Social Work with Children and Families

Drawing on Ireland’s experience of transforming law, policy and practice and combining theory with real-life experiences, this compelling book demonstrates how a progressive rights-based approach to child detention can be implemented.

Schools play a vital role in safeguarding children and young people, and this timely book examines how schools identify and respond to child protection concerns, and their engagement with local authority children’s services.

During adolescence, young people are exposed to a range of harms and risks beyond their family homes and this book assesses social care organisations’ safeguarding responses across 10 countries. The authors highlight key areas for service development and give insights into how these risks and harms can be responded to in the future.

This book shows how reflexive debate enhances childhood research. Expert contributors explore researchers’ identities, roles, boundaries and ethical governance, and use empirical international examples from a range of child-related issues to challenge conventions and raise standards.

This bestselling, fully updated textbook explores the relationship between the latest neuroscience and our understanding of child development from 0-18+, considering the links between brain development and social and cultural issues.

This key text offers the first overview of the strengths-based approach in social work from the UK perspective. Covering the five main models of strengths-based practice, with case studies and practical guidance on theory into practice, the text enables students and practitioners to apply the benefits in their own social work practice.

Gender-based violence is explored from the perspective of young women in this essential guide for those working with young people.

Bringing together a range of perspectives from practice, lived experience and academia, this is an accessible and timely guide to children’s services reform. Critically considering the impact of the MacAlister Review, the book highlights both the positive and negative aspects of reform, before setting out alternative policy and practice directions.

Drawing from longitudinal research, this book shows how the perspectives of people who have been in care can help us redefine the concept of family. Through a narrative analysis of the complexity of family lives, the author challenges the idea that some families are ‘ordinary’, while others are troubled, problematic and ‘other’.

The Cleveland child sexual abuse scandal was not the scandal we thought. Beatrix Campbell shows how medical evidence of childhood rape identified by pioneering paediatricians was deemed credible but ‘dangerous’. This secret has framed policy making and public opinion and has had consequences for children, professionals, justice and the state.

Based on the findings of the Innovate Project, this book asks how services can be re-envisioned and transformed through innovation. The authors offer insights into the core conditions necessary for socially just and practice-congruent social care innovation that responds to the distinctive, contemporary safeguarding concerns facing young people.

This fully-updated, accessible textbook considers the theory and practice of critical social work in addressing inequality and social injustice. It is essential reading for students, educators and practitioners of child and family social work.