Book review: Practising Social Work Law

Practising Social Work Law (3rd edition)

Suzy Braye and Michael Preston-Shoot

Palgrave

ISBN 9780230543188

If you want a social care law book to use in practice, don’t choose this one. If, however, you want a reflective theoretical account of applying law to social work, this book will get you thinking.

The legal references are wide-ranging and mainly up to date, although it does refer to outdated Working Together guidance and was published before the Law Commission review.

The two chapters covering case examples show how to use the law in practice and are useful tools for anyone writing a case study. It would have been useful to put more emphasis on safeguarding in the examples selected, but they cover a wide range of adult and children’s situations.

There is strong, valid criticism of current practice, but the book is not accessible enough to achieve its aim of providing social workers “with a reflective, secure and critical legal and ethical literacy”.

Linda Naylor is an independent trainer for Training Matters

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