Values in Social Work

This book will help students who feel that they don't understand politics, or that it is not relevant to them. It will also energise professionals who are struggling to maintain their values within the current context of social work practice and managerialism. I will highly recommend it to my students.' - Dr Mel Hughes, Senior Lecturer in Social Work, Bournemouth University, UK 'I commend this text as an excellent discourse on the developmental pathway that UK SW has navigated for the past 50+ years and its recognition that we have become 'agents of the state'. Whether social work wishes to retain this uncomfortable status is ideologically challenged within an articulate and contemporary discourse.' - Christopher Penney, Senior Lecturer in Social Work, University of Portsmouth, UK.

Principles of social justice lie at the heart of the social work profession. This book examines the current climate of social work practice and the challenges presented by neoliberalism. It puts forward a model for reconnecting with more traditional social justice values and doing the right thing rather than just doing things the right way.