Here we are dealing with reflective practice again. To Southampton for the launch of the book by myself and Gurid Aga Askeland (she from Norway, and yes she is – distantly – related to the family that produces aga stoves). The book argues that social workers (and people in palliative care come to that) need to understand how to cope with complexity. Our suggestions are critical reflection, cultural translation, knowledge validation (checking that the information you’re using is appropriate), developing strengths to deal with complexity, seeing yourself as piloting through chaos – that is, immense variability – look for the regularities, shift yourself progressively towards equality in what you do. It’s an Ashgate book, and cheaper from their website than from a bookshop: I reckon it’s got a reasonably clear explanation of what postmodernism, postcolonialism and globalisation is: worth the price for that alone.

Payne, M. and Askeland, G. A. (2008) Globalization and International Social Work: Postmodern Change and Challenge. Aldershot: Ashgate.
http://www.ashgate.com/default.aspx?page=637&calctitle=1&pageSubject=471&title_id=9407&edition_id=10065&history=default.aspx%3fpage%3d1249%26calctitle%3d1%26pageSubject%3d471

I argue that every social worker, indeed every professional, needs to understand social trends like globalisation and postmodernism if they are going to write court reports and help other professions and people affected by such trends. I often think that palliative care is a particularly postcolonialist. It has this philosophy that everyone who isn’t providing a palliative care service according to Western values and medical resources, is behindhand, whereas they might be just dealing with death and bereavement differently.