Abstract

How do you keep the whole family in mind when carrying out social work assessment? How do you balance the needs of adults and children? How do you ensure that children's welfare and safety are everyone's priority when families face complex difficulties?

Mastering Whole Family Assessment in Social Work brings together what social workers in adult and children services need to know about assessment across both services. With tools and frameworks that make sense of the interface between adult life difficulties, family problems, parenting capacity and children's needs, this practical guide will help social workers to think across professional and administrative divides. Case studies, practice vignettes, exercises and suggestions for further reading are included throughout the book to help the reader consider the well-being of the whole family when conducting and interpreting assessments.

This guide will help social workers to think holistically and work collaboratively both with each other and with families.

Fiona Mainstone takes on the social work task; interface of work between adult and children's services; and the quality of assessment is also included and relevant. The exercises in each chapter of the book are beneficial to any practitioner... I did find the appendices at the back very useful... I did enjoy this book. The 'Mastering' series has bought together in one volume prevailing thought and research on whole family assessment.
Hilary Schultess-Young, Independent Social Worker
Professional Social Work (PSW)
Fiona Mainstone is an independent consultant and educator with many years' experience of social work in local authorities. She contributes to post-graduate programmes at several UK universities and delivers training to managers and practitioners in both adult and children's services. She also practises as a solutions-focused therapist.

This book brilliantly does what it sets out to do -- it provides students and experienced social workers alike with a helpful overview of many different areas of social work specialist knowledge and best practice relevant to whole family assessment, as well as offering many pointers towards aspects of relevant specialisms that workers may not routinely need to consider. It will help them to think more collaboratively about whole family needs, including safety, and guide them towards more effective interventions.

If you work in children's services and have ever complained that your colleagues in adult services lack focus on the child -- or vice versa -- then read this book. It tells you everything you need to know about how to work together constructively to maintain focus on the needs of all family members.

Judith Milner, former Senior Lecturer in Social Work, Consultant and Trainer in Solution Focused Practice, UK
‘I’m delighted to see a series that is accessible and that deals with the knowledge and skills needed to work creatively with the everyday concerns and complex issues encountered in direct social work practice. This series offers indispensable coverage of key issues.’
Pamela Trevithick, Visiting Professor in Social Work, Buckinghamshire New University, UK
Assessment is a complex and fraught process that can either engage families in, or push them away from, social work support. Mainstone's whole family approach cuts through these complexities and presents a respectful model that offers social workers hope in developing constructive relationships with families. This is a book that should be consulted again and again!
Professor Jonathan Parker PhD, AcSS, FHEA, FRSA, Deputy Dean for Research and Enterprise Director Centre of Social Work & Social Policy School of Health & Social Care, Bournemouth University, UK