The New Social Worker Vol. 20, No. 4, Fall 2013 | Page 35

Reviews Facilitative Leadership in Social Work Practice by Elizabeth M. Breshears and Roger Dean Volker. Springer Publishing Company, New York, 2013, 208 pages, $55.00 softcover. Somebody at Springer owes Breshears and Volker an apology for the mundane title of this wonderful little book. Eleven short chapters are accessible to undergraduate students and packed full of concise summaries of complex topics. The authors give the reader everything essential to revolutionizing the bane of employed existence—the meeting. Sprinkled with stories from their personal experience and appended with 18 specific techniques for use in revitalizing meetings, public forums, work teams, and task groups, this book belongs in the personal library of every social worker. A few exercises close every chapter for classroom use. The authors claim that facilitative leadership is “a fundamental skill for social workers” (p. xii). Like a group facilitator, a facilitative leader promotes inclusion and avoids the exercise of power over the group; but unlike a group facilitator, the facilitative leader is not necessarily neutral. This results in a potential conflict in which the facilitative leader is constantly balancing attention to the ongoing group processes with the need for group productivity, attention to content, and accountability to external authorities. The authors suggest that attendees practicing facilitative leadership will enhance any meeting, and I agree. One of the most interesting aspects of Breshears and Volker’s view of facilitative leadership is that it can be practiced in any meeting by anyone in attendance. The skills, techniques, and perspectives conjoined in the facilitative leader do not require position or title. Accordingly, the practice of facilitative leadership is thoroughly compatible with the ethics and values of the profession, the pragmatic realities associated with the modest status associated with social workers in a variety of practice contexts, and the profession’s commitment to improving life opportunities for our clients despite our limited access to resources. Breshears and Volker never use hyperbole to this extent, but after reading this book it is hard to imagine social work practice without facilitative leadership. A few chapters warrant specific acclaim because of the breadth of their content and brevity of their expression. Leadership Theories (Chapter 3) is one of the more heavily cited chapters. It provides a wealth of information about the historical trends and different perspectives regarding leadership. Building on these theories, Leadership Ethics for Social Workers (Chapter 4) not only relates leadership approaches to social work ethics, but also engages with the literature on power, oppression, and empowerment. Frankly, I have not read anything comparable to the clarity and conciseness of this chapter. Theoretical foundations continue in How Groups Work (Chapter 5) where the authors summarize group formation, group effectiveness, and the avoidance of groupthink. The book ends with six “how to” chapters to stimulate reflection and practice related to leadership, group organization, process observation, process intervention, evaluation of facilitative leadership, and recommendations from the authors’ experiences. I believe social work students and social workers lucky enough to stumble onto a copy of this book will hang onto it. It is a handy reference to a variety of group activities, but it is so much more than that. Group leaders will find it a self-help guide. Frustrated work teams will find it a diagnostic tool to understand what is going wrong. The chair of every committee can only hope that committee members are familiar with the content. I highly recommend that practitioners and students get a copy of this book and implement it in their practice. We will all be better off for doing so. Reviewed by Peter A. Kindle, Ph.D., CPA, LMSW, assistant professor, University of South Dakota, [email protected]. Treating Women With Substance Use Disorders During Pregnancy: A Comprehensive Approach to Caring for Mother and Child, by Hendree E. Jones and Karol Kaltenbach. Oxford University Press, New York, 2013, 210 pages, $55. Providing services to people diagnosed with substance use issues is a challenging enterprise for many new social workers, as most baccalaureate and master’s programs give a cursory overview of substance use issues within the curriculum. Students do not often think of specializing in providing services to pregnant women with substance use issues, yet this is an area social workers are likely to encounter. Substance use disorders often precede pregnancy. Simply abstaining from substances during pregnancy may be easier said than done, especially for women who have complicated histories with