Donald Collins – författare

An Introduction to Family Social Work celebrates social work's proud history as the first professional group to work with families. The #1 bestselling book on the market for family practice, this book is written for BSW and MSW students who are employed in agencies that do not offer traditional office-based family therapy. Many beginning and community-based social workers are employed in agencies that provide support, teaching, and concrete services to families experiencing a wide spectrum of needs and problems. These services are provided in the community and client's home, not in the office. Such settings include child welfare, women's shelters, family support, mental health, schools, and prisons. An Introduction to Family Social Work provides an overview of initial work with families and multiple generations from a generalist perspective. This book draws from the rich theoretical base of family therapy literature and translates working with families into practical, hands-on, social work practice. It also incorporates a family-in-environment approach, so that social workers can tap into social environmental resources as needed.

Reflecting on Autoethnographic and Phenomenological Experiences: A Caregiver's Journey theorizes the layers of autoethnography. It explores components that may be not only melancholic and empirical, but also emotionally painful. The book searches phenomena in autoethnographic happenings that make them redolent. Through a phenomenological lens of an insider that includes self- and other-hood, marriage, career, fatherhood, suicide, despair, double grief, loss, caregiving, housekeeping, advocating, mind reading, and encouraging, a narrative that illustrates self-reflection on particular experiences is constructed and result in experiential and didactical understandings. Individual, personal, and subjective interpretation of relational happenings are explored. Laid out through positionality are the individual, personal, and subjective interpretations of a season of daily caregiving in the life of a marriage, as well as some introspections revealing meanings of phenomena within the context of particular settings. Reflective journaling and observations of the marital season seek to understand if and how shared experiences transcend multiple contexts and help the reader understand experiences of dementia.