This important sourcebook examines the latest developments in the use of social group work in establishing out-of-home children in permanent homes in an age of federal cutbacks.

"The least detrimental alternative", the authors' seminal principle for safeguarding a child's growth and development by minimizing intrusions of the law, has been cited in more than 1,000 child custody cases since 1973.

Three distinguished authorities in law, psychiatry, and child development critically evaluate current child placement laws.

The second volume in a classic trilogy of reference works often cited in child custody cases, which introduced the concept of the “least detrimental alternative” when addressing a child’s welfare. The second volume in a classic trilogy of works by Joseph Goldstein, former Sterling Professor Emeritus of Law at Yale Law School; Albert J. Solnit, the former director of the Yale Child Study Center, and Anna Freud, daughter of Sigmund Freud. These texts (Beyond the Best Interests of the Child was the first in the series, and In the Best Interests of the Child was the third) are classic references often cited in child custody cases; Before the Best Interests of the Child specifically addresses when the state should intervene. Rather than the familiar legal "best interests of the child" doctrine, the authors’s work is based on the more realistic standard of finding the "least detrimental alternative." This is indispensable reading for social workers, family court judges, lawyers, psychologists, and parents.

Stories Celebrating Group Work: It’s Not Always Easy to Sit on Your Mouth celebrates the 25th anniversary of the esteemed journal Social Work with Groups with a collection of 21 narratives from group work practitioners and educators. These highly personal stories from a range of social workers—young and old, “famous” and not so famous—reflect each author's development and experience, serving as both instruction and inspiration for practitioners and educators. This unique collection—by turns humorous, moving, profound, and down-to-earth—gets to the heart of what it means to be a member of the social work community. Each chapter of Stories Celebrating Group Work draws on its contributor’s area of expertise and interest in a specific topic, chronicling the development of the author's understanding, appreciation, and skill. Authors address the everyday concerns of social work professionals, such as maximizing mutual aid, promoting positive norms, maintaining authority in group work, managing conflict, dealing with taboo subjects, building a group work culture in a human services organization, working with a co-leader, tapping the strengths of group members, and addressing social change. The individual stories of working with men, women, and children suffering through abuse, homelessness, addiction, and teenage pregnancy, in places as diverse as East Harlem, Maine, Canada, Nebraska, Long Island, Haiti, Uruguay, help form a collegial spirit as group workers gain insight from the theory and practice of those who went before. The personal stories you’ll find in Stories Celebrating Group Work include: “How I Became a Social Worker” “The Power of Group Work with Kids” “How the Relational Model of Group Work Developed” “My Love Affair with Stages of Group Development” “But I Want to Do a Real Group” “Racial Difference and Human Commonality: The Worker-Client Relationship” and many more! Stories Celebrating Group Work: It’s Not Always Easy to Sit on Your Mouth is a one-of-a-kind collection of stories, at once entertaining and educational. It's an essential read for beginning and seasoned human services practitioners, and educators involved with, or interested in, working with groups.

This diverse collection of articles by group work professionals who work in the classroom and in the field captures not only the art and science of social work with groups but also its soul, highlighting practice, teaching, and writing ideas that promote the power of group work - and the people who do it. Making Joyful Noise reinforces the value and uniqueness of group work as a positive, optimistic, empowering, and affirming way of working with people. The articles presented here cover a wide range of age groups, populations, and settings and include examples on the use of activity and discussion in groups: a poetry club for children, the meaning of camp for preadolescents, a boxing group for adolescents who live in the inner city, self-defense classes for adults, and caregiver support for the elderly. The book also steps into the classroom to promote the teaching of social group work and the education of advanced group work practitioners and to encourage practitioners to write about their group work practice. Finally, the book presents and illustrates a number of concepts that are unique to group work and that encourage front-line practitioners to “be bold” and to “stay in the mess.” While organized as a tribute to the late Dr. Roselle Kurland, Making Joyful Noise is in and of itself an important collection of articles and essays on social group work and one that is certain to provide all practitioners who are interested in group work with a spark, a smile, and some needed inspiration for their important work. Making Joyful Noise includes: essentials for preserving, promoting, and portraying group work practice the critical relationship between human and professional ethics in group work six common mistakes that practitioners make in regard to group purpose using organizational analysis to improve group work practice creatively blending activity and discussion in diverse settings cultivating collegiality to reduce isolation and enhance practice developing a capacity to “stay in the mess” in group work with people of all ages skills for effectively working with transitions, separation, and loss in group guidelines for practitioners wishing to write for publication and much more! This book is a rich and diverse collection that is required reading for anyone working to promote social work with groups.

Here is an exciting and informative volume on the use of social group work in psychiatric settings. As it affirms the significance of social group work’s clinical potential, Group Work With the Emotionally Disabled fosters further development in this highly specialized area of human service. Baruch Levine, a prestigious social group worker and clinical theorist, has edited this exceptional volume that emphasizes the coexistence of mental illness and mental health in effective group experiences for treating mental disability. Readers are treated to a comprehensive history of the development of the use of social group work practice with the emotionally disabled in psychiatric settings. Other authoritative chapters focus on the practice aspect and explore the problems and issues in group work with the emotionally disabled, the settings for group treatment of the chronically ill and psychiatrically at-risk, and the development of comprehensive approaches to the treatment and rehabilitation of persons with severe mental illness.

This highly successful book on groupwork practice, first published in 1979, has become a standard introductory text on most social work training courses. It is very popular with social workers, whatever their agency setting, and is also used by health visitors, youth workers and the voluntary sector. This new enlarged and revised third edition includes two new additional chapters. The first of these addresses the issue of groupwork in day and residential centres where special kinds of group skills are required in addition to those already well established for fieldwork groups. The second new chapter attempts to understand the significance of race and gender in groupwork and to begin to develop a framework for anti-discriminatory practice. All key sections from previous editions have been retained and updated, while those on group composition, open groups, co-working and consultation have been extended and revised to give more comprehensive coverage. The bibliography has also been developed to include the most recent additions to the groupwork literature, including many articles from the journal Groupwork for which Allan Brown is co-editor.