Handbook of Social Work Practice with Vulnerable and Resilient Populations

When community and family support systems are weak or unavailable, and when internal resources fail, populations that struggle with chronic, persistent, acute, and/or unexpected problems become vulnerable to physical, cognitive, emotional, and social deterioration. Yet despite numerous risk factors, a large number of vulnerable people do live happy and productive lives. This best-selling handbook examines not only risk and vulnerability factors in disadvantaged populations but also resilience and protective strategies for managing and overcoming adversity. This third edition reflects new demographic data, research findings, and theoretical developments and accounts for changing economic and political realities, including immigration and health care policy reforms. Contributors have expanded their essays to include practice with individuals, families, and groups, and new chapters consider working with military members and their families, victims and survivors of terrorism and torture, bullied children, and young men of color.

Alex Gitterman is the Zachs Professor of Social Work and director of the Doctoral Program at the University of Connecticut School of Social Work.

Charles D. Garvin, University of Michigan:
Gitterman and many other social work experts present a comprehensive and up-to-date account of the full range of social work services. The book is outstanding in its recognition of human resilience in the face of the most devastating adverse social circumstances that must be changed. Another virtue of the book is the use the authors employ of a validated and broad range of social interventions.

Kia J. Bentley, Virginia Commonwealth University:
This thoughtfully updated and expanded third edition of Gitterman's popular handbook is firmly rooted in the most important ideas in social work: our biopsychosocial perspective on human challenges, our reliance on multiple theories and a risk and resilience framework, our appreciation of the sociopolitical context of what we do, and our growing insistence on having an evidence-informed basis for our programs and interventions. Readers will not only be better equipped to understand and empathize with the profound and complex challenges that clients face but also to act competently and compassionately to help facilitate change.

Dana Grossman Leeman, Simmons School of Social Work:
Everything a social worker needs to begin thinking about practice with a specific client population, need, or context is represented in this compendium. I have not come across a text that is so far-reaching in scope.