Professional judgement and decision making are central to social work, both in everyday professional practice and in public perceptions of social work as a profession. This book examines key issues that are relevant today. The chapters cover child protection, mental health, and elder care settings in Europe, Australia and Canada. They discuss organisational and cultural contexts for professional judgement; the role of experience in the development of expertise and professional discretion; understanding variability in decision making; and the role of legal frameworks in decision making. This book will enable practitioners, managers, policy makers, and researchers to appreciate the complexities of professional judgement and decision making in different social work settings and to apply this understanding to their own practice. This book was originally published as a special issue of the Journal of Social Work Practice. The book is linked to sister text Risk in Social Work Practice: Current Issues, which examines key debates around the understanding of risk in contemporary social work practice.

At a time when accountability and the avoidance of risk are increasingly demanded of social workers, the ability to make clear and informed decisions is essential. This book, written for practicing social workers undertaking their ASYE and compulsory CPD, has been designed to help professionals make sound judgments in increasingly complex contexts and under pressure. The focus is on empowering front-line professionals through reflective practice, so that they are able to draw on multiple factors and perspectives and make sound problem-solving judgements. The book begins with the core concepts, client focus, and legal background before moving on to consider the collaborative processes and the nature of individual judgements. It then considers particular dimensions of social work decision making, such as safeguarding, taking risks, assessment and dynamic decision tools and processes. It then concludes by look at the organisational context of decision management, with a focus on supervision, training and effective communication.

At a time when accountability and the avoidance of risk are increasingly demanded of social work practitioners, the ability to make clear and reasoned professional decisions is essential. This welcome new edition provides a supportive framework for making social work judgements and assessments based on a structured and practical approach. Woven through with practice scenarios applicable to the many facets of social work, this text emphasizes the importance of good decision making to high-quality social work practice. Reassuringly clear throughout, this new addition to the BASW Practical Social Work series is core reading for all involved in the field of social work, whether as students, academics, practitioners or managers. New to this Edition: - Provides an accessible discussion and framework for a skill which all students must evidence in orderto qualify for practice - Significantly updated to reflect the growing prominence of user involvement and interprofessional collaboration

Dilemmas and Decision Making in Social Work is a collection of stories to help social workers work with dilemmas, weigh up options and make good decisions. Told in the first person from the point of view of a social worker, each case study begins with the service user’s story and then applies relevant theory. It demonstrates where workers have to think outside their own frames of reference and seek other’s expertise, how they work with barriers to collaboration with other professionals and how to handle disagreements. Where fitting, the emotional impact of the work is highlighted and how social workers deal with this. In summary: Starts with the human story and then considers which theory applies so very accessible to readers Demonstrates thinking in action Packed with succinct examples of real time challenges and how these have been tackled Full of reflective questions valuable to all social workers and supervisors regardless of experience. This book helps students and new workers learn from experience of established workers, firstly to gain insight into practice in areas they have no experience, but primarily to help them understand how decisions are made reflexively in the moment.

As practising social workers, your students will need to be able to make sound judgments in complex contexts and when they are under pressure. This book covers the essential knowledge they will require to understand and develop skills in relation to professional judgement and decision making processes, including: - the use of assessment tools; - engagement in assessment and decision processes; - the context of risk, complexity and uncertainty in practice; - communication and management of risk within social care processes.

The study of ‘risk’ in social work involves complex interplay between human behaviour, emotion, evidence of fact, professional values and organisational systems. This book brings together contributions from key social work researchers and theorists from the UK, USA, New Zealand and Italy, writing with a focus on aspects of risk within social work. It examines key debates concerning risk in contemporary social work practice, including ethical dilemmas, approaches to decision-making and the challenges of ignorance and errors. Contributions range from the perennial challenges of how one uses formal knowledge when assessing risk to emerging risks arising from the counterterrorism agenda. This book will enable practitioners, policy makers and researchers to appreciate the complexities of risk in different settings and apply this understanding to their own practice. This book was originally published as a special issue of the Journal of Social Work Practice.

In Problem Solving, Decision Making, and Professional Judgment, Paul Brest and Linda Hamilton Krieger have written a systematic guide to creative problem solving that prepares students to exercise effective judgment and decision making skills in the complex social environments in which they will work. The book represents a major milestone in the education of lawyers and policymakers, Developed by two leaders in the field, this first book of its type includes material drawn from statistics, decision science, social and cognitive psychology, the "judgment and decision making" (JDM) literature, and behavioral economics. It combines quantitative approaches to empirical analysis and decision making (statistics and decision science) with the psychological literature illustrating the systematic errors of the intuitive decision maker. The book can stand alone as a text or serve as a supplement to a core law or public policy curriculum. Problem Solving, Decision Making, and Professional Judgment: A Guide for Lawyers and Policymakers prepares students and professionals to be creative problem solvers, wise counselors, and effective decision makers. The authors' ultimate goals are to help readers "get it right" in their roles as professionals and citizens, and to arm them against common sources of judgment error.