New Books: Social Work

In this book, former social worker Jessica Pryce walks alongside her close friends and even her family as they navigate the child welfare system, while sharing her own reckoning with the requirements of her job and her role in the systemic harm. Through poignant narratives and introspection, readers witness the harrowing effects of a well-intentioned workforce that has lost its way, demonstrating how separations are often not in a child's best interests. With a renewed commitment to strengthening families in her role as activist, Pryce invites the child welfare workforce to embark on a journey of self-reflection and radical growth.

On March 26, 2018, rescue workers discovered a crumpled SUV and the bodies of two women and several children at the bottom of a cliff beside the Pacific Coast Highway. Investigators soon concluded that the crash was a murder-suicide, but there was more to the story: Jennifer and Sarah Hart, it turned out, were a white married couple who had adopted the six Black children from two different Texas families in 2006 and 2008. Behind the family's loving facade, however, was a pattern of abuse and neglect that went ignored as the couple withdrew the children from school and moved across the country.

Adoption has always been viewed as a beloved institution for building families, as well as a mutually agreeable common ground in the abortion debate, but little attention has been paid to the lives of mothers who relinquish infants for private adoption. Relinquished reveals adoption to be a path of constrained choice for those for whom abortion is inaccessible, or for whom parenthood is untenable. Rooted in a long-term study, Relinquished is an analysis of hundreds of in-depth interviews with American mothers who placed their children for domestic adoption; stories about our country's refusal to care for families at the most basic level.

The link between homelessness and mental health disorders is undeniable. Both are strongly affected by social and economic determinants such as poverty, migration, unemployment, access to healthcare, and urbanization and, as a result, providing optimal care in the community requires understanding of the cultural context. Written and edited by experts drawn from different cultural and geographical perspectives, this unique resource covers key topics such as COVID-19, dental issues, chronic pain, the experiences of specific vulnerable groups, as well as case studies.

LGBTQ youth are disproportionately represented in the U.S. youth homelessness population. Based on interviews and ethnographic fieldwork in central Texas, Coming Out to the Streets maps the LGBTQ youth's lives prior to experiencing homelessness and while they live on the streets, deal with police, and navigate shelters and services for people experiencing homelessness. Through this documentation, Robinson shows how poverty and racial inequality shape how LGBTQ youth experiencing homelessness negotiate their gender and sexuality.

Before Dobbs, it was a common misconception that abortion restrictions affected only people in certain states but left one's own life untouched. Since the fall of Roe, a domino effect has cascaded across the entire country. As the landscape of abortion rights continues to shift, the experiences of the patients Luthra follows in Undue Burden -- who crossed state lines to seek life-saving care, who risked everything in pursuit of their own bodily autonomy, and who were unable to plan their reproductive future in the way they deserved -- illustrate how fragile the system is and how devastating the consequences can be.

Essentials of Health Justice will serve to enhance discussion of the many structural, legal, and policy issues underlying health disparities; the various public health and health care interventions geared toward improving health care access and more just health outcomes for vulnerable populations; and the ways in which the nation can better achieve health equity and justice.

Racism is imbued within the structures of our society. The 13th Grand Challenge is boldly calling social workers to extract this systemic stronghold from its profession and breathe new life into a field that has the capacity to transform our society. To facilitate this necessary disruption, social workers must be willing to critically engage in an exploration of the meaning of racism and its impact on social work in order to work towards its elimination from society and the profession.

Social Work and Social Welfare provides a global, human rights perspective on social welfare policies that are at the forefront of controversy in today's world. Structured around one of the concepts students struggle with the most--the research question--this book begins with how to understand the role of good questions before demonstrating how questions underpin good research designs and how social research can be framed as asking and answering questions.

According to the last census, one in five people in the United States lives with a disability. Some are visible, some are hidden--but all are underrepresented in media and popular culture. Activist Alice Wong brings together an urgent, galvanizing collection of personal essays by contemporary disabled writers. Taken together, this anthology gives a glimpse of the vast richness and complexity of the disabled experience, highlighting the passions, talents, and everyday lives of this community. It invites readers to question their own assumptions and understandings. It celebrates and documents disability culture in the now.