Collections

Open Textbooks for Social Work  by various (Various CC licences).

A collection of openly licensed textbook from a variety of publishers and projects about or related to social work.

Supplementary Materials

A Toolkit for Teaching Communication Skills in Social Work by Kelly Allison, and Marie Nightbird (CC BY-NC).

A resource for any instructor who teaches communication skills in either a face-to-face or online environment. It includes five videos demonstrating basic communication skills and a teaching guide for instructors.

Fanshawe College Personal Support Worker Clinical Professional Practice Resource Hub by Klaske Rheubottom, RN, BScN, MScN (CC-BY-NC-SA).

This Open Education Resource (OER) textbook was created to provide a resource for Personal Support Worker Students, Clinical Instructors, Clinical Advisors, and PSW Preceptors. This resource hub will act as a guide for the Clinical Professional Practice experiences in the Personal Support Worker program at Fanshawe College. [Published 2025 by Fanshawe College.]

Textbooks

Ah-ha! Preparing for the next steps in your social work journey by mrothday (CC-BY-NC-SA).
A practice guide for a senior internship in social work. The content included in this OER is intended to provide you with some basic ideas and strategies and integrate content you’ve learned in your social work courses. This OER was written for Metropolitan State University social work students, with application to internships and career preparedness for students across the country.

Basic Social Work Interviewing Skills and Techniques: A Workbook for Application by Victoria Venable-Edwards and Becky Anthony (CC-BY-NC-SA).

This workbook was originally created in 2016 to accompany a two credit undergraduate basic interviewing skills course at Salisbury University’s School of Social Work. The authors, who also teach the course, struggled to find an affordable textbook option for the course that was brief, relevant, and provided application opportunities to support students’ learning. Therefore, an inexpensive self-published version of this workbook was created for the course! The authors updated the workbook almost every year to reflect feedback from students, lessons learned from its usage, and changes in the field of social work.

Childhood Experiences of Family Violence Among Racialized Immigrant Youth: Case Studies by Purnima George; Archana Medhekar; Ferzana Chaze; Bethany Osborne; Sophia Schmitz; Allyson Nodin; and Gillian Grant (CC BY-NC-ND).

The book provides narratives of the direct and indirect experiences of family violence, its impacts and survival by racialized immigrant youth in their childhood. Envisioned to serve as a training tool for human service professionals, the book, “Childhood experiences of family violence among racialized immigrant youth: Case studies,” provides narratives of the direct and indirect experiences of family violence, its impacts and survival by racialized immigrant youth in their childhood. The case narratives have been constructed from the phenomenological interviews conducted with twelve racialized immigrant youth as they described and interpreted their experiences of violence. Guided by theoretical frameworks such as Anti-Colonialism, Critical Race Theory, a rights-based approach to children and Anti-Oppressive practice, with concepts of the Best Interest of the Child and Coercive Control, the narratives shed light on how, in the case of racialized immigrant children, their experiences of family violence are complicated by systemic violence. In bringing to light the role of systemic violence, the book provides a new direction to effectively address family violence in the case of racialized immigrant children.

Child Maltreatment: An Introductory Guide With Case Studies  by Susan Loosley and Jen Johnson (CC-BY-NC-SA).
This guide provides an overview of the different types of abuse, including signs to look for when a child is being abused or neglected. Legal responsibilities to identify and report suspected child abuse are also presented. This resource also contains case studies with interactive questions that allow for theory to be applied to practice.

Rural and Northern Social Work Practice: Canadian Perspectives by Bonnie Jeffery and Nuelle Novik  (CC BY).

This book highlights the contextual foundation of social work practice with rural and northern communities by addressing the importance of place using anti-oppressive perspectives. Practice competencies are presented, including an emphasis on trauma- and violence-informed approaches and the importance of addressing the mental wellness of social workers practicing in these communities. The book explores selected areas of social work practice including abuse and intimate partner violence, mental health issues and addictions, newcomers and immigrant populations, older adults, and child protection work.
Understanding Child Maltreatment  by Jen Johnson, Susan Loosley (CC-BY-NC-SA).

This guide provides an overview of the different types of abuse, including signs to look for when a child is being abused or neglected. Legal responsibilities to identify and report suspected child abuse are also presented.

Understanding Homelessness in Canada  by Kristy Buccieri; James Davy; Cyndi Gilmer; and Nicole Whitmore (CC BY-NC-ND).

Have you ever wondered about why homelessness exists in Canada? This book brings together lived experience representation and the most recent research to explore homelessness in Canada, from a range of different perspectives. Readers are challenged to think about homelessness from various academic viewpoints, including the fields of Indigenous and Canadian Studies, Mental Health and Public Health Studies, Population Studies, Social Sciences, and Health Sciences. The authors pose seemingly simple questions and then, through the use of real life scenarios, embedded interview videos, artwork, and interactive activities, demonstrate how the answers are actually rather complex.

Websites

Open Social Work  by Kimberly Pendell and Matthew DeCarlo (CC BY-NC-SA).

A collaborative project that addresses open education, open access, open science, and the practices that support them.

Open Social Work Education  by various (CC BY-NC-SA).

Open Social Work Education (OSWE) is dedicated to increasing the availability and adoption of OER in social work by publishing open textbooks, conducting OER research, curating resources, and conducting research and advocacy.

Media Attributions

• Canada Map Icon by Icons8 (CC BY-ND).
• BC Map by Adamwashere (CC BY-NC-SA).
• Sask map by Wikimedia Commons (public domain).