The Routledge International Handbook of Digital Social Work - Paperback

by Antonio López Peláez (Editor), Gloria Kirwan (Editor)

This handbook provides an authoritative and cutting-edge overview of current research and trends related to the emerging field of digital technology and social work.

This book is divided into six sections:

1. Reframing Social Work in a Digital Society
2. Shaping a Science of Social Work in the Digital Society
3. Digital Social Work in Practice
4. The Ethics of Digital Social Work
5. Digital Social Work and the Digitalization of Welfare Institutions: Opportunities, Challenges and Country Cases
6. Digital Social Work: Future Challenges, Directions and Transformations

This book, comprised of 40 specially commissioned chapters, explores the main intersections between social work theory and practice in an increasingly digitized world. Bringing a critical focus to how social work as a profession is adapting exponentially to embrace the benefits of technology, it gives specific consideration to the digitalization of the social work profession, including the ways in which social workers are using different forms of technology to provide effective services and innovative practice responses.

With chapters on big data, digital archiving, e-citizenship and inclusion, gerontechnology, children and technology, and data ethics, this book will be of interest to all social work scholars, students and professionals as well as those working in science and technology studies more broadly.

Author Biography

Antonio López Peláez is Professor of Social Work and Social Services at UNED, Spain, and Executive Director of the International Council on Social Welfare (www.icsw.org). He is Director of the Social Work Series, published by Thomson Reuters Aranzadi.

Gloria Kirwan is a Senior Lecturer in the Graduate School of Healthcare Management, Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland. She is currentlty the co-editor of the Journal of Social Work Practice (Taylor & Francis), editor of the journal Groupwork (Whiting & Birch), and editor of the Irish Social Worker, the journal of the Irish Association of Social Workers.