At a time when accountability and the avoidance of risk are increasingly demanded of social workers, the ability to make clear and informed decisions is essential. This book, written for practicing social workers undertaking their ASYE and compulsory CPD, has been designed to help professionals make sound judgments in increasingly complex contexts and under pressure. The focus is on empowering front-line professionals through reflective practice, so that they are able to draw on multiple factors and perspectives and make sound problem-solving judgements. The book begins with the core concepts, client focus, and legal background before moving on to consider the collaborative processes and the nature of individual judgements. It then considers particular dimensions of social work decision making, such as safeguarding, taking risks, assessment and dynamic decision tools and processes. It then concludes by look at the organisational context of decision management, with a focus on supervision, training and effective communication.

As practising social workers, your students will need to be able to make sound judgments in complex contexts and when they are under pressure. This book covers the essential knowledge they will require to understand and develop skills in relation to professional judgement and decision making processes, including: - the use of assessment tools; - engagement in assessment and decision processes; - the context of risk, complexity and uncertainty in practice; - communication and management of risk within social care processes.

Social workers regularly make high-risk, high-impact decisions: determining that a child has been abused; that an individual may take their own life; or that someone with a history of violence poses harm to another. In the course of this work, social workers are exposed to acute and prolonged workplace trauma and stress that may result in posttraumatic stress, compassion fatigue, and burnout. These effects not only impact practitioners, but also the decisions that social workers make and ultimately the quality of the services that they provide. In this book, Cheryl Regehr explores the intersection between workplace stress, trauma exposure, and professional decision-making in social workers. She weaves together practice experience, research on the impact of stress and trauma on performance and decision-making in other high-risk professions including paramedics and police officers, and the empirical study of competence and decision-making in social work practice. Covering a wide range of research and theory, she surveys practical approaches to reducing stress and trauma exposure, mitigating their effects in social work practice, and improving decision-making. This book is critical reading for all social workers who engage in high-stakes decision-making, from those newly embarking on a career to expert practitioners.

Professional judgement and decision making are central to social work, both in everyday professional practice and in public perceptions of social work as a profession. This book examines key issues that are relevant today. The chapters cover child protection, mental health, and elder care settings in Europe, Australia and Canada. They discuss organisational and cultural contexts for professional judgement; the role of experience in the development of expertise and professional discretion; understanding variability in decision making; and the role of legal frameworks in decision making. This book will enable practitioners, managers, policy makers, and researchers to appreciate the complexities of professional judgement and decision making in different social work settings and to apply this understanding to their own practice. This book was originally published as a special issue of the Journal of Social Work Practice. The book is linked to sister text Risk in Social Work Practice: Current Issues, which examines key debates around the understanding of risk in contemporary social work practice.

As practising social workers, your students will need to be able to make sound judgments in complex contexts and when they are under pressure. This book covers the essential knowledge they will require to understand and develop skills in relation to professional judgement and decision making processes, including: - the use of assessment tools; - engagement in assessment and decision processes; - the context of risk, complexity and uncertainty in practice; - communication and management of risk within social care processes.

The study of ‘risk’ in social work involves complex interplay between human behaviour, emotion, evidence of fact, professional values and organisational systems. This book brings together contributions from key social work researchers and theorists from the UK, USA, New Zealand and Italy, writing with a focus on aspects of risk within social work. It examines key debates concerning risk in contemporary social work practice, including ethical dilemmas, approaches to decision-making and the challenges of ignorance and errors. Contributions range from the perennial challenges of how one uses formal knowledge when assessing risk to emerging risks arising from the counterterrorism agenda. This book will enable practitioners, policy makers and researchers to appreciate the complexities of risk in different settings and apply this understanding to their own practice. This book was originally published as a special issue of the Journal of Social Work Practice.

At a time when accountability and the avoidance of risk are increasingly demanded of social work practitioners, the ability to make clear and reasoned professional decisions is essential. This welcome new edition provides a supportive framework for making social work judgements and assessments based on a structured and practical approach. Woven through with practice scenarios applicable to the many facets of social work, this text emphasizes the importance of good decision making to high-quality social work practice. Reassuringly clear throughout, this new addition to the BASW Practical Social Work series is core reading for all involved in the field of social work, whether as students, academics, practitioners or managers. New to this Edition: - Provides an accessible discussion and framework for a skill which all students must evidence in orderto qualify for practice - Significantly updated to reflect the growing prominence of user involvement and interprofessional collaboration

At a time when accountability and the avoidance of risk are increasingly demanded of social workers, the ability to make clear and informed decisions is essential. This book, written for practicing social workers undertaking their ASYE and compulsory CPD, has been designed to help professionals make sound judgments in increasingly complex contexts and under pressure. The focus is on empowering front-line professionals through reflective practice, so that they are able to draw on multiple factors and perspectives and make sound problem-solving judgements. The book begins with the core concepts, client focus, and legal background before moving on to consider the collaborative processes and the nature of individual judgements. It then considers particular dimensions of social work decision making, such as safeguarding, taking risks, assessment and dynamic decision tools and processes. It then concludes by look at the organisational context of decision management, with a focus on supervision, training and effective communication.

′Effective Child Protection is a significant contribution to child welfare practice and policy...Munro offers a pathway to achieving better outcomes for children and families who are recipients of child protection services′ - Children and Youth Services Review Praise for the First Edition: `The book makes the fully justified claim [that] it will be essential reading for professionals undergoing qualifying and post-qualifying training. It is to be hoped that it will enjoy an even wider readership′ - Child Abuse Review This new edition is essential reading for anyone concerned with improving child protection practice. Building on the strengths of the first edition, it provides a deeper understanding of how practice judgements and decisions can be improved in child protection work. Updates include: - an account of how intuition, emotion, and analytic thinking are combined in practice - an analysis of how the nature of the task determines what combination is needed - an updated chapter on how we can detect errors - new material on how organisations can promote good reasoning skills - a simpler way to understand risk assessment instruments. Illustrated with detailed case studies throughout, it will be invaluable reading for students, researchers and practitioners in all areas of child protection, including social work, education, health and policing. Eileen Munro is a Reader in Social Policy at the London School of Economics, specialising in child protection. Other publications include Child Protection (SAGE 2006).

The assessment of needs and the process of planning care are central issues in modern social work practice. Skilled assessment of client needs and strengths is essential to effective planning and efficient provision of quality social work services including both counselling and personal care. The focus of this book is on the development of the skills required at each stage of the social work process: assessment, care planning, implementation and evaluation. Throughout the book a balance is maintained between the focus on client involvement and the role of the social worker in an agency. The latter part of the book addresses practical issues in developing new approaches to assessment and care planning: primary workers, individual support and managing change. Social work practitioners, managers and trainers and students on qualifying and pre-qualifying training will find this an invaluable aid to the development of sound and yet creative practice.