Health, Welfare and Practice: Reflecting on Roles and Relationships (Published in association with The Open University)

Bringing together key issues in the provision and use of caring services, Health, Welfare, and Practice is an invaluable training resource for health and social work practitioners. Roles and relationships are central themes in this timely volume: their complexity is stressed, as is their relevance to a better understanding of practice. Topics addressed include distinctions between health and welfare occupations, informal helping roles, and different approaches for practitioners to develop sensitivity to diverse experiences and to challenge unfair discriminatory responses, attitudes, and stereotyped assumptions. In addition, Health, Welfare, and Practice offers a unique collection of personal accounts from users and providers of health and social care. "The problem is what to read first. . . . There is meat for the academically-minded alongside telling insights from service users. . . . The emphasis on roles and relationships holds the collection together and frees many of the writers to set aside professional status and use their personal experience to inform the search for better practice." --Health Service Journal "This book has a number of strengths. All of the chapters are brief and well focused. Thus, instructors can assign particular chapters with particular issues in mind. In this way too, many of the chapters stand as excellent vehicles for stimulating class discussion. . . . I think this book has excellent applicability to the education of students of a variety of health and human service occupations." --Disability Studies Quarterly

Ray Woolfe is a Counselling Psychologist in private practice.