How to Be a Social Worker: Developing Your Professional Identity

By Priscilla Dunk-West

This textbook equips social work students with the tools to develop a social work identity. It provides a critical examination of the knowledge base of social work - from human growth and development to social work research - and explores how a practitioner's own values, principles and experience combine to shape their social work identity and practice alongside this.

Linked to a range of core modules on pre-qualifying social work programmes but written also for those practitioners committed to nurturing their own social work identities, this is a must-have text from one of social work's most up-and-coming authors that brings together all areas of the classroom and practice curriculum to make learning a novel, creative and interactive process.

New to this edition:
- Addresses themes and issues that have become more relevant in contemporary practice such as anti-racism, ageism, adultification, AI and digital social work, gender identity, sexuality and the political context of social work.
- More on task-centred practice, relationship-based practice, trauma-informed practice and anti-oppressive practice.
- New content on bureaucracy, burnout and self-care, spirituality, as well as grief and loss.
- Discussion on responding to reluctant service users or challenging situations.
- New reflections and case study examples.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1350541915
• ISBN13: 9781350541917
• Release Date: October 2026
• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Length: 272 Pages
• Weight: 1.00 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 6.1" x 9.2"