ABSTRACT
Social work has its roots in holistic vision of helping people across three domains; one-to-one casework, group work and community work. There is, it seems, a tension between the social work mission to engage in advocacy and promoting social justice on the one hand and an increasing emphasis on responsibilities of social workers in terms of assessing and responding to cases of child protection. Communication also has a cultural dimension. One of the many challenges for social work is what will be referred to as the invisibility of their skills. To complicate matters further, social workers, ironically, when they have more experience may begin to divorce themselves from a conscious engagement with thinking about and applying theory. This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book provides a theoretically informed understanding of the core skills required to provide counselling interventions that work.
