Social Work Now, Issue 39, pages 15-20.
Most social workers, wherever they work, deal with complex life situations in their practice. If situations were not difficult in various ways or complex in their ramifications, people would often manage them without calling on help from a social worker. This paper focuses on the implications of the complexity of the situations that social workers deal with for the way in which they use theory in their practice. I argue that social work theory does not adequately guide social workers’ practice in such complex situations. They need to incorporate a range of additional knowledge and skill to make good use of practice theory.