Reviews : The Essential Social Worker: a guide to positive practice MARTIN DAVIES Heinemann/Community Care; £4.95 pb; pp 246
| Author | Gordon Read |
| Published date | 01 September 1981 |
| DOI | 10.1177/026455058102800412 |
| Date | 01 September 1981 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
141
REVIEWS
0
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you
would
like
to
contribute
to
these
Review
pages,
write
to
or
phone
the
Hon
Editor,
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Bar,
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8PJ.
The
Essential
Social
Worker:
a
guide
to
positive
practice
MARTIN
DAVIES
Heinemann/Community
Care;
£4.95
pb;
pp
246.
Because
of
the
author’s
background,
interests
and
selection
of
descriptive
material,
this
textbook
about
practice
in
social
work
has
particular
relevance
to
Probation.
The
key
arguments
are
’cen-
trist’
and
unlikely
to
please
either
the
right
or
the
left.
One
forms
around
the
employee
status
of
social
workers
in
this
country,
whose
obligations
to
the
state,
Davies
asserts,
are
as
legitimate
as
their
obligations
to
the
client.
Another,
and
most
crucial,
is
that-baldly
put-social
work
should
be,
and
in
practice
is,
about
maintenance
and
not
change;
that
the
ethic
of
change
associated
with
virtuosity
has
undermined
the
validity
and
impor-
tance
of
the
fact
that
’for
almost
all
the
clients
of
the
Probation
and
Social
Ser-
vices
it
is day-in
day-out
routine
that
truly
identifies
the
nature
of
social
work’.
Davies
is
fully
aware
of
the
equivocal
and
often
thankless
position
the
social
worker
has
between
the
individual
and
the
state
and
has
an
important
section
on
power
in
relation
to
this.
I
am
less
con-
vinced
by
his
position
on
the
political
aspects
of
maintenance
and
change,
and
would
hold
that
interaction
between
the
agency
worker
and
the
wider
environ-
ment
is
very
direct
as
well
as
complex
so
that
although
political
action
or
’cam-
paigning’
may
not
be
social
work
per
se,
it
is
likely
to
arise
in
some
form
or
another
from
every
stage
of
social
work.
This
is
an
informed
work
written
with
Davies’
usual
freshness
and
lucidity,
cap-
turing
the
dynamic
and
shifting
nature
of
our
responses
to
the
pressures
imposed
on
those
who
live
at
the
margins
of
our
society.
For
that
reason
what
might
appear
as
a
weakness
in
the
text,
the
too
easy
dismissal
of
sociology,
social
admini-
stration
theory
and
psycho-analysis
as
useful
theories
for
practice
may
actually
be
one
of
its
strengths;
forcing
adherents
of
these
theories
to
argue
the
relevance
of
each.
While
practice
may
not
draw
overtly
on
those
disciplines
it
is
in fact
steeped
in
them
as
is
our
whole
society.
They
do
inform
practice
and
the
student
needs
to
understand
how
in
order
to
call
on
them
to
better
effect.
Although
the
book
is
directed
to
stu-
dents,
and
as
a
source
book
on
a
range
of
practice
approaches
it
is
excellent,
it
also
provides
invaluable
bearings
for
others
on
what
social
work
is
now
and
might
become;
that
only
by
recognising
the
limitations
of
our
practice
are
we
likely,
paradoxically,
to
enlarge
its
scope.
Most
of
all
it
seems
to
me
that
this
book
will help
practice
teachers-fieldwork
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