Social Work with Latinos

Features

• Features an up-to-date demographic profile, including projections that focus on key factors of significance for the social work profession.
• Identifies the rewards and challenges for the development of social work interventions (micro, mezzo, macro) focused on Latinos.
• Provides an updated conceptual foundation from which to develop social work strategies for outreach, engagement, service-provision, and evaluation.
• Uses a series of case illustrations to highlight how cultural competency/humility can unfold to better reach this population group.
• Grounds the Latino experience within a social, economic, cultural, and political context.
• Offers a series of recommendations for social work education, research and practice.

About the Author(s)

Melvin Delgado, PhD, Professor of Social Work & Co-Director, Center on Addictions Research and Services (CARS), Boston University School of Social Work. Dr. Delgado has devoted his professional career to practice and scholarly writing on urban communities with a special focus on Latinos and other people of color.

Reviews

"Melvin Delgado is one of a select few social work scholars capable of competently taking on the Herculean task of writing a book on social work practice with a diverse population. In this second edition of his 2007 book by the same title, Professor Delgado skillfully, sensitively, and humbly updates the original textEL. Dr. Delgado presents a practice framework founded on Latino cultural assets. Such an approach moves readers away from a deficit narrative pervasive in the professional literature and embraces a strengths orientation long proclaimed by social work." --Journal of Teaching in Social Work

"The relevance of Delgado's book comes at a time in history, perhaps more than any time before, when we need to address Latinos in the United States with substantial nuance. It is not just the diversity of national origins, but the generations of each group and where they have set roots, as well as their economic circumstances. It is not just immigration trauma and acculturational stress, but also the separation of families through deportation. It is not just children left behind and losing parents to deportation, but the multi-generational impact on Latino families and their communities. This new edition advances Delgado's message and provides an updated and expanded volume for the contemporary social worker." -- Luis H. Zayas, PhD, Dean, School of Social Work; Robert Lee Sutherland Chair in Mental Health and Social Policy, The University of Texas at Austin

"In the time period since this book's first edition, the United States, and the political, economic, and social situation of Latinos within it, has profoundly changed. To be effective, social workers require a knowledge base that includes an up-to-date investigation into the current context that Latinos are living in. . . . In this book, one of the foremost Latino experts in the field guides the reader through the demographic and cultural complexity of the Latino population, and cogently synthesizes a wide body of literature using an ethnographic approach to enliven the findings. It constructively focuses on community and cultural assets such as remittances that create substantial financial capital flows among Latinos, and aspirational desires that motivate Latino achievements as they pursue their various interpretations of the American Dream. I highly recommend it." -- Gregory Acevedo, PhD, MS, Associate Professor, Graduate School of Social Service, Fordham University

"Social Work with Latinos is a significant and comprehensive contribution to the field. Just as the Latino community is astoundingly diverse and growing rapidly, Delgado's treatment is simultaneously nuanced and expansive. He locates the relevance of this book squarely within the diversity of the Latino community: Latinos represent dozens of countries, cultural backgrounds, and racial identities . . . In light of this diversity, Delgado suggests that social work with Latinos will challenge the profession to think differently about race, identity formation, remittances, and immigration policy . . . This book is necessarily ambitious in scope but it is grounded in praxis, a signature balance across Delgado's scholarship. As such, it is critically important for the field of social work today, both for social work students and practitioners." -- Benjamin J. Roth, PhD, MSW, Assistant Professor, College of Social Work, University of South Carolina

"Professor Delgado's expansion on his thesis on the cultural assets paradigm provides today's human service practitioner with a conceptually sound basis for advocating for social justice and equality for Latinos." -- Edgar Colon, DSW, LCSW, Professor of Social Work, Southern Connecticut State University