Introduction

We start our review of the contribution of religion and religious organisations to social welfare by looking first at the social work profession. It is also apt to begin with social work because the empirical research which this book draws on will help illustrate fundamental characteristics about the nature of religious welfare provision and social action which will help illuminate the concept of ways of being proposed in this book.

Together with education, social work is a central plank of religious welfare activity. In the British academic literature, it is the subject of social work that has surpassed its cousin, social policy, in engaging with the implications of religion and spirituality for human wellbeing. In part, this may be explained by the physical proximity of social work to people's lives and the increased need to pay attention to minority ethnic populations, some of who are among the poorest and least well-integrated populations in the UK. The previous chapter has already outlined that there are high levels of deprivation among the Muslim population, so it is not a surprise that one of the more recent social work publications in the UK is in relation to Islam (see Ashencaen-Crabtree et al, 2008).