There is no one right way to do social work. That is the clear message after many years of research, theory, conceptualization and debate. For a long time, social work was caught in the trap of the modernist search for certainty, that there must be one right answer, one best way to do it, or one unified grand ‘theory of everything’. Different theories would compete with each other for supremacy. The search for this holy grail has now been recognized as futile. Social work is a human activity, about people working with people. Both the people who do the working (the social workers) and the people with whom they work display the human frailties, contradictions, weaknesses and imperfections that are a part of the human condition; they do not fit a single stereotype, and steadfastly refuse to fit neatly into any of the categories that theoreticians, policy makers and managers try to create for them