This book challenges the current child protection culture and calls for family-minded humane practice where children are understood as relational beings, parents are recognized as people with needs and hopes and families as carrying extraordinary capacities for care and protection.

The state is increasingly experienced as both intrusive and neglectful, particularly by those living in poverty, leading to loss of trust and widespread feelings of alienation and disconnection. Against this tense background, this innovative book argues that child protection policies and practices have become part of the problem, rather than ensuring children’s well-being and safety. Building on the ideas in the best-selling Re-imagining child protection and drawing together a wide range of social theorists and disciplines, the book: • Challenges existing notions of child protection, revealing their limits; • Ensures that the harms children and families experience are explored in a way that acknowledges the social and economic contexts in which they live; • Explains how the protective capacities within families and communities can be mobilised and practices of co-production adopted; • Places ethics and human rights at the centre of everyday conversations and practices.

This book offers an analysis and summary of the uses, abuses and limitations of attachment theory in contemporary child welfare practice. Analysing the primary science and drawing on the authors’ original empirical work, the book shows how attachment theory can distort and influence decision-making. It argues that the dominant view of attachment theory may promote a problematic diagnostic mindset, whilst undervaluing the enduring relationships between children and adults. The book concludes that attachment theory can still play an important role in child welfare practice, but the balance of the research agenda needs a radical shift towards a sophisticated understanding of the realities of human experience to inform ethical practice.

Exploring the current and historical tensions between liberal capitalism and indigenous models of family life, Ian Kelvin Hyslop argues for a new model of child protection in Aotearoa New Zealand and other parts of the Anglophone world. He puts forward the case that child safety can only be sustainably advanced by policy initiatives which promote social and economic equality and from practice which takes meaningful account of the complex relationship between economic circumstances and the lived realities of service users.

This volume examines existing research documenting racial disproportionality and disparities in child welfare systems, the underlying factors that contribute to these phenomena and the harms that result at both the individual and community levels. It reviews multiple forms of interventions designed to prevent and reduce disproportionality, particularly in states and jurisdictions that have seen meaningful change. With contributions from authorities and leaders in the field, this volume serves as the authoritative volume on the complex issue of child maltreatment and child welfare. It offers a central source of information for students and practitioners who are seeking understanding on how structural and institutional racism can be addressed in public systems.

There is no doubt that parenting is a roller coaster of an adventure that presents its fair share of challenges. In Parenting the Child You Have, author Aypril Porter uses Human Design to teach readers how to navigate its twists and turns while also creating a closer, richer relationship with their children. Parenting The Child You Have teaches you how to understand and appreciate your child's uniqueness, while also seeing how you differ from each other. As a result, parents can be the best version of themselves while helping children stand tall in their knowledge of who they came here to be. Porter's gentle, supportive wisdom enables children to be seen, heard, and valued for who they truly are, allowing them to navigate the world from a deep inner wisdom. Parenting The Child You Have will help you find more compassion for your children and all of the people in your life, especially those whose habits drive you crazy!

Recent Serious Case Reviews into child deaths have concluded that social workers attention is drawn away from the child by demands placed on them by the adults, organisational structures and systems. This book repositions social work thinking and practice by placing the child's lived experience at the centre of its illustrative examples and cases.

Can we re-imagine divine power as deeply related to the changing world? Can we re-imagine the creation of the world as an ongoing process of co-creation in which every individual from particles of atoms to human beings plays a part? Can we re-imagine Goddess/God as the most relational of all relational beings? Can we re-imagine the world as the body of Goddess/God? If we can, then we can understand the deeper meaning of female images of divine power, including Goddess, God-She, Sophia, and Shekhina. Many traditional understandings of divine power begin with thinly disguised rejections of the female body and connection to the natural world. Women theologians from Jewish, Christian, Goddess, and other traditions are re-imagining divine and human power as embodied, embedded in a changing world, and deeply related to all beings in the web of life. Drawing on the work of process philosopher Charles Hartshorne - whose insights deserve a wider hearing - Carol P. Christ offers intellectual foundations for deeply held feelings about the meanings of female images of divine power. Her gift is the ability to make complex ideas seem simple and radically new ideas seem familiar. This book is addressed to everyone who has ever wondered about the implications of re-imagining God as female.

As the government continues to open up child protection and social work in England to a commercial market place, what is the social cost of privatising public services? And what effect has the failure of previous privatisations had on their provision? This book, by best-selling author and expert social worker Ray Jones, is the first to tell the story of how crucial social work services, including those for families and children, are now being out-sourced to private companies. Detailing how the failures of previous privatisations have led to the deterioration of services for the public, it shows how this trend threatens the safety and wellbeing of vulnerable children and disabled adults.

What role does emotion play in child and family social work practice? In this book, researcher Matthew Gibson reviews the role of shame and pride in social work, providing invaluable new insights from the first study undertaken into the role of these emotions within professional practice. The author demonstrates how these emotions, which are embedded within the very structures of society but experienced as individual phenomena, are used as mechanism of control in relation to both professionals themselves and service users. Examining the implications of these emotional experiences in the context of professional practice and the relationship between the individual, the family and the state, the book calls for a more humane form of practice, rooted in more informed policies that take in to consideration the realities and frailties of the human experience.