Marion Bogo - Social Work Practice

Social Work Practice, Second Edition

INTEGRATING CONCEPTS, PROCESSES, AND SKILLS

Marion Bogo

COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY PRESS NEW YORK

Columbia University Press

Publishers Since 1893

New York Chichester, West Sussex

cup.columbia.edu

Copyright 2018, 2006 Columbia University Press

All rights reserved

E-ISBN 978-0-231-54655-3

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Bogo, Marion, author.

Title: Social work practice : integrating concepts, processes, and skills / Marion Bogo.

Description: Second edition. | New York : Columbia University Press, [2018] | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2017053787 (print) | LCCN 2017057122 (e-book) | ISBN 9780231186223 (hardcover : alk. paper) | ISBN 9780231186230 (pbk. : alk. paper)

Subjects: LCSH: Social service. | Interviewing in social service.

Classification: LCC HV40 (e-book) | LCC HV40 .B5465 2018 (print) | DDC 361.3/2dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017053787

A Columbia University Press E-book.

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DEDICATED TO LAUREN AVERY

AND

DYLAN CARTER

AS YOU GREW, SO DID THIS BOOK

The impetus for the first edition of this book came from the late John Michel, who was senior executive editor at Columbia University Press. His encouragement, humor, and warmth inspired me to attempt to produce a social work practice book that would integrate theory and practice in a manner that would be useful for students as well as practitioners. Since the first edition, many editors at the Press encouraged me to write a second edition, finally leading to discussions with Stephen Wesley about this endeavor. I thank him for his enthusiasm for this projectit spurred me on to write this second edition.

I am grateful to the many clients I have worked with as a social workerthey stimulated the reflection and analysis that led to further conceptualizing practice theory. The material in this book draws from many studies on social work practice and I thank my coinvestigators such as A.K.T. Tsang for our work on cross-cultural practice, Cheryl Regehr for our work on competence, and Faye Mishna for our work on cyber communication. Many creative and hard-working doctoral studentsmany of whom are now colleagueswere instrumental in carrying out these research studies and contributing invaluable insights for practice. Much appreciation goes to Carmen Logie, Ellen Katz, Michael Woodford, Kenta Asakura, Lea Tufford, Barbara Lee, and Karen Sewell. I have valued and learned from feedback from my academic colleagues Andrea Litvack, Roxanne Power, and Toula Kourgiantakis. The first edition of this book has been used by many teaching teams and students over the years at the Factor-Inwentash Faculty of Social Work. I thank them all for their response to the material, as it has helped me expand on the first edition and develop the current edition.

Social work practice is highly complex. Practitioners are challenged to integrate and apply a wide range of elements and to do so in collaboration with clients. Professional practice involves the synthesis of the knowledge and value base of the profession, helping processes and skills, in a way that is compatible with the social workers personal self. The aim of the first edition of this book was to provide generic theoretical knowledge and information about processes for direct social work practice that social workers could use to build their competence and guide their actions. An attempt was made to synthesize information about traditional and emerging conceptual approaches, practice models, and principles, relevant and supporting empirical work, and skills that are needed to implement and demonstrate effective work with clients.

I was motivated to write a second edition of this book in light of the continuously expanding social work knowledge base and the notion of educating for competence, first articulated in the Educational Policy and Accreditation Standards ( EPAS ) of the Council on Social Work Education (CSWE) in 2008 (CSWE 2008). EPAS 2015 (CSWE 2015) further expanded the notion of competence to include holistic competence, stating, the demonstration of competence is informed by knowledge, values, skills, and cognitive and affective processes that include the social workers critical thinking, affective reactions, and exercise of judgment in regard to unique practice situations (6). This book integrates conceptualizations and findings from the research on competence undertaken with my team that is consistent with this perspective (Bogo et al. 2013; Bogo et al. 2017; Bogo et al. 2004; Bogo et al. 2006).

The person-in-environment and bio-psychosocial perspectives remain dominant in direct practice that aims to integrate attention to diversity in work with clients. These organizing frameworks are used to gain understanding about the human condition, social functioning, and well-being. Increasing theoretical and empirical contributions from basic and social sciences now provide more depth and render these concepts more complex. Indeed, the number of practice models and principles continues to grow. Social work educational programs are committed to exposing students to the professions intellectual debates and to both traditional and innovative approaches. They aim to cover considerable ground, from societal to individual perspectives, and from philosophical positions to empirical findings. As a result, social work students are likely to find a program of study that is crammed with innumerable bodies of knowledge, perspectives, values, and practice approaches. Course reading lists grow and basic practice texts expand with the publication of each new edition as authors incorporate the newest concepts and debates into their work. As more specialized models are described and tested, students are also presented with an ever-expanding range of procedures and specific intervention techniques.

Students clearly state that at the beginning of their studies, they want to learn about a core foundation of interrelated concepts, processes, principles, and skills for practice. Such a core is seen as a place to start, that is, a place that can serve as a foundation throughout ones careera foundation that provides a sense of being grounded as a professional and engenders confidence that one possesses a core of competencies that is available to use in practice. Such a core can be built on and adapted based on the mandate of the agency, the workers role, the specific model procedures, specialized information about populations and problems, and the needs of the particular client in the working relationship with the social worker. In both editions of this book, the aim was to address these challenges by presenting an integration of information about selected generic theoretical concepts and models, relevant empirically based helping and change processes, long-standing social work practice principles, and communication and interviewing skills. These dimensions can be used as an integrated foundation for generalist and specialist practice when working directly with clients, including in advanced clinical social work practice.

This book is organized into three sections: Conceptual Frameworks for Social Work Practice, The Helping Process in Social Work Practice, and Interviewing in Social Work Practice. , Conceptual Frameworks for Social Work Practice, provides a comprehensive discussion of holistic competence in relation to EPAS 2015 and identifies key themes in the contemporary knowledge base. It also addresses challenges for students learning about social work as they integrate information about values, theories, and models while developing their professional identity and use of self. Collaborative relationships with clients and working with diversity and difference are examined in the remaining chapters in this section.