ABSTRACT
This chapter draws on the experience of practitioners and managers who have been at the forefront of developing the "patch", or community social work, approach in British social services and presents a framework for practice based on this work. This approach recognizes that social services and social work are normally marginal to the management or resolution of people's problems and that partnerships between people and professionals and collaboration among agencies are essential. Inventive practitioners are reformulating the role of the professional, despite pressures to adopt models similar to those developed in the United States: managed care in an increasingly pluralistic welfare market with highly specialized therapeutic practice focused on specific diagnoses. The "unitary approach" to social work practice attempted to link and integrates different approaches within a framework of systems theory. Practice theory is even more important when intervention is based on partnerships with all of these people and recognizes their equal rights as citizens.
