This wide-ranging collection of essays offers valuable insights into the cultural issues involved in the practical application of social work theories. Leading contributors explore the challenges faced by indigenous populations and ethnic minority groups, examining how they can gain control over their position as minority populations, and offering valuable guidance on cross-cultural work. The direct implementation of four established theoretical approaches - ecological systems, community development, strengths-based approaches and attachment theories - is shown in a variety of contexts, including mental health care, trauma counselling and child protection. Using community development work in Australia and New Zealand as a case study, the contributors also advocate using these approaches in work with migrants and refugees. Social Work Theories in Action recognizes the importance of drawing on the strengths of families, individuals and communities and offers theoretical perspectives that can be applied in everyday work situations. It is essential reading for social and community workers, mental health professionals and social work students.

Contextual Coaching represents a coaching methodology whereby the Coach adapts the style of the coaching conversation to the Performance Level of the Coachee in order to improve learning, motivation, and ultimately business results. It is a dynamic interactive process that integrates core coaching skills, the Coachee's level of ability in a certain task or context, and different styles of coaching conversation, as described by the Berens' Interaction Styles framework. The audience for this approach is internal managers, mentors and external coaches.

This comprehensive and much-needed resource is for professionals and students in social care, who are required to engage with the spiritual dimension of their therapeutic work with clients. The authors, who include social workers, mental health professionals, religious professionals and academics, show how they have developed ways of applying their own and their clients' spirituality in their practice. They describe their work in an international range of human service contexts including: * working with grief and loss * community development work * working across cultures * social justice work * social work teaching and learning. The client groups they cover include children, older people, individuals with learning disabilities, and ethnic minority and indigenous groups. Drawing on theological and philosophical ideas from different cultures, this much-needed resource gives guidance on and examples of practice that together enable the reader to explore and develop the role of spiritual awareness in their work. It is an essential resource for all those training or practising in social work, mental health, pastoral care and counselling.