ABSTRACT
Social work with people suffering mental ill-health has received very little attention; the last major study in Britain was conducted almost two decades ago soon after the implementation of the Mental Health Act and well before the reorganisation of the local authority personal social services. Social workers are concerned not only with the presence of a mental health problem but also with its severity. Having selected a sample of clients for interview, we asked the relevant social workers to seek their clients’ consent to visits from one of the research workers. In addition to the case-specific interviews, a further group of thirty social workers was interviewed in more general terms about the attitudes, beliefs and opinions which they brought to mental health social work. The limited resources available to the study were primarily devoted to an investigation of area team social work practice.
