Professional Social Work Education and Health Care : Challenges for the Future

Professional Social Work Education and Health Care responds to critical concerns about the educational preparation of social workers within the rapidly changing health care environment. Contributors address issues and questions of importance to educators who are contending with the multiple challenges of rapidly changing institutions, fiscal constraints, and service to populations with complex social health care needs. This coverage provides you with important visions of the future education of leaders in health care social work. The editors of Professional Social Work Education and Health Care present information that looks to the future in order to open the floor for communication among the leaders in health care social work settings. Chapters explain the context of social work practice, exploe current social work practice issues, and look into continuing education and fieldwork. In doing so, they give you valuable information about imprtant issues such as:

• changes in social work department structure and function in challenging economic times
• collaborative efforts and reciprocal relationships in education and training
• emergence of networks that will join forces with hospitals
• preparation for short-term, solution-based social work
• the remaining need for traditional, long-term social work frameworks and values
• the shift in ideology to viewing clients as consumers rather than patients
• modification of curriculum to focus on parenting, health education, adolescent pregnancy prevention, and wellness programs
• emergence of a model for post-master’s education
• field work in community-based health care placements versus inpatient hospital settingsThis book’s model for making education and practice responsive to each other and for responding to the needs for collaboration makes it a valuable resource for social work educators, practitioners, and clinicians in health and mental health; advanced gerontologists in academic and practice agencies; and teachers of policy and research in health concentrations in schools of social work. Professional Social Work Education and Health Care is an excellent ancillary text for advanced undergraduate and graduate courses in social work practice in health and mental health and is a strong addition to reading lists for classes on social work with the aged, social work research in health care, and field work seminars in health and mental health.

Mildred D Mailick, Phyllis Caroff