The long awaited new edition of this hugely popular text has been heavily revised to reflect the current needs of students on the first year of their social work degree. With ten new chapters and a wealth of expert contributors, this text looks exclusively and in detail at the topics that matter."

This major text addresses the relevance of sociological concepts to social work practice, arguing that lack of understanding of the ways in which social work fits into society's structures and is informed by its relationship with these can lead to impoverished social work practice. Written from an anti-racist, feminist perspective, it both argues for social workers to engage in empowering forms of practice and provides students, practitioners and educators with a new 'paradigm' to draw on.

Written by leading authorities in the field, this challenging book addresses complex issues of ethnicity and racial discrimination in ways that encourage further debate and analysis. Its main theme is that social work has been and remains, deeply implicated in racist policies and practices that have been locality specific, but that racism is also recognizable across borders as a phenomenon that appears everywhere. At the same time, the book focuses on innovative theories and practice which seek to promote an emancipatory social work which sets itself the goal of eradicating social injustice...