This is the first study to compare advocacy, counselling and mediation as social processes of empowerment. It focuses on the user/worker partnership in care-giving services, and on the increasing imperative for cooperation between disciplines.

The contributors, who are all practitioners and leading authorities in their fields, examine the cultural and organizational contexts in which each of these media has developed as well as their potential usefulness in casework. The chapters cover a number of areas of casework that cause particular concern including cultural and community conflict, work and post-traumatic stress management and health decision making, describing each in a multidisciplinary setting with case illustrations.

Taking a socially inclusive approach, this book bases itself on principles which will promote positive action for social justice, as well as non-discriminatory, non-oppressive and non-stereotypical equal opportunities policies and practices.