Review: Sakhalin Island Anton Chekhov One World Classics, 2007; pp 500; £9.99, pbk ISBN-13: 978—1—84749—003—2
| Author | John Harding |
| Published date | 01 September 2008 |
| Date | 01 September 2008 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/02645505080550030704 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
He underlines the value of CPD with or without qualifications. He also locates this
discussion within a wider framework related to legislation and policy. Inevitably
the examples cited relate solely to the English policy agenda; it would be hard to
do otherwise, but his analysis is acute as illustrated by this observation:
The modernisation agenda (DoH) has set out to protect people from poor
practice, to raise service standards and to make welfare agencies more
accountable. It seeks to improve the commissioning of personalised services and
to transform people’s experiences of provision by strengthening the co-ordination
of professional activity around specific outcomes. However, at its heart there lies a
contradiction. The emphasis on quality is juxtaposed with tolerance of resource
driven work. The stress on co-ordination sits alongside policy proliferation rather
than on harmonisation, whether between health care and adult services, or
between youth justice and children’s services. (Preston-Shoot in Tovey, 2007: 21)
These insights could be applied to any area of social work practice in any country
within the UK.
The Post-Qualifying Handbook for Social Workers provides up-to-date commen-
taries on social work with children and their families, community care, mental
health, learning disability and work with young offenders. Each of these chapters,
whilst inevitably focusing on the English context, offers useful reflections and
evidence to readers across the UK. My one gripe, and it is a small one, is that the
editor could have sought contributions from wider afield.
Tovey and his colleagues are to be congratulated for pulling together a timely,
and much needed, publication.
Raymond Taylor
Senior Research Fellow, Universities of Glasgow and Strathclyde
Sakhalin Island
Anton Chekhov
One World Classics, 2007; pp 500; £9.99, pbk
ISBN-13: 978–1–84749–003–2
The contribution of some great novelists to our under-
standing of prison life, and the sense of alienation and
exile experienced by prisoners, can be illuminating and
insightful. Take, for example, Charles Dickens’ account of
the prisoner’s solitude in the confines of the Eastern Peni-
tentiary in Philadelphia (Dickens, 1842) or Dostoevsky’s
experiences in the labour camp at Omsk that fed his novel, The House of the Dead
(Dostoevsky, 1860). But, possibly, the best sustained observation of a penal colony
and its traumatizing effects on inmates, peasants in exile, and their families, is
Chekhov’s account of his visit to Sakhalin Island, a bleak and oppressive place
Probation Journal
308 55(3)
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