"Health, Welfare and Practice" is a textbook and training manual for health and social work students and practitioners. It brings together key issues in the provision and use of caring services. Readers are encouraged to make links on issues which cut across the occupational divisions between and within health and welfare. The book should be useful to those wishing to bring about more inter-professional collaboration. Roles and relationships are central themes: their complexity is stressed, as is their relevance for a better understanding of practice. The book is divided into four sections: "experience and expertise" questions the distinctions between health and welfare occupations, and informal helping roles; "diversity and discrimination" explores different approaches for practitioners to develop sensitivity to diverse experiences and to challenge unfairly discriminatory responses, attitudes and stereotyped assumptions; "empowerment and power" examines the potential for user empowerment, given the imbalance in power between workers and users; "reflecting on practice" provides a series of accounts from users and providers of health and social care, which bring the preceding section into sharp focus. "Health, Welfare and Practice" is the set book for the Open University Course K663 Roles and Relationships: Perspectives on Practice".