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A step-by-step guide to the underpinning theoretical knowledge in social work helping your students to confidently apply theory in practice.
- Exercises will help them get to grips with the essentials and reflect on learning.
- Case studies from eight fictional social workers located in a busy local authority office will allow them to explore a range of different practice experience, theoretical perspectives and approaches to understanding situations and identifying possible courses of action.
- The authors own experiences will show the importance of reflection, supervision and continual learning to help them prepare for the reality of practice.
List of contents
Introduction
Part I Theory: explaining the world and understanding our practice
Chapter 1: Understanding theory in practice
Chapter 2: Foundations of theory in social work
Chapter 3: Economics, politics and the organisational delivery of social work
Chapter 4: Critical and radical theories
Chapter 5: Theories of human development
Chapter 6: Theories of systems and relationships
Chapter 7: Theories of risk and vulnerability
Part II: Practice: using theory in our work with people
Chapter 8: Applying theories in practice
Chapter 9: Children and their families
Chapter 10: Foster and Kinship Care
Chapter 11: Offenders
Chapter 12: Physical Disability
Chapter 13: Mental Distress
Chapter 14: Learning Disabilities and Autism
Chapter 15: Older People
About the author
I have been a social worker since 1992 and chose social work as a profession to challenge inequality and discrimination. I have worked mainly in childcare social work, and from 1995, specifically in fostering and adoption. I have worked in statutory, voluntary and independent social work and have worked in all four countries of the UK. I developed a specialism working with male carers, as well as caring for children on the autism spectrum. Having held a wide range of practice, training, reviewing and management roles, I am also a passionate educator. I am qualified to teach adults and children, have been an NVQ assessor and am a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy. I completed a PhD on foster fathers through Durham University, and joined Northumbria University’s teaching team in 2013. I teach across all social work programmes, focusing particularly on social work assessments and interventions. I supervise PhD students, and I currently am principal investigator on an evaluation of simulation-based learning in social work programmes.
I qualified as a social worker in 2001, and went on to practice in a variety of mental health settings. I became an Approved Social Worker (ASW) and later an Approved Mental Health Professional (AMHP). I developed a specialism in working with people diagnosed with emotionally unstable personality disorder and self-harming and suicidal behaviours. I qualified as a Best Interests Assessor (BIA), and went on to become a local authority Mental Capacity Act lead. From 2013 until its closure, I was a College of Social Work’s accredited Expert Safeguarding Adults Practitioner. I left practice in 2013, to teach and research at Northumbria University. I teach across all qualifying and post qualifying social work programmes, focussing particularly on social work with adults, mental capacity, adult safeguarding and mental health. I am a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy and I am currently completing a PhD, which explores how adult safeguarding is performed with people experiencing dementia.
Summary
A step-by-step guide to the underpinning theoretical knowledge in social work helping your students to confidently apply theory in practice.
Report
"Student performance after implementing Vantage is incredible...this is a really tangible way to see that." Karen Deeming
