Full Description
The aim of this book is to exemplify the ways in which social work and research develop in 'advanced' welfare states - countries where public spending is relatively high as a proportion of GNP. While such countries have traditionally been associated with Scandinavian countries in particular, and North-Western Europe more generally, there are other countries where the public spend on welfare is relatively high.
The various contributors in this book explore and exemplify ways in which social work and research are distinctive for advanced welfare states. This involves exploring their connection to professional identities, histories and welfare systems; their associations with academic, theoretical and cultural traditions of collaboration between academic and social work practice, and the distinctive links with community, national policy, governmentality and agency, with respect to forms of knowledge, discourses and conception of social problems.
Written by contributors who have experience of living and working in Belgium, Denmark, Ireland, Italy, Singapore and the UK, this book speaks throughout about problems, methods, systems and ideas in language that is readily transferable and transcends national boundaries of thought and social work practice. It will be read and understood by social work students across Europe.
Contents
Introduction. Understanding Social Work in Advanced Welfare States
Section 1: Advanced welfare states: European patterns and trends
1. Diversities and Patterns in Social Work and Research in Advanced Welfare States
2. Social work and research in a Europe of Superdiversity
3. Beyond Flexicurity: The Shift towards Work-First and its Implications for Street-Level Work in the Danish Employment System
4 The impact of Neoliberalism through ideas of productivity - The Case of Child Welfare in Denmark
Section 2: Directions in social work research in advanced welfare states
5. Controversies in social work research - A critical hermeneutic perspective
6. Driving forces in practice research
7. The materiality and materials of social work: on socio-material theories and social work research
8. Institutional Ethnography for people in a vulnerable and oppressed situation.
9. Disagreement as Reparative Critique in the Development of Social Work Practice
Section 3: Directions in social work practice in advanced welfare states
10. Local Community Work as an Incubator - The Role of Governance Technologies in Local Community Work Approaches to Inclusion
11. Proactive, Ambivalent and Defensive Relations between Social Work and Social Policy: The Shaping of Productivity
12. Vulnerable children and young people: An enduring challenge in the Danish welfare state
13. The conception of disability and mental illness in advanced welfare states - A review and a proposal.
14. The body in social pedagogical work
Conclusion
References
