Summary a phrase-by-phrase guide

Reviewer's Comments

English/Spanish Child Abuse Phrase Book

reviewed for THE NEW SOCIAL WORKER by Linda M. Grobman, editor, THE NEW SOCIAL WORKER

English/Spanish Child Abuse Phrase Book: Family-Social Worker Interview Manual/Manual Bilingue Para Familias, by Edward Stresino, 2002. University of New Mexico Press, Albuquerque, 120 pp., $11.95.

The idea of the English/Spanish Child Abuse Phrase Book is simple. It provides a word by word, phrase by phrase, guide to conducting a child abuse interview--in Spanish. It goes through each individual phrase in a typical interview, and every conceivable question a child abuse investigator might ask, and presents side-by-side English and Spanish versions.

Imagine that you are a social worker on a home visit to a family's home to check out a report of suspected child abuse. You get to the house and find that the family only speaks Spanish, but you need a little help with the language. You can look in this book and find that "It's about your child" translates to "Se trata de su niqo/niqa."

The book's sections include interviewing parents, interviewing children, vital data, medical exams, abuse evaluation, placement orientation, court orientation, child abuse regulations, and others. A key vocabulary section includes translations for parts of the body, family relationships, injuries, and symptoms.

Stresino has written this book based on his years of experience as a children's services worker in Emergency Response. The book has been used in child welfare training programs throughout California.

The English/Spanish Child Abuse Phrase Book is not a substitute for a working knowledge of conversational Spanish. After all, it does not provide translations for the answers to your interview questions--only the questions (and statements) themselves that you might commonly use.

What this book can do very effectively is get you up to speed quickly if you are new to bilingual (English/Spanish) social work. English-speaking social workers who work with Spanish-speaking families would do well to keep a copy of this book with them at all times.

Reviewed by Linda M. Grobman, ACSW, LSW, editor/publisher of THE NEW SOCIAL WORKER.