The Handbook of Social Work and Social Development Practice in Africa

All recent books on international social work mention Africa only briefly and few engage with the broader field of development studies. This book focuses solely on the unique African context engaging with issues relating to social work and development more broadly thus enabling a deeper examination and more complex and nuanced picture to emerge. Unlike most academic works, this book highlights multiple practitioner voices, with authors or co-authors that have recently been or are currently practising social workers. As an edited book, it draws from both academic research as well as lived practice experience, supported by strong theoretical positioning and guidance in introductory chapters, drawing on African literature, wherever possible. Looking at case-studies from Lesotho, Botswana, Kenya, Zimbabwe, Ethiopia, Namibia, Uganda, Nigeria, Kenya, South Africa, Rwanda, Zambia and Tanzania and covering established areas of practice such as child protection; working with older people; working with people with disabilities; mental health; and mainstream services targeting women as well as emerging areas of developmental social work practice, such as humanitarian assistance in post-conflict situations; work with immigrants and refugees; and the training of community-based workers, this book takes a future-oriented perspective that aims to move beyond well-worn critiques to envision constructive and sustainable futures for social work and social development in Africa from a critical perspective.

Mel Gray is Professor and Chair of Social Work at the University of Newcastle, Australia, and previously the University KwaZulu-Natal in Durban, South Africa, where she was born. She edited the first book on Developmental Social Work in South Africa (David Philip 1998) and has long had an interest in the responsive of Western social work to non-Western contexts. She also published Social Work: A beginner’s text (1996), an introduction to the profession for social work students in South Africa.