This book examines the impact of the aftermath of the 2008 economic crisis on social work and welfare systems. It outlines a new environment of austerity where reduced government commitment to tackling inequality and poverty is accompanied by increasingly punitive approaches to welfare. The authors present perspectives from ten different countries exploring the challenges that individual social workers and the profession more generally faces. The book argues that social work has to maintain and strengthen its commitment to key principles of social justice in the face of an extended period of welfare retrenchment and attacks on the social state.