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.

This book helps social workers ensure they maintain the highest professional standards by raising awareness of both the strengths and challenges of the immigrant community. The book first explores the changing demographics of immigrant newcomers and legal classifications of immigrants. It seeks to help social workers better understand the legal meaning of terms such as nonimmigrant, immigrant, Green Card holder, and citizen. Then, the book explores theories of cultural competency and social work practice and describes the intersection of immigration and health, mental health, criminal justice issues, and employment. Issues of particular interest to immigrant communities, such as the exploitation of immigrant workers (and appropriate legal remedies), immigrant access to health services and public benefits, the triple mental health trauma many refugees and asylees face, and the issue of newcomers as victims of crime as well as the immigration consequences of criminal conviction are discussed. The book also deals with family groups, which, although inherently strong, are made vulnerable because of their immigrant status in the United States. It concludes by urging practitioners to expand their strategies and advocate not only for individual clients (at the micro level), but to advocate as well for change at the organizational/agency level (mezzo level), and at the federal, state, and local levels (macro level).

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.

Death and Dying courses in social work; nursing; counseling psychology; and medicine traditionally focused on topics such as the experience of dying; the delivery of health care during the end of life; and the experience of mourning after a death. The book includes neurobiological aspects of development and grieving for the students to understand these aspects of biology if they are to claim a bio-psycho-social-spiritual perspective in the 21st century. It talks about the spiritual development in each life phase and also on the special considerations in risk and resilience to describe aspects of marginalization that may affect development. The book explains the factors that promote resilience; maintaining our strengths-based approach to all of this material. It continues with the identification of maturational losses; incorporating these non-death losses into a section renamed living losses found in each life phase chapter. The book defines the chapters by developmental tasks that are tackled at more or less predictable ages to which the chapters are loosely bound. It reviews research on specific responses to loss situations and discuss intervention strategies supported by practice wisdom and empirical research. The book has ancillary materials available to qualified instructors that include outlines; PowerPoint; and activities for each chapter as well as the readings from the earlier editions. This edition of the book will help each reader feel prepared to help grievers of all ages and types.

This book differs greatly from earlier versions because of two main changes. The first is the adoption of an intersectional approach in working with families. It underlines the importance of an intersectional approach to working with families that, in addition to culture and ethnicity, also considers socioeconomic class, gender, age, religion, immigration status, and sexual orientation as important factors. Additionally, the text expands its direct-practice view with the addition of four new chapters written by psychologists, plus a new chapter on health issues in multicultural families and access to health services. The book is updated with the latest knowledge and research, along with new and revised case vignettes demonstrating culturally competent practice. It provides a new intersectional approach to assessment and treatment and adds the perspectives of psychologists in four completely new chapters. The book includes a new chapter on the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, fifth edition from a multicultural perspective, plus new chapters on health and access to health services and offer the most up-to-date knowledge and research. It provides new and updated case vignettes and reflects changes in the family unit over the last quarter century and how it impacts treatment. The book addresses distinct sociopolitical issues affecting immigrants and undocumented families and focuses on the most important emerging issues of multicultural families. It covers multicultural mental health across the lifespan and encompasses the distinct perspectives of different ethnic and racial groups, and those of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender families. The book also discusses domestic violence and substance abuse in regard to multicultural families and delineates the most effective treatment methods. It examines the culturagram as a useful assessment and treatment planning modality and addresses ethical issues including the National Association of Social Workers code of ethics.

This fourth edition of the book covers basic and advanced concepts related to the delivery of social work services in health care settings. When health care is responsive to those in need, the provision of services must be equitable, safe, timely, efficient, effective, evidence-based, and patient-centered while simultaneously exemplifying best practices for all. As pressure for quality services continues to increase, however, the equitable distribution and availability of affordable health care has changed. This has left many providers and patients alike filled with expectation and speculation as to what constitutes essential health care service delivery. The book advocates a proactive stance for health care social workers and is designed to serve as a practical guide for understanding and addressing the philosophy of practice in our current health care environment. Suggestions are made for achieving ethical time-limited, evidence-based social work practice in these settings. At the end of each chapter, a “Summary and Future Directions” section is provided that will help social workers to understand what can be expected and how to prepare for the practice changes needed in order to remain viable clinical practitioners. The book is designed as a practical guide to help social workers understand the roots of social work practice, stressing the importance of the person-in-environment and person-in-situation while utilizing strength’s perspective employing this information as a foundation for embracing the changes to come. As a skilled professional, the incorporation of evidence-based social work practice will need to serve as the cornerstone of all we do while always taking into account the uniqueness and situation-based strategy needed to help each individual patient/client/consumer.

This book highlights the enormity of the problems of child maltreatment and their relationship to poverty and other social ills. The first chapter introduces the reader to the issues that impact children, such as poverty, lack of education, and myriad other problems of child maltreatment including physical, emotional, and sexual abuse; physical and emotional neglect; as well as parental substance abuse and mental health problems. This is followed by a chapter that presents the private efforts to provide services to abused and neglected children that have transitioned through the years into significantly greater governmental roles. Chapter 3 addresses the fact that the majority of families known to the child welfare system live in poverty, and examines the relationship between poverty and child abuse and neglect, and the increased risk of coming into contact with child protection agencies. While the fourth chapter discusses relationship between the educational system and the child welfare system, the fifth and sixth examine the health issues of families known to child protection agencies, and children in the child welfare system and the juvenile justice system referred to as “crossover” or “dual status” youth. The court system plays a critical role in foster care. Adoption from child welfare agencies typically occurs after foster care placement when it becomes apparent that birth parents will be unable to reunite with their children. It can be extremely traumatic for birth parents to lose their children to the foster care system, and then to adoption.