Social Theory, Social Change and Social Work

Social work is currently experiencing an important period of change--in its priorities, organization and day-to-day practices. Increasingly, notions of care management, monitoring and evaluation and inter-agency coordination have become more dominant, requiring new skills and new forms of knowledge to the extent that the image of the generic social worker working in the unified agency and drawing upon casework, informed by particular forms of psychology and displaying particular skills in human relationships, seems outmoded. Social Theory,Social Change and Social Workhas two inter-related themes. First to account for and analyze current changes in social work and secondly, to assess how much recent developments in social theory can contribute to their interpretation.