Description:
Bringing together international case studies, this book offers theoretical and empirical insights into the interaction between social work and social policy.
Moving beyond existing studies on policy practice, the book employs the policy cycle as a core analytical frame and focuses on the influence of social work(ers) in the problem definition, agenda setting, policy formulation and implementation of social policy. Twenty-three contributors offer examples of policy making from seven different countries and demonstrate how social work practitioners can become political actors, while also encouraging policy makers to become aware of the potential of social work for the social policy-making process.
Brief description: Michael Lavalette is a Professor in the Department of Social Work, Care and Justice at Liverpool Hope Univeristy. He has published widely on radical social work and contemporary social movements. He is co-editor of Critical and Radical Social Work journal.
Review Quotes: "This is not just a routine collection of academic papers. In much of this material, there is detailed evidence from well-constructed empirical research that policy influence is possible in the daily practice and activism of social workers, and the world would be better for more of it." British Journal of Social Work