By Frank Browne and & Wes Shera.

Introduction

Social workers who practice in the field of adult mental health in Ireland are a distinct group of practitioners.  They are directly involved in both the successes and failures in the constantly changing environment of mental health policy and services.  With recent efforts to reform mental health care in Ireland, using a recovery paradigm, social workers have been the focus of many of the expectations for change.  This article refers to surveys done in 2002 and 2003 as a baseline and then presents the results of a recent survey June 2010 of adult mental health social workers to determine what they perceive as specific improvements in the system of mental health care and what they perceive as areas for further improvement. Click here to download the rest of the article..