The Value Base of Social Work and Social Care

"This book takes careful steps to ensure that readers really do engage with its eleven main themes ... all the contributors bring high levels of experience and expertise to their chapters, together with important international perspectives. Barnard sets the scene in an opening chapter, exploring the historical context of values, ethics and professionalization. Written in a clear accessible style, it provides one of the best succinct overviews that can be recommended to any student or practitioner beginning their study of this key theme ... This handbook deserves a wide readership and, if used sensitively, will play an important role in developing good values-based practice in social work and social care."
British Journal of Social Work

Featuring contributions from key commentators including Lena Dominelli, Sarah Banks, Peter Beresford, Michael Flood and George Ritzer, this diverse text explores an array of concepts and themes that are vital to our understanding of the value base in social work.

Each chapter contains a range of exercises and activities that are intended to encourage students to take a creative and active learning approach to defining and understanding values. Among the key themes examined in the book are the tensions between values such as social justice, anti-oppressive practice, compassion, empathy and the contemporary preoccupation with cost codes, performance management, the obsessive cult of managerialism and the allure from those with power in public life for the emerging 'free market'.

Also included are chapters on:

• anti-oppressive practice
• service user values
• anti-social care
• violence prevention
• valuing equality

The Value Base of Social Work and Social Care is a key text for students undertaking the qualifying social work degree, and for those studying youth work, youth justice, education welfare, probation, health care, counselling and community work. Due to the range of contributors and the current emphasis placed on interprofessional working, it is also relevant to an international audience of practitioners and professionals within the field of social care.

Adam Barnard is Senior Lecturer at Nottingham Trent University, UK, acting as Programme Leader for the Human Services degree and specialising in philosophical perspectives, ethics and values.

Nigel Horner is Deputy Head of School of Health and Social Care at the University of Lincoln, with particular interests in fictional literature and social work, the history of child welfare and the value of social work theory.

Jim Wild developed the ideas behind the values events of 2006 and 2008. He is course leader for the Diploma in Applied Studies in Men and Masculinities at Nottingham Trent University, UK.