Social Work and Covid-19

Captures the unique moment in time created by the Covid-19 pandemic and uses this as a lens to explore contemporary issues for social work education and practice.   

The 2020 coronavirus pandemic provided an unprecedented moment of global crisis, which placed health and social care at the forefront of the national agenda. The lockdown, social distancing measures and rapid move to online working created multiple challenges and safeguarding concerns for social work education and practice, whilst the unparalleled death rate exacerbated pre-existing problems with communicating openly about death and bereavement. Many of these issues were already at the surface of social work practice and education and this book examines how the health crisis has exposed these, whilst acting as a potential catalyst for change.  

This book acts as a testament to the historical moment whilst providing a forum for drawing together discussion from contemporary educators, practitioners and users of social work services.

Foreword: Ruth Allen

Introduction: Denise Turner 

1. Social Work, Technologies, Covid 19   Amanda Taylor- Beswick 

2.  Protecting Children During The Pandemic   Nicola Labuschagne, Gema Hadridge, Laura Vanderbijl, Sarah Jones and Ellie Geater

3. Unaccompanied asylum seeking children and young refugees  Dr Kish Bhatti-Sinclair

4. ‘We just don’t matter’: Articulating the experiences of Black African Social Work Students during the Covid-19 Pandemic in England Dr Prospera Tedam

5. Embracing ‘un’ -certainty in Practice Education  Cornelia Lange and Robert Maynard

6. ‘From surviving to thriving: The experience of social work students and their families in lockdown.’

Andrew Lorimer, Francis Sentamu, Rachel Sharples

7. Living through COVID-19 - a disabled person’s perspective      Varsha Tailor

Poetry helps: Poetry as a means of creative reflection and learning in social work  Ariane Critchley and Autumn Roesch- Marsh

 9. ‘From beginning to end’:  Loss, Change and meaning -making in the context of Covid 19  Denise Turner

10. Supervision in End of Life Care Marie Price

11. Conclusion

Dr Denise Turner is an experienced, registered Social Worker and currently works as a Senior Lecturer in Social Work.

Her research interests encompass digital practices and death, loss and bereavement. She was Chair of the Advisory Group for the national Digital Capabilities project for Social Work, delivered by SCIE and BASW and is interested in the positive challenges of digital media. She has authored a book on parents’ experiences of the professional response to sudden, unexpected child death and is currently involved with research focused on bereavement and grief resulting from Covid19.