This subject introduces students to professional communication skills and working in direct practice in case work, family work, and case management settings, as well as working in teams, organisations, agencies, services or providers and communicating across the sector. Students will demonstrate macro and micro communication skills, and active listening, within professional and cross-cultural contexts, through application to role plays and case study simulations. Professional communication skills are foundational for social work practice. Further to communication skills, this subject explores and evaluates case management practice, how case work and family work integrates within the framework of case management, and the structured steps in the case management process across a range of practice fields. The history, policy and political framework, and the implementation of case management across a range of practice fields will be critiqued, particularly normative discourses of blame the victim, dysfunctional families, best interests of the child and other deficit narratives. Students will design and develop care plans as part of the case management process, which incorporates assessment and interventions, in collaboration with services users. To do so, students will explore the lived experience of service users and the co-design of care plans using the case management process. Thereby, students will develop knowledge and skills in undertaking holistic social assessment, developing care plans, coordinating services for service users, monitoring and evaluating care plans, and transitioning service users to independent and interdependent living.