Images are inscribed in the memory more easily than words, and some remain with the viewer for a lifetime. Combining hindsight, insight and foresight, the chapters in this book turn a spotlight onto various aspects of health, social work and socially engaged arts practice. The visual imagination is evoked in this book to help practitioners see beneath the surface of contentious and problematic issues facing human services today. Risk assessment, child sexual abuse, work-life balance, old age, dementia, substance misuse, recovery, sex work, homelessness, isolation, biography, death and dying, grief, loss, vulnerability, care, and the function of the museum as a preserver of memory, all come under the sustained gaze and examination of the contributors. Grounded in the arts and humanities, the visual sense as a gateway to empathy is explored throughout these chapters. References are included to visual art, curating dramatic performance, poetry, film, dance, photography, diary entries, and public exhibitions. In an age when people increasingly compose their lives by staring into various screens, this book celebrates the visual modality that can humanise services with ‘human-seeings’. This book was originally published as a special issue of the Journal of Social Work Practice.

How are we to understand how the dominance of visual images and representations in late modernity affects Social Work practice, research and education? Social workers are increasingly using still and moving images to illustrate their work, to create new knowledge, and to further specific groups’ interests. As a profession in which communication is central, visual practices are becoming ever more significant as they seek to carry out their work with, and for, the marginalised and disenfranchised. It is time for the profession to gain more critical, analytical, and practical knowledge of visual culture and communication, in order to use and create images in accordance with its central principle of social justice. That requires an understanding of them beyond representation. As important as this is, it is also where the profession’s scholarly work in this area has remained and halted, and thus understanding of the work of images in our practices is limited. In order to more fully understand images and their effects – both ideologically and experientially – social workers need to bring to bear other areas of study such as reception studies, visual phenomenology, and the gaze. These other analytical frames enable a consideration not only of images per se, but also of their effect on the viewer, the human spectators, and the subjects at the heart of Social Work. By bringing understandings and experiences in Film, Media, and Communications, Visual Communication for Social Work Practice provides the reader with a wide range of critically analytical frames for practitioners, activists, educators, and researchers as they use and create images. This invites a deeper knowledge and familiarity with the power dimensions of the image, thus aligning with the social justice dimension of Social Work. Examples are provided from cinema, popular media, but more importantly from Social Work practitioners themselves to demonstrate what has already been made possible as they create and use images to further the interpersonal, communal, and justice dimensions of their work. This book will be of interest to scholars, students, and social workers, particularly those with an interest in critical and creative methodologies.

This book is a timely review of scholarship in social work supervision; re-examining the state of knowledge, research and practice; and asking if it is time for a new paradigm for the field. The contributors present a universal paradigm in social work around what we understand social work to be, not only through its practice of supervision but also what this contributes to the challenge of any dominant ideas or ideals about the supervision agenda in an increasingly globalised social work context. Capturing new developments from different regions of the world, the book shows how these can inform critical practice, professional development and well-being, and have a wider impact on accountability, effectiveness and work performance. The book will be appreciated by people needing or using services, novice or learner social workers, and those responsible for training or educating in supervision knowledge and skills or preparing to take up this important role. With applications for both academic research and practitioner-based learning, this book will help to ensure the best quality and supportive practice within the workforce and community it serves. This book was originally published as a special issue of the European Journal of Social Work.

Creative research methods for data generation have expanded over recent decades and researchers are eager to take a creative approach to data analysis. It is challenging to bring creativity into data analysis while retaining a systematic, rigorous and ethical approach. Written by experts in the field, this handbook addresses these challenges. The chapters adapt analytical techniques in creative ways for novice and expert researchers. Existing and novel methods from analysis of quantitative data to embodied, performative, visual, written, arts-based and collaborative analysis are featured with transferable case examples across disciplines. This collection offers a definitive practical guide to creative data analysis.

Tomiyama Taeko, a Japanese visual artist born in 1921, is changing the way World War II is remembered in Japan, Asia, and the world. Her work deals with complicated moral and emotional issues of empire and war responsibility that cannot be summed up in simple slogans, which makes it compelling for more than just its considerable beauty. Japanese today are still grappling with the effects of World War II, and, largely because of the inconsistent and ambivalent actions of the government, they are widely seen as resistant to accepting responsibility for their nation’s violent actions against others during the decades of colonialism and war. Yet some individuals, such as Tomiyama, have produced nuanced and reflective commentaries on those experiences, and on the difficulty of disentangling herself from the priorities of the nation despite her lifelong political dissent. Tomiyama’s sophisticated visual commentary on Japan’s history—and on the global history in which Asia is embedded—provides a compelling guide through the difficult terrain of modern historical remembrance, in a distinctively Japanese voice.

"This collection of writings on social work and the arts was borne during extraordinary and uncertain times. The 2020 COVID-19 pandemic had brought the world to a standstill - most of us were hunkered down, if lucky, able to work from home yet feeling isolated and collectively lonely; others lost their jobs and yet others were on the frontlines fighting a heretofore unknown yet perniciously contagious disease. At the same time, precipitated by sequential killings of several black men and women at the hands of law enforcement, racial tensions in the U. S. erupted. Fueled by a culture more politically divided than ever, people defied the virus taking to the streets demanding racial equity, justice, and inspiring hope that social change was (is?) possible"--

We live in a visual culture, and visual evidence is increasingly central to social research. In this collection an international range of experts explain how they have used visual methods in their own research, examine their advantages and limitations, and show how they have been used alongside other research techniques. Contributors explore the following ideas: * self and identity * visualizing domestic space * visualizing urban landscapes * visualizing social change. The collection showcases different methods in different contexts through the examination of a variety of topical issues. Methods covered include photo and video diaries, the use of images produced by respondents, the use of images as prompts in interviews and focus groups, documentary photography, photographic inventory and visual ethnography. The result is an exciting and original collection that will be indispensable for any student, academic or researcher interested in the use of visual methods.