Eurpoean Studies in Social Work : Steven Shardlow and Stacey Cooper

Children's Book Reviews

This book is a must for anyone who is involved in social work and social care and has an interestin their profession in an international context.

It is one of a series of three books written after three years of co-operation by a multi-national group, sponsored by the Socrates Programme of the European Union. The initial aim of this group was to develop a common module on Theories and Models of Social Security Systems and Social Work Practice in Europe for use in their respective educational locations. As an additional outcome we can enjoy the rich resource of this Bibliography of materials written in English about social work across Europe.

It has been designed to include:
· Comparative studies of social work that include at least two European states
· Comparative studies of social work that include at least one European state compared with at least one non-European state
· General theoretical material on comparative studies in social work
· Single country studies that are of particular value and interest to those living outside that country.

The text is divided into Comparative Studies and Single Country Studies sections, which are internally organised by client groups. The items are listed alphabetically according to author and most contain a brief summary of the content.

There are two improvements which would make this excellent book even more attractive to the lay reader – one is the addition of a subject index. There seems to be no way of identifying the subjects covered quickly other than by scanning the sub-sections. The other is that some help in finding the many journals and publishers mentioned as sources of the articles described would be welcome. No doubt academics will have access to such information. It might be a little more testing for a care worker or student in their local library. But these comments should not detract from the over-all usefulness of this comprehensive work in bringing together so much source material.

Kathleen Lane
16.03.00

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