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Critical Issues in Social Work with Older People

This book is one of a series of texts on ‘Reshaping Social Work’ and is designed to develop the knowledge base for critical, reflective practitioners. Each book in the series is designed to support students on qualifying social work programmes as well as update practitioners on crucial issues in modern social work. It aims to do this by strengthening our research knowledge, providing an emphasis on critical analysis and skills development in order that we are equipped to meet the future challenges of social work practice. I enjoyed reading this book, particularly the chapters on ‘Transition and Continuities’ (despite its heavy theoretical base), ‘Care Giving in Diverse Contexts’ and ‘Developing Critical Gerontological Practice: New Challenges’. I also enjoyed the narrative used throughout the book as a case study example. However I became frustrated by the chapters on ‘Risk Assessment’, ‘Dementia’ and ‘End of Life Care’. This may be because the book tells us about the ideal and the reality of practice is often so far removed from it. The format of the book was also helpful in enabling the reader to dip in and out of it as needed. As a practitioner with 14 years’ experience, this was especially helpful as I simply do not have the luxury of time to read a whole book from start to finish. The book has nine chapters, each with a main points précis, an introduction, informative and balanced content, and a conclusion. The authors have also added a ‘Stop and Think’ box which poses questions to the reader and a ‘Taking it Further’ section which suggests additional reading. I felt that the questions asked in the ‘Stop and Think’ section could have been more challenging and could have related more directly to the working environment and practice issues. However despite a number of strengths, I struggled to see where the book sits in the modern agenda. While highlighting the key features of working with older people, it could have gone further to fully address the complexities and accompanying challenges of the social work role within an adult care management team working in a multidisciplinary agency framework. Unfortunately specialist teams are a thing of the past and the social workers skill base is being stretched in all directions. One of the most striking comments was the acknowledgement that ‘ . . . under the guise of the care management process, social work practitioners have experienced the erosion of their professional skills’ (p. 6). In my experience, this is both sad and true.