Constructing Clienthood in Social Work and Human Services

This innovative book explores social work, therapy and counselling as a series of encounters - between clients and human services professionals, social workers, their colleagues and other professionals, and more widely between citizens and the state. Providing a variety of social constructionist perspectives on the idea of the 'client', it presents in-depth discussion of the roles, language and contexts of meetings between social workers and their clients.

International contributors present discussion on categorization, analysing identities and reflexive practice. Drawing data from a variety of sources, including meetings, client files and transcribed dialogues with clients, the book employs methods such as conversation and discourse analysis to propose new insights into what it means to be a client of the human services agency.

Bringing together a rich variety of data, this volume forms an important contribution to major debates on the nature of social work and counselling. As well as innovative approaches to theory and research, the implications for practice in social work and counselling are discussed. Challenging previously-held notions about clienthood, this book is a useful and thought-provoking resource for social workers, counsellors, policy makers, academics, researchers and students and trainers in social work and counselling.

Christopher Hall is Senior Research Fellow at the Centre for Applied Childhood Studies, University of Huddersfield. Kirsi Juhila is Professor of Social Work at the University of Tampere, Finland. Nigel Parton is a Professor in Child Care and Director of the Centre for Applied Childhood Studies, University of Huddersfield, and visiting professor at the University of Tampere. Tarja Pösö is Professor of Social Work at the Department of Social Policy and Social Work, University of Tampere. All the authors have experience in social work practice and teaching and have published widely in the areas of social work, social policy, and social constructionist and discourse approaches to social work.