The growing public awareness of bias and discrimination and the disproportionate involvement of minority populations, especially based on race, class, and gender, have affected the social work profession with a call to fulfill its long-forgotten mission to respond and advocate for justice reform and health and public safety. Forensic social workers practice far and wide where issues of justice and fairness are found. This book emphasizes on the diversity of populations and settings, social workers would best serve their clients adding a forensic or legal lens to their practice. It targets the important and emerging practice specialization of forensic social work, a practice specialization that speaks to the heart, head, and hands (i.e., knowledge, values, and skills) of social work using a human rights and social justice approach integrated with a forensic lens. The book defines forensic social work to include not only a narrow group of people who are victims or convicted of crimes and subsequently involved in the juvenile justice and criminal justice settings, but broadly all the individuals and families involved with family and social services, education, child welfare, mental health, and behavioral health or other programs, in which they are affected by human rights and social justice issues, or federal and state laws and policies. Practitioners who read this book will learn and apply a human rights legal framework and social justice and empowerment theories to guide multilevel prevention, psychosocial assessments, and interventions with historically underserved individuals, families, and communities, especially using the life course systems power analysis strategy and family televisiting. The book fills a critical gap in the knowledge, values, and skills for human rights and social justice–focused social work education and training.

Social work has a long-standing commitment to healthcare and the recognition of the inextricable link to quality of life and well-being across the lifespan. This book emphasizes the critical importance of health for all members of society and the significant role of social work in the field. It presents essential information about health and social work critical to understanding today’s complex health care systems and policies. The book is intended as a core text for masters of social work (MSW) and advanced bachelor of social work (BSW) courses on health and social work, social work and health care, health and wellness, social work practice in health care, and integrative behavioral health taught in social work, public health, and gerontology. The book is organized into three parts containing 18 chapters. The first chapter describes the role of social work in healthcare. The second chapter discusses ethics and values in healthcare social work. The next three chapters present social determinants of health, intersectionality, and social work assessment. Chapter six discusses health promotion and public health. Chapter seven presents integrated behavioral healthcare. Chapter eight describes substance misuse, abuse, and substance-related disorders. Chapters nine and ten discuss palliative care, end-of-life care, correctional healthcare, and psychosocial care. Chapter 11 describes children and family health. Chapter 12 explores healthcare and work with older adults and their caregivers. Chapters 13 to 15 delve on immigrants and refugee health, health and HIV/AIDS, and LGBTQ health. Chapters 16 and 17 describe healthcare and disability, and healthcare and serving veterans. The final chapter discusses future direction of healthcare and social work.

This book provides an overview of theories for direct social work practice and a framework for integrating the use of theory with central social work principles and values, as well as with the artistic elements of practice. It is intended primarily for graduate-level social work students and practitioners. The book has similarities to other books that provide surveys of clinical theories for social work practice; however, the authors think it has a number of distinctive and useful features. In brief, these features include: (a) grounding direct practice specialization firmly in the generalist perspective of social work practice; (b) documenting the trend toward, and rationale and empirical support for, eclecticism in the broad field of counseling/psychotherapy, and reviewing various approaches to eclecticism; (c) bringing order to, and demystifying theories by differentiating among levels of theory, organizing direct practice theories into like groupings, and providing an overview of the central characteristics of each grouping of theories; (d) providing a critical perspective on the dominant, scientific paradigm of direct practice that centers the use of theory and technique, and putting equal emphasis on the artistic elements of practice; and (e) proposing the problem-solving model as a useful structure for facilitating the integration of the artistic and scientific elements of practice. The contents of all of the chapters in this fourth edition have been revised and updated to reflect developments in theory, practice, and research since the second edition was published. In Part II of the book there is a new chapter on couples theory and intervention, as an additional metatheory for social work practice. In Part III, there are now chapters on trauma informed practice, motivational interviewing, anti-oppressive theory, mindfulness-based practices, eye movement desensitation and reprossessing and dialectical behavior therapy.