The Power to Care: Clinical Practice Effectiveness With Overwhelmed Clients

Providing a much-needed analysis of the varying aspects of social work with overwhelmed clients, this in-depth and comprehensive collection of research gives readers insight on what approaches truly make a difference among struggling patients.

Following fifty cases across five different agencies, the authors of The Power to Care have collected information and put together a complete guide to the helpful and problematic methods that social workers use.

Focusing on helping clients of transgenerational poverty with a history of family violence, substance abuse, and truancy, among other hardships, the authors present information on the clients’ problems, intervention approaches used by clinicians, and the positive and negative outcomes of the treatments in order to analyze what is successful and what is harmful when treating overwhelmed clients.

With commentary on the dysfunctional national policies that often reinforce the detrimental conditions of those suffering, The Power to Care includes a variety of examples and cases that illustrate which clinical strategies are most effective in order to help inform educators, clinicians, agency directors, and policy makers.

Elaine Pinderhughes is Professor Emerita and former Chair of the Clinical Program at the Boston College School of Social Work.

June Gary Hopps is the Dean of the Graduate School of Social Work at Boston College.