ABSTRACT
This chapter concerns understanding social workers' attitudes and actions in relation to the poverty of social service users. Social workers' attitudes to poverty are influenced by: personal factors such as schooling and professional training, present and past family situations, interactions with social service users, the social services hierarchy, and team members; and institutional factors such as the policies and bureaucracies of the social services department and local and central government departments. Cook and Selltiz define attitude as: an underlying disposition which enters, along with other influences, into the determination of a variety of behaviours toward an object or class of objects, including statements of beliefs and feelings about the object and approach-avoidance actions with respect to it. Psychological research on the relationship between attitudes and behaviour has centred around two related theories. The theoretical concepts described have implications for the training of social workers and students in relation to poverty issues.
