Animals and social work : a moral introduction Upplaga 2011

Since the beginnings of the twentieth century social work has exhibited a thoroughgoing moral indifference to the needs and wellbeing of our fellow animals. This indifference is all the more remarkable given that animals have always been part and parcel of the human world within which social workers practice. Their invisibility is odder still given our own species embeddedness within the natural world. Social Work and Animals represents a pioneering contribution to the literature of social work ethics and moral philosophy. Lucidly and cogently arguing why it is that animals ought to matter morally to social workers, it engages in a sustained critique of the key moral principles that are deemed to underpin practice. It articulates an alternative moral principle that respects individuals irrespective of species membership. This principle informs a revised code of ethics, one which has profound theoretical and practical implications for social work and its practitioners.