Sensory Awareness and Social Work (Transforming Social Work Practice Series)

Understanding sensory needs is fundamental for social work and care management practice. Social workers are trained to reflect on their own practice, make useful application of theory and promote anti-discriminatory practice at all times. This book will assist students in identifying people who have a sensory need and enable them to have the knowledge, skills and values to address this. Designed specifically to encourage students to build confidence and develop skills essential to best practice, this book is specifically structured to address all aspects of sensory need.

Michelle Evans has 14 years of practice in all areas of sensory need, including Deaf/deafness, visual impairment and Deafblindness. She has a first class honours degree in social work and has worked as a care manager in adult services and a social worker in children′s services. She has a particular interest in methods of social research which contribute to raising sensory awareness in social work/care management. She lectures social work students at London South Bank University and develops and delivers sensory awareness training to practitioners and managers.

Andrew Whittaker, PhD, is Professor of Social Work Research at London South Bank University, England, where he is head of the Risk Resilience and Expert Decision Making (RRED) research group. His research on risk and decision making has ranged from ethnographic to randomised controlled trial research designs. Andrew recently completed a review of professional decision making for a child death inquiry in Queensland, Australia. He is the Convenor of the Decisions, Assessment and Risk Special Interest Group (DARSIG) of the European Social Work Research Association. DARSIG is the main European network for researchers in the field of assessment, risk and decision making in social work, with more than 80 members in over 20 countries. Andrew is Editor of the Journal of Social Work Practice.