Review
"This book challenges many of the underlying assumptions of the social work profession and institutional response to need. It addresses the lack of responsiveness to the experiences of Blacks and highlights the tendency of systems of care to provide cookie cutter approaches to expressed need, putting the issue of race front and centre in the provision of goods and services. A must read." --E. Jane Middleton, Chair, Dept of Social Work Education, California State University, Fresno
"Mekada Graham's work is clearly monumental, placing black people's experiences, values and worldviews as the foci for creating innovative methods of social work practice at both the micro and macro levels of intervention. This approach gives social work a wider and deeper arsenal to advance its official agenda of positive human transformation for all." --Professor Jerome Schiele, Morgan State University
"This book is a very welcome update of Bandana Ahmad's classic 1990 text on black perspectives in social work. Race equality is now policy throughout government, but Mekada Graham draws together the evidence on persistent inequalities that affect the daily lives of black and minority ethnic individuals and communities. It is essential reading for a profession committed to social justice and to the continuing struggle for race equality." --Daphne Statham, Independent Consultant, former director of the National Institute for Social Work
Product Description
Over several decades, anti-oppressive practice and anti-discriminatory perspectives have become an integral part of social work. These perspectives emerged during the 1980s in response to the growing awareness of widespread discrimination and inequalities in service provision and delivery. Anti-racist perspectives were subsumed into an anti-discriminatory framework which addressed wider forms of discrimination such as those based on gender, disability and ageing. Major social work texts have developed anti-discriminatory perspectives and anti-oppressive models of practice as an essential component of contemporary social work. This book builds upon popular texts addressing anti-discriminatory frameworks but focuses specifically upon black perspectives in social work and taking into account current issues and concerns. "Black Perspectives in Social Work" was published almost sixteen years ago and there is an urgent need for a new text that addresses new developments and charts the impact of social changes and new literature shaping social work theory and practice with black and minority individuals, families and communities. This book provides a general introductory text to social work with black and minority ethnic communities for students, lecturers, practice teachers/assessors who are engaged in examining anti-discriminatory practice frameworks and black perspectives in academic settings and practice learning. It will support curriculum-based learning through its focus on anti-discriminatory practice in a climate that appears less sympathetic to the multicultural nature of British society.