Social Work Practices

Professor Karen Healy is a social work educator and researcher based at The University of Queensland, Brisbane Australia. She has written five books in the field of social work including works on theory for practice and social work methods and skills. Professor Healy has also written numerous journal articles in a broad range of social work and social policy topics including: professional practice; international comparison of child welfare systems; workforce issues and professional recognition. Professor Healy conducts professional writing workshops with social workers and is involved in research and evaluation of social work practice and social policies.

`Karen Healy has written a very interesting and worthwhile book that explores the relevance and significance of postmodern theory to social work. It provides a well-argued account of recent developments in social work theory… However, it is not simply an account of theory, as considerable effort goes into making links between the theory and its implications for practice. …[I]t offers a sound foundation for exploring issues of theory and practice. A major strength of the book is that it shows that some of the significant flaws in earlier attempts to develop critical approaches to practice should not lead us to assume that radical approaches are necessarily oppressive in themselves, or doomed to failure…It should serve its purpose well in prompting educators, policy-makers and practitioners to begin to take on board the critique of dominant approaches to social work theory and to help us guard against the dangers of dogmatism and orthodoxy′ - European Journal of Social Work `Karen Healey profoundly challenges, in the context of the postmodernity of late capitalism, many of the assumptions upon which the critical tradition in social work has been founded. This is a book which interrogates not only the emancipatory metanarratives of left perspectives from her position within the left, but also questions many of the received ideas about her professional power and identity, and about the kinds of social work practices necessary in order to continue to pursue welfare as an emancipatory project under transformed ideological and material circumstances. This is a most significant contribution to the debates which confront social work, worldwide, at the present time′ - Peter Leonard, McGill University

• Social WorkContemporary ChallengesThe Legacy of Our Past and the Nature of Our PresentFoucault, Feminism and the Politics of EmancipationCritical Social Work Responses to `Post′ TheoriesRethinking Professional Power and IdentityLiberation or RegulationInterrogating the Practices of ChangeReconstructing Critical PracticesConclusions