One of the things that has fascinated me for decades now is the relationship between theory and practice. It has been sad over the years to encounter so many people who seem content to drive a wedge between the two of them - whether (a small but significant minority of) academics who are happy to explore theory without any consideration for its relevance to practice or the breed of practitioner who largely dismisses theory and prefers to just 'get on with the job' (totally oblivious to the fact that our practice is necesssarily premised on a knowledge base - a mixture of formal and informal theory). Perhaps one day our profession will have a much firmer grip on the idea that theory and practice are two sides of the same coin and that it is counterproductive to drive them apart. For me the key is to 'theorise practice' - that is, to start with practice and then draw on our theoretical understandings to make sense of the complex situations we need to wrestle with in social work, hence my latest book: Theorizing Social Work Practice http://astore.amazon.co.uk/neilthomp-21/.