Introduces students to the key legal and ethical principles guiding professional practice. Using an applied, practice-based and refreshingly 'real' approach this text will help to make law and ethical issues more accessible and looks at how legal and ethical principles interplay and inform professional development.

Introduction - But I want to be a social worker, not a philosopher!
Judging actions or people?
Social workers, social justice and the law
Accountability, ethics and the law
Protecting children or supporting parents?
Whose future? The ethics of compulsory adoption law
Youth justice
Community care and the ethics of resource allocation
Making decisions on behalf of other people: promoting the best interests of vulnerable adults
Acting legally, acting ethically

Before moving into social work education, Robert Johns worked for a number of years in a range of social work roles, predominantly in the public sector. His specialisms were youth justice and court-work, representing the interests of children involved in care proceedings. Academically, his major abiding interest has been social work law but he has also taught social policy and social work values and ethics, hence his latest book, Ethics and Law for Social Workers. Currently, he teaches  at the University of East London, where has been Head of Social Work and programme leader for the qualifying MA offered in conjunction with the Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust. He is the author of Using the Law in Social Work, now in its sixth edition, Social Work, Social Policy and Older People and, most recently,  Capacity and Autonomy.