With communication and relationships at the core of social work, this book reveals the way it is foremost a practice that becomes reality in dialogue, illuminating some of the profession’s key dilemmas. Applied discourse studies illustrate the importance of talk and interaction in the construction of everyday and institutional life. This book provides a detailed review and illustration of the contribution of discourse approaches and studies on professional interaction to social work. Concentrating on how social workers carry out their work in everyday organisational encounters with service users and colleagues, each chapter uses case studies analysing real-life social work interactions to explore a concept that has relevance both in discursive studies and in social work. The book thus demonstrates what detailed discursive studies on interaction can add to professional social work theories and discussions. Chapters on categorization, accountability, boundary work, narrative, advice-giving, resistance, delicacy and reported speech, review the literature and discuss how the concept has been developed and how it can be applied to social work. The book encourages professional reflection and the development of rigorous research methods, making it particularly appropriate for postgraduate and post-qualifying study in social work where participants are encouraged to examine their own professional practice. It is also essential reading for social work academics and researchers interested in language, communication and relationship-based work and in the study of professional practices more generally.

In the helping professions, codes of ethics and decision-making models have been the primary vehicles for determining what constitutes ethical practice. These strategies are insufficient since they assume that shared meanings exist and that the contradictory universal principles of codes can be reconciled. Also, these tools do not emphasize the significance of context for ethical practice. This book takes a new critical theoretical approach, which involves exploring how social workers construct what is ’ethical’ in their work, especially when they are positioned at the intersection of multiple paradoxes, including that of two opposing responsibilities in society: namely, to care for others but also to prevent others from harm. The book is built on narratives from actual front-line workers and therefore is more applicable and grounded for practitioners and students, offering many suggestions for sound practice. It illustrates that an understanding of ethics differs from worker to worker and is heavily influenced by context, workers’ values, and what they take up as the primary discourses that frame their perceptions of the profession. While recognizing the oppressive potential of social work, the book is rooted in a perspective that ethical practice can contribute to a more socially just society.