Order from a Major Online Bookstore
Ultimate Book Price Comparison Engine
Save Your Time And Money
| AnyBook4Less.com | Order from a Major Online Bookstore |
|
| Home | Store List | FAQ | Contact Us | | ||
| Ultimate Book Price Comparison Engine Save Your Time And Money |
||
 |
Title: The Life Model of Social Work Practice by Carel B. Germain, Alex Gitterman ISBN: 0-231-06416-0 Publisher: Columbia University Press Pub. Date: 15 April, 1996 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $60.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 2 (1 review)
Rating: 2
Summary: The start of an unfortunate legacy
Comment: This book is the intellectual cornerstone of most generalist model social work education in the United States. In that respect it exemplifies much of what wrong (and there is a great deal wrong) with the generalist model. This is a book that social work educators seem to like. However, when you ask most students or practitioners, the response is less enthusiastic.
Where I went to school it was considered heresy to criticize the life model, because it is a "major" theory that belongs uniquely to social work. That's too bad, because if this is a high point of social work theory, then it speaks poorly for our intellectual base.
The life model, like the social work profession, seems organized around being as inclusive as possible in the service unity. This harkens back to the social work profession arising out of the unification of several diverse, often fractious social welfare movements. Inclusiveness is important to social work as a defining value of the profession. But in the attempt to be as inclusive as possible, the life model dilutes itself as a usefull basis for intervention.
The life model rests on the astonishingly obvious premise that aspects of the persons biopsychosocial ecology interact; and that intervening in the that ecology may have a salutary effect on the client. What's worse, the theory treats this understanding as if it were some kind of end point, rather than a basic underpinning of understanding human behavior. I have yet to hear anyone tell me how this theory informs what you do with a live human being sitting with you in a clinical setting. What good do we do our trainees to be educating them with model? What good do we do our clients?
If social workers are to join our professional cousins in the modern world it needs to move beyond simplistic and obvious theories like the life model. Intellectual inclusiveness does not have to mean being general to the point of irrelevance. The continued promulgation of this theory in social work education dilutes our strength. We live in a time when, more than ever, our society and our clients need us to be thoughtful as well as compassionate. We need to do better than this.
 |
Title: Skills of Helping Individuals, Families, Groups, and Communities by Lawrence Shulman ISBN: 087581414X Publisher: F E Peacock Pub Pub. Date: 01 January, 1998 List Price(USD): $79.95 |
 |
Title: Social Work Macro Practice, Third Edition by F. Ellen Netting, Peter M. Kettner, Steven L. McMurtry ISBN: 0205380697 Publisher: Pearson Allyn & Bacon Pub. Date: 16 July, 2003 List Price(USD): $66.60 |
 |
Title: Clinical Social Work Knowledge and Skills by Helen Northen ISBN: 0231101104 Publisher: Columbia University Press Pub. Date: 15 April, 1994 List Price(USD): $53.00 |
 |
Title: Direct Social Work Practice/With Infotrac: Theory and Skills by Dean H. Hepworth, Ronald H. Rooney, Jo Ann Larsen ISBN: 0534368387 Publisher: Brooks Cole Pub. Date: July, 2001 List Price(USD): $77.95 |
 |
Title: Social Welfare: A History of the American Response to Need (5th Edition) by June Axinn, Mark J. Stern ISBN: 0801330408 Publisher: Pearson Allyn & Bacon Pub. Date: 09 August, 2000 List Price(USD): $53.20 |
Thank you for visiting www.AnyBook4Less.com and enjoy your savings!
Copyright� 2001-2021 Send your comments
