Social Work Practice

Social Work Practice: a conceptual framework promotes a critical reflexivity of challenging taken-for-granted ideas, assumptions and ways of doing things. Much of the current perceived ideas in social work, and our habits of thinking, relate politics only to government and not to a public way of thinking about and debating issues. Political constructs drawn from two major twentieth century political theorists, Michel Foucault and Hannah Arendt, are presented to question the meaning of the political and to enable a critical engagement with social work practice by promoting a range of political skills, such as making judgments, political storytelling, facilitating dialogue between people, and 'acting in concert' towards agreed shared goals. This book identifies and highlights the specific political dimensions of central social work skills, focusing on: • how our modern day selves and those of others are constituted through power relations • the politics of knowledge and the effects of dominant discourses on social practices • the effects of current technologies and techniques on social work practices • the processes of political storytelling and forming political judgments • revaluing political action. With the aid of detailed case studies, a reference list of key figures in Western philosophy and a glossary of common terms, Social Work Practice: a conceptual framework encourages a revaluation of political action and a framework for reflexivity to facilitate social work students, practitioners and academics to address contemporary challenges in social work practice.