stressful or frightening, and a theory whose value for many social work problems is well underpinned by research evidence. Written by senior practitioners who are all still working in the front line, this book puts complex real life experiences into words, to help the social worker become a more effective practitioner.

Complex Psychological Trauma takes clinicians beyond the standard approaches for treating simple, single-stressor incident PTSD. Here the focus is on the major choice points that establish the relational conditions for growth and change. In these pages, new and experienced clinicians alike will find specific guidance for acting in a relationally healing manner and refreshingly practical, real-life advice on what to say in challenging therapy situations.