Book Review: Client Violence in Social Work Practice: Prevention, Intervention, and Research

• Author: Mark S. Davis
• DOI: 10.1177/0734016806291178
• Published date: 01 September 2006
• Date: 01 September 2006
• Subject Matter: Articles

community-based, battered women’s organization and with community leaders and mem-

bers. Chapter 23 evaluates the effectiveness of the Job Readiness Program, which was

offered to battered women in seven shelters, by examining these women who had left

shelters for as little as 3 months and as much as 1 year.

The book’s major contribution includes the efforts that have compiled a large collection

of articles in the context of structural inequality by uniting multiple levels of violence and

by proposing community-based, culturally sensitive, alternative approaches to end vio-

lence. The book’s comprehensive approach to domestic violence is different from other

domestic violence books. The editors clearly send the message that intersections of

race/ethnicity, class, gender, sexuality, and immigrant status differentiate women’s situa-

tions, experiences, and identifications of domestic violence. This message is explicitly

echoed in each chapter. The book also shows how the solutions and challenges differ

depending on each group’s access to socioeconomic, cultural, and structural factors, as well

as immigration status. Yet many chapters in Part 3 give less support to criminal justice

approaches because they do not address women’s economic, social, and political disadvan-

tages and because state violence is intimately connected to domestic violence. The book

explicitly demonstrates that we must understand how violence at personal and state levels

affects communities of color and poor women in applying the best strategies to ending vio-

lence at all levels. I highly recommend this book for those who conduct research on vio-

lence against women, specifically women of color and poor women. Also, those who work

with victims of domestic violence who are interested in learning more about domestic

violence issues or who seek a social justice framework to end injustice will benefit from

this book.

Yok o B aba

San Jose State University, CA

Newhill, C. E. (2003). Client Violence in Social Work Practice: Prevention, Intervention,

and Research. New York and London: Guilford, 2003.

DOI: 10.1177/0734016806291178

Those of us who have experienced the rage and aggression of clients know well the myr-

iad reactions such an episode evokes. Formal training does little to prepare one for this, nor

can most organizations adequately cope with the aftermath. Thus, many of us who have

worked in human services will wonder why a book like Client Violence in Social Work

Practice has not appeared before now. Christina Newhill has stepped up and filled a major

void, not just in the social work literature but in the literature on workplace violence in gen-

eral. Her book, which is subtitled “Prevention, Intervention, and Research,” could have eas-

ily been subtitled “A Survival Manual.”

Newhill examines client violence from just about every possible angle. The reader learns

how to recognize the early signs of brewing trouble. As prickly a topic as the prediction of

violence is, the author does not avoid it but includes the best of what we know clinically

Book Reviews 259