This journal typically works across a broad field, placing the focus on different layers of the context in which the work of the social professions is located. These include the structures and trends of macro level social, political and economic ideologies, the specific policy priorities that relate to particular groups, the organisational contexts in which services are located, and the micro level practice concerns and approaches.
The papers in this issue 19.5 pick up a wide range of contemporary themes across this range. We start with a cluster of work on organisations, management and the broader society structures and trends that create the social, economic and policy environment for practice. Tony Evans, Anne Marie Villumsen and Ole Steen Kristensen, Gary Spolander, Emilia Martinez-Brawley and Paz M.-B. Zorita, Peter Hendriks with Lia van Doorn and Hans van Ewijk, and Stig Elofsson with Tommy Lundström and Emelie Shanks all in different ways contribute understandings about what may be termed the macro and mezzo layers of context.
The second part of this collection of papers addresses contemporary issues within social work and social care practice with adults, thus enabling us to engage with more micro layers of our field. The work of Anne Mari Steigen with Ragnfrid Kogstad and Jan Kåre Hummelvoll, Linda Mossberg, and Gideon de Jong with Gert Schout, Ellen Meijer, Cornelis Mulder and Tineke Abma takes us into the realm of mental health provision. And finally Ulla Melin Emilsson, Francesca Alice Vianello, Gülsüm Çamur Duyan with Tarık Tuncay, Burcu Özdemir and Veli Duyan, and Majen Espvall and Peter Dellgran bring insights into contemporary practice with older people.
We will continue in the issue to follow, 19.6, with a collection of papers that address social policy and social work practice relating to children, young people and their families. Thus, the final two issues of this volume 19, taken together, provide a whole system overview of contemporary issues in the field. You will find within them much of interest, to inform and stimulate ongoing debate.