This exciting new textbook introduces students to the key aspects of the law and legal frameworks essential for social work practice in Australia. Simple and easy to read, it communicates the complex legal concepts in practice in ways students can easily understand. With a focus on human rights and ethical conduct, it's both concept based, examining the ways of thinking and understanding law and social work interactions, and topic based, exploring the different specific areas of law which social workers are most likely to come into contact with. This is essential reading for any student taking a unit in Social Work Law. Specific to Australia, it accounts for Australian jurisdictions, and can be easily integrated into the classroom context, with case studies, questions for discussion and links to further resources, including interactive resources and a website to support further learning and provide updates to changes in the law between editions.

Race in the Shadow of Law offers a critical legal analysis of European responses to institutional racism. It draws connections between contemporary legal knowledge practices and colonial systems of thought, arguing that many people of colour experience the law as a part of a racial problem, rather than a solution, to racial injustice. Based on a critical legal ethnography of anti-racism work in Europe, and with an emphasis on the German context, the book positions Black and anti-racist perspectives at the centre, rather than the margins, of critically thinking through the intersection of race and law. Combining this ethnography with comparative legal analysis, discourse analysis and critical race theory, the book develops a critical discussion of the European legal frameworks aimed at regulating racism, and particularly institutional racism, in policy and policing. In linking this critique to the transformative potential of social movements, however, it goes on to examine the strategic and creative possibility of disrupting conventional modes of engaging, and resisting, law.

Currently there is an enduring and changing meaning of social work in a world where new crises are being confronted and new opportunities are arriving in the evolving context of social work and the related disciplines. There is a question on how to manage the transformation of social work both productively and creatively during this global shift. Practitioners and educators can experience a tragic disorientation when confronted by the diversity and depth of these crises endured and can face doubts about their role in social work throughout all these changes and difficult situations. Alternatives to this disorientation, a comfort with uncertainty, and a capability to take risks need to urgently be developed on a professional and personal level for success in the evolving field. Through historical lens and a review of policies and value-based approaches, the recontextualization of social work can be explored. Practical and Political Approaches to Recontextualizing Social Work explores practical and political ways in which social work practice has been reconstructed. Chapters identify this recontextualization of social work and how it is changing, adapting, and transforming the profession along with providing the potential implications for the profession. This book grants insight on the reconstruction of social work on the personal and interpersonal level (“case” work) and also on those intending to impact social work on the local/global environment level in all dimensions: politically, economically, socially, and ecologically. In addition, the book includes a shift from the present short-term and micro/personal view to a future and much broader and encompassing perspective and practice vision. This book is essential for social workers, practitioners, policymakers, government officials, researchers, academicians, and students who want to learn more about the recontextualizing of modern social work in a shifting global environment.

This book provides an up-to-date, accessible introduction to the relationship between families, prisons and penal policies in the United Kingdom. It explores current debates in relation to prisoners and their families, and introduces the reader to relevant theoretical approaches. Interdisciplinary in nature, the book incorporates perspectives drawn from criminology, sociology, social work and law. The book includes: a current exploration of key aspects of the consequences of imprisonment for prisoners and their families an assessment of the role of current prison policies and practices in promoting and maintaining family relationships a summary of the current law in relation to prisoners and their families, with reference to the relevant legislation and recent case law.

In this provocative examination of the fall of the profession of social work from its original mission to aid and serve the underprivileged, Harry Specht and Mark Courtney show how America's excessive trust in individualistic solutions to social problems have led to the abandonment of the poor in this country. A large proportion of all certified social workers today have left the social services to enter private practice, thereby turning to the middle class -- those who can afford psychotherapy -- and away from the poor. As Specht and Courtney persuasively demonstrate, if social work continues to drift in this direction there is good reason to expect that the profession will be entirely engulfed by psychotherapy within the next twenty years, leaving a huge gap in the provision of social services traditionally filled by social workers. The authors examine the waste of public funds this trend occasions, as social workers educated with public money abandon community service in increasing numbers.

Equips students with a critical perspective and develops their understanding of social work practice.