Environmental Social Work

by Mel Gray (Editor), John M. Coates (Editor), Tiani Hetherington (Editor)

Social work has been late to engage with the environmental movement. Often working with an exclusively social understanding of environment, much of the social work profession has overlooked the importance of environmental issues. However, recently, the impact of and worldwide attention to climate change, a string of natural disasters, and increased understanding of issues around environmental justice has put the environment, sustainability, and well-being in the spotlight.Divided into three parts, this field-defining work explores what environmental social work is, and how it can be put into practice. The first section focuses on theory, discussing ecological and social justice, as well as sustainability, spirituality and human rights. The second section comprises case studies of evolving environmental social work practice. The case studies derive from a range of areas from urban gardens and community organizing to practice with those affected by climate change. The final section relevant to students and lecturers looks at learning about environmental issues in social work.Environmental Social Work provides an integrated theoretical and practical overview of why and how social work might respond to environmental factors affecting the societies and people they work with at international, national, local and individual levels.

Genres: Social Work

361 pages, ebook

First published January 1, 2012

About the author

Mel Gray is an Emeritus Professor of Social Work at the School of Humanities, Creative Ind and Social Science at the University of Newcastle. Gray came to academia having already spent 15 years practicing social work in South Africa.

Reviews

[madeline]

(3.5)
This text was a bit dense and hard to understand, but also very interesting. It contained a lot of important information relating to sustainability and the various roles social workers can play in working to lessen or solve these issues. Although not particularly fun to read, this was definitely informative and provided me with a lot of good information.

(Read for SOC WORK 204: Sustainability and Social Problems)

[earl johnson]

Essential book to address the schizophrenia of a social work stuck in modernity.

Social work has it's roots in modern industrial society. Social work is committed to social justice issues and there is no greater social justice issue than our rapidly degrading environment and the consequent socio-economic results. This book ties all that together.