Book Review: Writing for social work by Lucy Rai

Lucy Rai has written a book aimed at helping student social workers with the task of writing in whatever context needed. The book is divided into two sections, one covering academic writing, the other writing in social work practice. This may be a helpful way of dividing the book in terms of not being overwhelmed by the content but, in practice, it is difficult to separate the two purposes as illustrated by Rai when she comments “in both contexts you will need to review possible sources of evidence, select what to include or draw on and then synthesise this information into one coherent document” (p. 126).