The Critical Practitioner in Social Work and Health Care

The Critical Practitioner in Social Work and Health Care takes a comprehensive and reflective look at key areas of practice and the challenges professionals face in training and in their working lives. The chapters focus on the skills and values fundamental to the caring role and helps readers understand the importance of being able to adapt to changing demands and expectations.

Key Features

• Presents a multiprofessional approach, incorporating examples from health, social work, and social care
• Offers an integrated approach to theory and practice
• Inclludes a range of case studies to illustrate key themes and issues
• Provides coverage of core topics such as: ethics, management, supervision, teamwork, interprofessional working, practice with service-users, research, policy issues, accountability
• Strongly supports underpinning knowledge for the National Occupational Standards and subject benchmarks

The book encourages the reader to develop the confidence and analytic skills to achieve best practice across all areas of their work. It will be required reading for all those studying social work, nursing, and allied caring professions. It will also be of great help to practitioners wishing to reflect on and develop their own practice.

This Reader is based on a number of updated chapters from Brechin et al Critical Practice in Health and Social Care also published by SAGE Publications.

Sandy Fraser is a Lecturer in Social Work, Faculty of Health and Social Care at The Open University. He is Chair of the Critical Social Work Practice course. His previous publications include: Doing Research with Children and Young People and The Reality of Research with Children and Young People (both 2004) and co-edited with Vicky Lewis, Sharon Ding, Mary Kellett and Chris Robinson, London: Sage Publications/The Open University.

Sarah Matthews is a Staff Tutor in The Open University regional office in Manchester. She is also a Mental Health Act Commissioner and runs a training and consultancy business. She worked for 20 years as a qualified social worker, latterly as a senior manager.

Sarah Matthews is a qualified, registered social worker. She has worked extensively in Adult Social Services, primarily within mental health, practising as an Approved Social Worker and Senior Manager in an inner city multi-disciplinary setting. Sarah was, for 9 years, an Area Commissioner for the Mental Health Act Commission. Currently, Sarah heads the Social Work Degree programme for the Open University in the North West of England and in Yorkshire. She is undertaking a part time PhD in Social Work at the University of Manchester investigating the role and experiences of the Approved Mental Health Professional.