Education social work with a Traveller woman

This article describes and analyses work with a Traveller woman and her children. The analysis shows how the work draws on a continuously evolving casework tradition of the last hundred years, and reflects on the implications for social work in a new century. The description of the casework illustrates that the practical and environmental help is intimately bound up with therapeutic help (for her partner and her children as well as the woman herself). It is pointed out that the problems facing an individual Gypsy can only be understood in the context of current social policy affecting all Travellers. Examining how certain concepts have a culturally specific signification in Gypsy life, it is argued that the effective delivery of both practical and psychotherapeutic help require an understanding of the ethnic and cultural context.