The book sets itself an ambitious task in attempting to respond to its key questions, namely: ‘what is social work for’ and ‘who is social work for’? It approaches answering these questions by referring to the constantly ongoing changes that take place in society; and how these changes have an impact both on the way in which social policies inform social work practice and on the way in which social workers enact and ‘make’ social policy through their everyday practises. By referring to ongoing changes in this way, the book shows that social work is very much a subject that is alive, one that adapts, and one that is potentially influenced by several different agents, operating individually and/or collectively.
The book is jam-packed with relevant information. At times, it adopts a critical approach, such as when exploring whether resources are brought together effectively in order to be responsive to the full spectrum of needs of service users, and if not, who is being left out. At times, it adopts a relatively more postmodern stance, such as when it looks into how state intervention can be ‘pictured’ differently by different people, and consequently, how through ‘unpacking’ their own understanding of ‘the state’, can instigate them to reflect on why they tend to subscribe to one understanding of social policy rather than subscribing to another. For instance, the book carefully locates social policy in both a governmental and wider political context, noting how factors such as international bodies, voluntary organisations, and even businesses can influence it. This is in contrast to earlier understandings of social policy, which gave by far more importance to such ‘traditional’ facets as education and health.
The book is divided into three parts, each of which draws on a rich literature that reflects the multidimensional character of the policy and practise dimensions of social work. Each part, and indeed each chapter, follows on from the previous one logically and sequentially. Having said this, each chapter can also be read individually by readers who want to focus on a particular aspect of social work, or who want to know more about a particular aspect of the work that social workers carry out and why they do it. The book offers well researched material in a readily comprehensible manner and, for this reason, certainly deserves a highly merited place on recommended reading lists at colleges and universities, particularly for students who are following courses in social work and/or social policy, or who have a keen interest in these disciplines. The well-structured layout of each chapter also serves to make the book a useful resource for lecturers requiring easily accessible material that they could use when planning and delivering their lectures.
Having said this, I would like to recommend to the author that, in future editions of the book, the second section be divided into two separate sections rather than one. I would suggest that the first of these sections would focus on ‘need’, ‘poverty’ and ‘inequality’. Then, the second section would be focused on the areas of ‘rights’, ‘participation’ and ‘regulation’. I believe that subdividing the book in this way would make it easier for people who would be reading it as an introductory text to follow. Based on my own experience as a lecturer of social work, I suspect that students who are new to social work/social policy may find it easier to associate ‘need’ with ‘financial needs’ (and therefore ‘poverty’) and thereby more likely to come to see ‘poverty’ as one of the manifestations of ‘inequality’. Likewise, I believe that ‘rights’ and ‘participation’ tend to be closely intertwined, and it is practically impossible to imagine effective ‘regulation’ taking place in a society where people have no rights and where participation is non-existent.
The last chapter, on funding and spending, should prove to be of particular interest to those who wish to explore further the complexities of the financial aspect of care provision, and to understand, in greater detail, the particular dilemmas that are faced when deciding which of the different categories of service users gets ‘what, when and how’. It brings to a close a section of a book which is centred on the effective use of personalisation.
Personalisation is, in turn, strongly associated, by the author, with the impetus of modern day social work to ensure that people's needs are responded to with sensitivity and flexibility. Particularly through emphasising the need for integrated service provision, the last part of the book illustrates how, at the heart of the social worker's role is not only an understanding of social policy, and the impact of social policy on people's lives, but also an examination of whether, through the wide medium of social work activity, social policies serve to enhance people's social well-being holistically and, if not, what can be done to change this.
