Introduction

This book has been written in the spirit of the message conveyed by this quotation from a fairly recent official report about the development of the mental health workforce. It is premised on a conviction that social work makes a vital contribution to services for people with mental health problems, but it has been written with an awareness that in many parts of the profession there are significant anxieties about the capacity of social work to sustain its identity and distinct contribution in the context of rapidly changing contexts of practice. There are particular concerns about the integration of health and social care services and the location of social work within multidisciplinary structures where social work is the minority player, and is heavily outnumbered by medical and ancillary professionals. Consequently, one purpose in writing this book was to delineate the changing context of practice, describing the policy environment that is shaping these changes, the implications for interventions to support people with mental health problems, and in particular the relevance of all this for the role of the social worker.