While social work theory tends to emphasise helping individuals and challenging social injustice, the reality of practice is characterised by challenge and conflict. This text offers a new concept of social work that explains the nature of these conflicts and moves beyond them, with an inspiring and practical vision of what social work is and should be. Placing rights at the heart of practice, this introduction to social work will be useful to practitioners and students with a substantive contribution to the theoretical literature that emphasises the role of social work when rights may be in conflict, enabling students and workers to become more confident in dealing with the uncomfortable realities of practice.

Current brain research bears on all of the helping professions. This book informs clinical social workers and social work educators about new findings from research on attachment and neurobiology. Topics include brain structure and organization, brain plasticity, normal and abnormal attachment, early trauma, adolescent mothers, parental depression, child abuse and neglect, and assessment and intervention strategies.

Social work graduate school is only the beginning of your preparation for professional life in the real world as a clinical social worker. Dr. Danna Bodenheimer serves as a mentor or a supportive supervisor as she shares practice wisdom on topics such as thinking clinically, developing a theoretical orientation, considering practice settings, and coping with money issues. She addresses the importance of supervision and how to use it wisely. A frank discussion on the important and rarely-talked-about issue of loving one's client is followed by a practical look at next steps-post-graduate options and finding your life's work in clinical social work. Altogether, Real World Clinical Social Work will serve to empower you as you find your own voice, your own way, and your own professional identity. What People Are Saying Reading Danna Bodenheimer's Real World Clinical Social Work: Find Your Voice and Find Your Way is like spending a weekend in a wonderful candid conversation with many of our favorite theorists! ....In language that is accessible, oftentimes metaphoric, and yet not at all simplistic, this book also introduces us to some of the clinical experiences of clients and therapists through an interweaving of their stories and theories. Just prior to presenting us with a thoughtful array of "post graduate options" for further learning and development, Bodenheimer explores the dimensions and dilemmas associated with still-controversial subjects like clients' transference and clinicians' countertransference, including feelings of love. Whether just entering the world of a master's-prepared social worker or having spent decades as an agency-based or private practitioner, an educator, or an administrator in the social services, spending time with Real World Clinical Social Work is a real gift to yourself and everyone you serve. Darlyne Bailey, Ph.D, ACSW, LISW Dean, Professor, and MSS Program Director Graduate School of Social Work and Social Research, Bryn Mawr College As students graduate from our MSW program, they often express a mix of excitement and anticipation about beginning social work practice. They almost always wonder, "Am I ready to do this work?" Dr. Bodenheimer's book is a wonderful bridge for new graduates as they move from the support of graduate education and agency supervision to independent practitioners. Using years of teaching and astute practice experience, she provides continued education, support, and clinical insight. While grounded solidly in practice theory, Dr. Bodenheimer guides practitioners to find their own practice wisdom and style that is so essential to the social work profession. No doubt, new social workers will find this an accessible, practical primer...and a life raft for embarking on the profession! Anne Marcus Weiss, LSW, MSW Director of Field Education University of Pennsylvania School of Social Policy & Practice Danna Bodenheimer's book is the clinical supervisor you always wanted to have: brilliant yet approachable, professional yet personal, grounded and practical, yet steeped in theory, and challenging you to dig deeper. Jonathan B. Singer, Ph.D., LCSW Associate Professor of Social Work Loyola University Chicago Founder and Host, Social Work Podcast It is nearly impossible to begin a career as a budding clinical social worker without the accompaniment of a variably loud inner voice that says, "You have no idea what you are doing." Dr. Bodenheimer befriends the beginning clinician with this incredibly personable and accessible book and says, "Sure, you do." Dr. Bodenheimer uses herself as a vehicle for connection with the reader, and she speaks directly to that inner voice with compassion, understanding, and guidance. Cara Segal, Ph.D. Smith College School for Social Work, faculty Private Practitioner, Northampton, MA

Social work theory is full of ideas about how to practise. It guides you in what to do as well as how to approach and think about social work goals. In this clear and systematic book covering both general practice concepts and theoretical insights, best-selling author Malcolm Payne shows you how to work with the main theories and practice techniques and pinpoint their strengths and limitations. This book: • Explores the social work process from first to last contact; • Covers all the theories and methods you need to know as a practitioner; • Examines practice techniques and the ideas that inform them; • Includes helpful chapter-by-chapter infographics. This practical guide condenses the practical features of social work theory but doesn’t oversimplify them. Students and practitioners can confidently put their knowledge into action and see how everyday practice implements theoretical ideas. It will be an invaluable resource to students and newly qualified practitioners in social work and in related fields of practice, making connections with both classic and contemporary movements in social work.

A Violent History of Benevolence traces how normative histories of liberalism, progress, and social work enact and obscure systemic violences. Chris Chapman and A.J. Withers explore how normative social work history is structured in such a way that contemporary social workers can know many details about social work's violences, without ever imagining that they may also be complicit in these violences. Framings of social work history actively create present-day political and ethical irresponsibility, even among those who imagine themselves to be anti-oppressive, liberal, or radical. The authors document many histories usually left out of social work discourse, including communities of Black social workers (who, among other things, never removed children from their homes involuntarily), the role of early social workers in advancing eugenics and mass confinement, and the resonant emergence of colonial education, psychiatry, and the penitentiary in the same decade. Ultimately, A Violent History of Benevolence aims to invite contemporary social workers and others to reflect on the complex nature of contemporary social work, and specifically on the present-day structural violences that social work enacts in the name of benevolence.