Book review
Title: Applying Research to Social Work Practice
Author(s): Brian Corby
Year: 2006
Edition: 1
Number of pages: 256
Publisher: Open University Press
ISBN: 9780335217847
Price: £23.99
Reviewer: Trish Hafford-Letchfield, Senior Lecturer in Social Work, London South Bank University
Review date: 21 November 2007
Getting to grips with the role and value of research in social work practice is an inescapable task for any student following a professional programme of training. Equally challenging is how academic and practice educators can effectively enable students and practitioners to navigate their way through the different paradigms, methods, and critical debates in relation to what is not only reliable, but realistic, when applying research based knowledge to practice, in a rapidly changing environment. With this in mind, this text is an enormous help to readers who are not only interested in the application of research itself but who want to increase their understanding of social work research as a phenomenon in its own right. Written in a clear and accessible style, Corby uses his own extensive experiences as a practitioner, then researcher and educator in the field. His approach is comprehensive and holistic taking care to present debates about social work research in its widest sense and building on the notion of a collaborative approach between academics, practitioners and service users. The aim of this book which he sets out from the beginning is to reduce the barriers between research as a mystical and purely academic activity towards its value in enhancing thinking about practice and translating thought into action (p180). Whilst the reader may be left with a sense of unease about how far research provides social work with a deliverable platform to take forward its agenda, this accurately reflects the current uncertainty in the face of many complexities facing the profession.
There are ten chapters beginning with the tracing of the origins of social work where Corby contextualises the ‘uneasy alliance’ between research and the parallel development of the profession. Corby analyses the emergence of interest in social work research from its evaluative tradition within ‘casework’ through to consumerist and more radical approaches. Contemporary research and the development of the ‘evidence-based’ movement from the late 1990s, its ‘for’ and ‘against’ arguments helps to explain the current preoccupation of central government in sponsoring research used to support and shape new interventions and the implied link to policy making and achieving outcomes for service users. The impact of this shift on more radical and original research and its purpose is questioned.
Corby bravely tackles the ‘paradigm wars’ or the “assumptions, concepts, values and practices” that constitute “different ways of viewing reality” (p52). Hierarchies of methods used in research studies or evaluations and the tensions between these are explored to reflect the complexity of judging relevance and accuracy in applied research. Any simple definition of evidence-based practice is rendered problematic. Corby questions whether sufficiently sophisticated methodologies have been able to provide the necessary skills available to generate social work knowledge and to meet the practitioners’ specific needs when working in a field of practice.
There are three chapters devoted to the influence of research in child care, mental health and social work with older people and disabled adults. I found these less intriguing as some of the examples given appeared arbitrary at times. They did however give a flavour of the way in which different forms of research are developing in particular fields.
This text will be helpful for students of social work at both qualifying and post qualifying levels. As core background reading, it could be included in almost any programmes where practitioners are engaging with debates about the application of research in practice. The boundaries of social work knowledge have always been relatively unstable because of the shifting relationship between its authoritative sources, reference points and other professional contexts (Webb, 2006). Corby manages to address some of these debates successfully without compromising more optimistic viewpoints.
References
Webb, S.A. (2006) Social work in a risk society: social and political perspectives. Basingstoke, New York: Palgrave MacMillan.
