Margaret CountsSpriggs's List: Social Work Practice

The starting point for this paper is the view that social work practice is a highly skilled activity and one that calls for an extensive knowledge base and considerable intellectual abilities. However, considerable confusion remains about what constitutes the knowledge base of social work and how this can be applied to the dilemmas regularly encountered in direct work. This article begins with an account of key writing on the subject of knowledge and, drawing on these works, it describes a framework that includes three interweaving features: (i) theoretical knowledge (or theory); (ii) factual knowledge (including research); and (iii) practice/practical/personal knowledge.

First written in response to CSWE mandates in the early 1980s for the incorporation of ethnicity in the social work practice sequence, this book is one of the most well-known and respected books on ethnic-sensitive social work practice, diversity practice, or practice with minorities. Through a generalist perspective in its approach the book includes various ethnicities, various populations -- individuals, families, groups, organizations, and communities-- and various approaches to practice -- empowerment and strengths perspectives, psychosocial perspectives, problem-solving, task-centered and structural approaches. MARKET: Social workers and therapists.

Discussion of child abuse and neglect