Chris Beckett qualified as a social worker in the 1980s, and worked in the field for 18 years, first as a social worker and then as a manager, latterly as the manager of a children and families social work team. Like most social workers who qualified at that time, he started out as a 'generic' social worker, working with a range of service users including children and families, old people, and people with mental health problems and disabilities, but his predominant area of work was with children and families.

He moved into academic social work in 2000, working first at Anglia Ruskin University in Cambridge and then at the University of East Anglia in Norwich. In addition to his social work text books, he has published academic articles on a variety of topics including the use of military language in social work, the importance of realism as an ethical principle, and statistics from Sweden about child abuse, following the legal ban there on corporal punishment. His main research area, however, has been decision-making in court proceedings about children, and decision-making about children more generally.

Chris has a parallel career as a writer of literary science fiction. (More information about his fiction can be found at www.chris-beckett.com.) He won the Edge Hill Short Fiction prize for his story collection, The Turing Test, and the Arthur C. Clarke award for his novel Dark Eden. He is now a full-time writer. His view is that 'academic' and 'creative' writing have more in common than might at first sight appear: in both cases the author begins with a jumble of ideas that seem to him to be in some way linked together, and attempts, in large part by a combination of intuition and trial and error, to impose some shape and structure.

Chris has three adult children, and lives in Cambridge with his wife Maggie and sundry animals.

Focusing on what students really need to know, this book breaks down all of the key social work theory covered across a students' training, demystifying complex concepts by demonstrating their application to real-life practice. Multiple case studies highlight applied theory in different practice settings and across issues and challenges that students might face, while self-assessment exercises, practice notes, concise chapter summaries and discussion points help to consolidate their understanding.

New chapters bring the book right up to date and include Relationship-based Work, The Importance of Language, Political Perspectives and Environmental Intervention.

Written by two well-established and expert authors, this is the 'must-have' theory text for all social work students.

What This Book is About
Chapter 1: Introduction and Using This Book
Chapter 2: What Do We Mean by Social Work Theory?
Chapter 3: The Use and Abuse of Theory
Social Work Roles
Chapter 4: The Roles We Play
Chapter 5: Relationship-Based Work
Chapter 6: The Use of Authority and Power
Chapter 7: Advocacy and Empowerment
Chapter 8: Working with Others: Working in a Team
Chapter 9: Environmental Intervention
Past, Present and Future
Chapter 10: Which Way to Look?
Chapter 11: The Power of the Past
Chapter 12: Searching the Present
Chapter 13: Exploring the Future
Chapter 14: The Importance of Language
Chapter 15: Working with People towards becoming Unstuck
The Wider Context
Chapter 16: Systems and System Levels
Chapter 17: Families as Systems
Chapter 18: Groups and Communities
Chapter 19: Political Perspectives
It's All Very Well in Theory...
Chapter 20: The Question of Evidence and the Problem of Uncertainty
Chapter 21: Talk and Substance
Chapter 22: The Limits of Theory
Chapter 23: Current Contexts and Contemporary Models of Social Work Practice