Download or read book Utopian Thinking and Social Work written by Chris Horsell and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2025-02-03 with total page 165 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book highlights the importance of employing imaginative sensibilities to thinking and action in social work and social policy practice. Exploring the question of how ideas about utopia and utopian method can be used in social work practice and policy practice to address social inequalities, it shows that central to this critique is the argument that contemporary social policy responses and subsequent social work interventions to a range of policy problems (e.g. homelessness, poverty, family violence) need to acknowledge the failure of dominant neoliberal discourses in addressing these issues. The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted and, in many ways, exacerbated existing inequalities, and the post-pandemic future provides opportunities to put utopian ideas into action. Showing how utopian thinking can challenge fundamental assumptions regarding welfare dependency and unitary identities in policy settings, this book will be of interest to all scholars, students and professionals working in social work and social policy.