Social Work with Latinos

Book excerpt: The focus on Latinos in the United States has generally overlooked key social-economic-political dimensions that are not only growing in importance, but may ultimately hold an important key to how well this group does in the immediate and distant future in the country. The approximate ten-year period since this text's initial publication has witnessed an increase in scholarship and new social-political-economic developments regarding this population group. Social Work with Latinos, Second Edition captures these advances and adds to the existing body of work in this area. In particular, this revised edition provides an up-to-date demographic profile; identifies the rewards and challenges for the development of social work interventions focused on Latinos; includes a conceptual foundation from which to develop social work strategies for outreach, engagement, service-provision, and evaluation; features 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; and provides recommendations for social work education, research and practice.