About Us

The CA+SW network is a group of academics and practitioners from different countries and with different backgrounds, brought together by our shared interest in the application of conversation analysis to the study of social work. While there are many aspects to social work, and it is done in a variety of ways in different settings, we believe that talk is always a defining feature of practice – social workers talk to parents, to children, to people with mental health problems and learning disabilities, to those with alcohol and substance misuse problems, to other professionals, and to each other and their supervisors. Social workers talk about their work and their talk is work. Conversation analysis offers a unique way of understanding this central feature of social work practice and the difference it makes for people using services.