Introduction

Abstract

Community care is about resources: all kinds of resources, personal, economic, social, political. Social workers are a significant part of the provision of community care: first, because they help clients to make effective use of their own personal resources and, secondly, because they help community resources to provide for those in need. Other groups of helpers, other occupations, share this work: social workers are in a network of helping agencies and professions. Their skills are shared with those other agencies and occupations and with ordinary people in their everyday lives. Social workers, however, have a special role in helping others — both clients and colleagues — make the best of community resources both in personal and individual relationships and in more general social provision. That role, and the skills involved in taking it on, are the central concern of this book.