1985 Reviews

Review of Agency-based Social Work: Neglected Aspects of Clinical Practice. By Harold
Weissman, Irwin Epstein, and Andrea Savage. Philadelphia: Temple University
Press, 1984

Mullen, Edward Joseph

Weissman, Epstein, and Savage make a unique and important contribution
through their publication of Agency-based Social Work. They create a vision of
what clinical social work practice could become, and they describe practice
roles that if adopted could result in effective services pertinent to the needs
of disadvantaged populations. Essentially, this book presents an argument for
the centrality of administrative (organizational) roles in agency-based clinical
practice. In addition, the rich descriptions make the learning of such roles
feasible.
The authors present results of a NIHM-funded project that sought to identify
the administrative skills and knowledge involved in clinical social work, and
to develop as well as evaluate a curriculum for training M.S.W. students in
the administrative aspects of their practice. Although the book is described
as the project's major effort to disseminate its central ideas, no discussion of
the curriculum is provided. Rather, the volume focuses on a description of
administrative roles performed by clinical social workers. As a result, the book
does not address the difficult curricular issues that the project must have
encountered, and that educators seeking to incorporate these ideas into existing
curricula will have to address.