Robert Lee Barker (born 1937) is a psychotherapist, author, editor, and professor of social work. He is most noted as the creator and author of The Social Work Dictionary through its first five editions and has written 20 other textbooks in the fields of family therapy, behavioral dysfunctions, and legal-social issues. He was an early advocate and systematizer for the case management approach to delivering social services, for private practice in social work, and for the emerging field of forensic social work. Biography Robert Lee Barker was born July 19, 1937 in Tacoma, Washington, the oldest of four children. His mother worked as a waitress and his stepfather was a prison guard. During college and graduate school he worked in a variety of blue-collar jobs in canneries and paper mills. In one of those jobs, he was employed in a Veteran's Administration hospital as a psychiatric aide, which inspired his interest in working with people with mental and behavioral distresses. He graduated in 1959 from the University of Puget Sound in Tacoma, majoring in sociology and psychology before earning his Master of Social Work (MSW) from the University of Washington in Seattle. In 1961 he became a 2nd Lieutenant in the U.S. Air Force where he worked as a social work officer at Travis Air Force Base. He was a founder and first president of the Air Force Social Workers Association. The organization later published Barker's pamphlet, “Careers In Air Force Social Work.” In 1969 he completed his military service at Andrews Air Force Base in Washington D.C., attaining the rank of Major. As part of his military duties in the hospital Department of Psychiatry, he had to personally inform hundreds of families of Vietnam casualties of the deaths of their loved ones. Under an Air Force Institute of Technology scholarship he attended Columbia University in New York to earn his PhD, where his mentors included Robert K. Merton, Richard A. Cloward, Eveline M. Burns, and Florence Hollis. In his doctoral dissertation research he studied personnel patterns in mental hospitals. This work led to a grant from the U.S. Veterans Administration to determine how to utilize social work personnel more efficiently. His dissertation work led to his first published book, Differential Use of Social Work Manpower. In collaboration with Professor Thomas L. Briggs of Syracuse University, Barker wrote a series of books and monographs to deal with shortages in mental