Social Work: A Critical Approach to Practice

Ten years since the first edition (Fook, 2002), a second edition of Jan Fook's well-known textbook has been published. Since then, Fook has moved from Australia first to the UK, where this edition was primarily written, and more recently to Canada, which means in theory that she is primed to bring insights from different Anglophone countries to bear on her subject in this later work. Indeed, she states in her revised Preface that ‘the changes in this second edition to some extent reflect my ongoing awareness of how context influences our conceptualisations of social work’ (p. xiv). The structure of the book remains the same: twelve chapters are organised into three parts: ‘Critical potential and current challenges’, ‘Rethinking ideas’ and ‘Redeveloping practices’. New to the second edition is a glossary of terms. The contents, references and index have been extended for the second edition. As in the earlier edition, acknowledgement is made of material that first appeared in an earlier work (Fook, 1998). The stated aims are to encourage social workers to aspire ‘to make a difference’ (p. xiv) as well as the more practical aim of making this edition ‘more student-friendly’ (p. xiv). For the latter reason, there are more summaries and textboxes in the new layout as well as suggested readings at the end of each chapter.