Service learning and social work education comprise an exciting, yet underutilized, partnership. This book represents the first comprehensive overview of this active and empowering approach to learning in social work. Both educators and practitioners will discover conceptual and practical guidance for developing productive community-based projects. Often envisioned as located at the midpoint on a continuum from volunteer work to internship, service learning combines the opportunity to serve with the opportunity to learn. It offers community agencies a chance to collaborate with academic colleagues to meet identified community needs, frequently with an explicit social justice dimension. The contributors illustrate how service learning facilitates students' understanding and interacting with community members as partners, not clients. Service learning encourages students to use critical thinking skills to reflect on their work and its implications. This combination of study-action-reflection in conjunction with course content is highly effective. The book explores its subject from several perspectives. The first section serves as a conceptual and theoretical orientation to service learning in social work. The second section offers models that illustrate many ways of implementing service learning across the components of the social work curriculum. The final two parts of the book focus on evaluation and service learning in the broader context of civic engagement.

This volume applies the service-learning pedagogical approach to the social work curriculum. Its aim is to familiarize social work educators and practitioners with the approach's conceptual and theoretical underpinnings, to illustrate how service learning may be implemented in any of the Council on Social Work Education curriculum content areas, and to suggest methods for assessing the outcomes of these experiences. The book's subject matter is relevant to both baccalaureate and master's level social work education.

If you have ever waded through a rambling case summary, a jargon-heavy program description, or a poorly organized training manual, you are aware of how important it is for human service agencies' written materials to be clear and concise. Whether in print or electronic format, most agencies must provide information to a variety of audiences. Ames and FitzGerald have developed a guide to help human service professionals clearly communicate valuable information to board members, funding sources, volunteers, and-perhaps most importantly-clients with limited literacy skills. The book highlights how readers can apply readability guidelines to improve all of the print and electronic materials agencies use to communicate with internal and external audiences. Whether creating a brochure, sending an email, writing a grant, or documenting case records, human service professionals can make their messages clear and understandable by following the guide's simple rules and practical suggestions.