The role of the social worker is to be found lying interestingly between society and the individuals they work with. As a result, social workers often feel pulled between the demands and challenges that each presents. The Compleat Social Worker explores the many debates the profession enjoys, including those between nature and nurture, care and control, thought and feeling, art and science, facts and values. In examining these ideas and the discussions they sponsor it celebrates social work's rich heritage of scientific thought and human relationships. It is out of these many divisions and disagreements and their resolution that the idea of the well-rounded, compleat social worker emerges.
For those wishing to explore and enjoy, argue and acknowledge what it is to be a good social worker, this elegant book will prompt lively interest and debate.
1. The Individual and Society: Looking Both Ways in Social Work
2. Order and Change: The Purpose of Social Work
3. Care and Control: The Tasks of Social Work
4. Bureaucrats and Professionals: How Social Workers are Organised and Operate
5. Certainty and Uncertainty: How Social Work Decisions are Made
6. Objects and Subjects: People's Inner and Outer Worlds
7. Qualitative and Quantitative: Social Work's Research and Evidence Base
8. Thought and Feeling: How Social Workers can Best Respond
9. Past and Future: What is the Focus of Social Work
10. Nature and Nurture: How to Make Sense of Human Behaviour
11. Art and Science: The Craft of Social Work
12. Good Relationships and Working Well: How to Practice Empathically and Effectively
13. Freedom and Equality: How to Balance Individual Choice and the Collective Good
14. Facts and Values: What is Known and What Ought to be Done
15. On the Whole and Taking Everything into Consideration
16. The Compleat Social Worker.
