Social Sciences and Human Services: Find Social Science and Human Services E-Books

In many regions of the world the twenty-first century has started with a structure of endless challenges for social work. Social work seems to be in demand almost everywhere, from support schemes for children and young people into adulthood and on to support for elderly people, in community work in cities and rural regions, in disaster relief and in care for refugees. This book describes the field of social work - its themes, problems and methods - in the face of the concept of the second, reflexive modernisation. The question needs to be asked of how, and whether, social work's success story from the first modernity can continue. We discuss the second modernity as a time of blurring boundaries. Today, it frequently faces the problem that the organised terms of its approaches come up against a social reality where the frameworks of social life are becoming dynamic. Normalised structures are dissolving or becoming mixed with new ones; boundaries are blurring and new ones appearing.

Social media and the digital revolution have fundamentally changed the meaning of "social" and "work." Social work, like all other professions, will undergo dramatic changes as apps and algorithms overtake human operations. The failure of social sciences in general and social work in particular warrants thoughtful innovations that ensure sustainable services. The author believes altruism is professionally unattainable until social work is completely re-founded. The Future of Social Work discusses seven new algorithms of social practice that challenge the existing model of social work education and offers a new perspective for radical transformation of the entire system. The book warns against academic complacence and shows how this radical transformation is necessary in order to prevent inevitable alienation, avarice, and anger in a techno-scientific world.