Perhaps you might like to read this: It's a review of my latest book
available here: www.another-way.co.uk:

"I was reading a restaurant review recently and the critic opened his piece
with the statement that he wasn't going to like the restaurant. The name was
a bit naff and the decor grim. But it turned out to be a hit. I felt the
same about this book. Many years in the academic world can do terrible
things to you, including the provision of a cynical element I try hard to
manage. Hamer has managed to write a book about working with people which
reignites the joy we all felt when we we began in joining one of the people
professions. But in the world of public service it's not been easy these
last few years. Battered by reduced resources, privatisation and the mania
of externally imposed performance indicators which result in agencies often
hitting the target but missing the point, we have allowed ourselves to
become deskilled, demotivated and less humane. But don't despair. This
little book offers genuine hope for those of us who want to recapture the
humanity of social work in particular and promoting social wellbeing in
general. It's not a self-help book in the traditional sense, but Hamer does
manage to provide some astute and meaningful guidance to better, more
fulfilling practice. Essentially this is about doing our work barefoot, not
in heavy boots - in other words, treading lightly, being authentic and
working with love. Love? Hamer uses the word a lot, but in these harsh times
it;'s almost a value we no longer talk about. His book is a refreshing
discourse on regaining the soul of social work by becoming more authentic
people ourselves. He acknowledges where we are now in the human services,
but encourages us to see beyond the mess and "find the spirit in the
mundane, the sacred in the ordinary, the specialness in the individual" and
offers a vision of social well-being that draws on the uniqueness of worker
and client. For Hamer, good practice is about the worker leaving no trace of
his or her passing, but working creatively with people. Work done without
creativity, he says, "is simply brutality".



It' a practical book as well as offerring an intellectual challenge to the
way we think about modern social work. It's a good read and, who knows, it
could be the start of social work ridding itself of its corporate dullness
and becoming the exciting, creative profession that seduced many of us in
the first place.



John Bates, Liverpool Hope University

in Well-Being, Promoting Social and Workplace Welfare.



Mark Hamer
www.another-way.co.uk


-- 
Mark Hamer
www.another-way.co.uk