Table Of ContentURBAN THEMES
IN 21 -CENTURY
ST
SOCIAL WORK
CHARLOTTE WILLIAMS
Social Work and the City
Charlotte W illiams
Editor
Social Work and the
City
Urban Themes in 21st-Century Social Work
Editor
Charlotte Williams
School of Global, Urban and Social Studies
RMIT University
Melbourne , Victoria , Australia
ISBN 978-1-137-51622-0 ISBN 978-1-137-51623-7 (eBook)
DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-51623-7
Library of Congress Control Number: 2016940593
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Contents
Part I Making Sense of the City 1
Charlotte Williams
1 Social Work and Th e Urban Age 15
Charlotte Williams
2 Beyond the Soup Kitchen 43
Charlotte Williams
3 Reconstructing Urban Social Work 71
Charlotte Williams
4 Social Work Research and the City 97
Charlotte Williams
v
vi Contents
Part II Social Issues and the City: New Directions
in Practice 121
Charlotte Williams
5 Superdiversity and the City 127
Dirk Geldof
6 Ageing in Urban Environments: Challenges and
Opportunities for a Critical Social Work Practice 151
Chris Phillipson and Mo Ray
7 Disabling Cities and Repositioning Social Work 173
Michael J. Prince
8 Care, Austerity and Resistance 193
Donna Baines
9 Homelessness in Western Cities 215
Carole Zuff erey
10 Living on the Edge: New Forms of Poverty and
Disadvantage on the Urban Fringe 235
Sonia Martin and Robin Goodman
11 Educating for Urban Social Work 259
Susie Costello and Julian Raxworthy
Conclusion: Urban Themes in Twenty-First Century
Social Work 281
Charlotte Williams
Index 289
Notes on Contributors
Editor’s Biography
Charlotte Williams, OBE i s Professor and Deputy Dean Social Work
at RMIT University, Melbourne, Australia. She is a qualifi ed social
worker and has over 25 years of experience in social work education. Her
research is underpinned by an interdisciplinary body of theory drawing
largely on comparative social policy, critical race theory, social geogra-
phy, social development, and theories of migration and multiculturalism.
She has extensively theorised issues of place, locality and nationhood as
they impact on welfare practices, particularly in relation to the racialisa-
tion or exclusion of minoritised groups. Her most recent publications
include: S ocial Work in a Diverse Society: Transformatory Practice with
Ethnic Minority Individuals and Communities (with M. Graham) (Policy
Press, 2016); the Special Issue of the B ritish Journal of Social Work entitled
‘A World on the Move’: Migration, Mobilities and Social Work (2014)
(co-edited with M. Graham); and Race and Ethnicity in a Welfare Society
(2010) (with M. Johnson), Open University Press.
vii
viii Notes on Contributors
Contributors’ Biographies
Donna Baines is Professor of Social Work and Social Policy at the
University of Sydney. Professor Baines has published extensively on man-
agerialism and restructuring social service work under neo-liberalism, and
now under austerity. She also publishes in the area of anti-oppressive and
critical approaches to social work practice. Professor Baines has published
recently on care work in the Journal of Social Work , C ritical Social Policy
and the J ournal of Industrial Relations, and is working on the third edition
of her best-selling (in Canada) edited collection Doing Anti-Oppressive
Practice, Social Justice Social Work (Fernwood, 2017).
Susie C ostello is a Senior Lecturer in Social Work in the School of Global
Urban and Social Studies at RMIT University in Melbourne, Australia.
Her practice background was in family social work in child protection,
family support, disability and psychiatry in health and institutional set-
tings. Her last role as a social work practitioner was with the City of Yarra
in Victoria, where alongside where responding to the welfare needs of
families, council social workers contributed to the planning and infra-
structure of the city, for example, participating in the implementation of
the Disability Discrimination Action Plan to upgrade streets and services
across the city and advocating for safety for vulnerable residents as part
of the city’s Community Safety Strategy. Susie’s publication and research
interests include violence against women, indigenous homelessness,
cross-cultural education and international social work. She leads RMIT’s
initiatives in contributing to urban planning in cities in Myanmar.
Dirk Geldof is Professor at the Faculty of Design Sciences of the
University of Antwerp (Belgium), lecturer and researcher at the Higher
Institute for Family Sciences (Odisee University College, Brussels)
and lecturer in Social Work at the Karel de Grote-University College
(Antwerp). He holds a PhD in Political and Social Sciences from the
University of Antwerp. In 2013, he published S uperdiversiteit. Hoe migra-
tie onze samenleving verandert (Acco, 5th edn, 2015). Th e English edition
Superdiversity in the Heart of Europe: Th e Belgian Case will be published
in January 2016 (Acco).
Notes on Contributors ix
Robin Goodman is Professor of Sustainability and Urban Planning and
Deputy Dean in the School of Global Urban and Social Studies at RMIT
University in Melbourne, Australia. Robin holds a BA (Hons) from La
Trobe University, and a Masters of Urban Planning and a PhD from the
University of Melbourne. She was the Director of RMIT’s Australian
Housing and Urban Research Institute (AHURI) Research Centre for
three years from 2010, and subsequently the inaugural Director of the
Centre for Urban Research. Robin has published widely on issues around
planning, public policy, sustainability and housing. She is co-author of
a forthcoming book entitled G rowing Pains: Planning Melbourne in the
21 st Century .
Sonia Martin i s a Lecturer and Programme Manager in Social Work
at RMIT University, where she teaches in the fi elds of social policy and
social research. Sonia has previously worked at the Universities of South
Australia, Adelaide and Melbourne and the Brotherhood of St Laurence
in the Research and Policy Centre. Her work on a large three-year ARC
Linkage grant at the University of Melbourne contributed to the award-
winning publication H alf a Citizen: Life on Welfare in Australia .
G rounded in the discipline of sociology, her research interests include
quantitative and qualitative analyses of poverty, inequality and social
exclusion; theoretical issues to do with agency, structure and ‘choice’, and
contemporary social policy arrangements and welfare reform.
Chris Phillipson is Professor of Sociology and Director of the Manchester
Interdisciplinary Collaboration for Research on Ageing (MICRA), based
at the University of Manchester, UK. Before moving to Manchester,
Phillipson held a variety of posts at Keele University, including Dean
of Research for the Social Sciences and Director of the Social Science
Research Institutes. He was also a Pro-Vice Chancellor for the University
and founded (in 1987) the Centre for Social Gerontology. He has pub-
lished extensively on a range of topics in the fi eld of ageing, including
work in the fi eld of family and community studies, transnational migra-
tion, social inclusion/exclusion, urban sociology and social theory. He is
the co-author of the Sage Handbook of Social Gerontology (Sage Books,
2010), Work, Health and Wellbeing (co-authored, Policy Press, 2012), and
