Social Work and Child Abuse: Still Walking the Tightrope?

by Merrick; Dave

• ISBN13: 9780415354141
• ISBN10: 0415354145
• Edition: 2nd
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2006-11-20
• Publisher: Routledge

Summary

Social Work and Child Abuse challenges the conventional views of this well documented topic. Instead of concerning itself with the ways in which the task of preventing and detecting child abuse can be more effectively undertaken, this book presents a critical analysis of the task itself as it is currently conceived in the light of the 1989 Children Act.There have been a number of public inquiries, often after tragic deaths, in which social workers have been severely criticised, and as a result the social work profession itself has been stigmatised. David Merrick argues that it is the statutory duty of social workers to prevent and detect child abuse and also to rehabilitate children with abusing parents/caretakers that at times will produce situations in which social workers are focused to a greater extent on any one of these duties at the expense of the others. This leaves them vulnerable to the periodic charge that they are either intervening to too great or too little an extent.This is an insightful and highly topical text that is essential reading for all professionals in social and probation work, and students in social work, social policy and criminology.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements	vii
Introduction to 2006 edition	1	(6)
A key question	1	(2)
Outline of chapters	3	(4)
1 Teaching or preaching?	7	(29)
Radical social work	7	(5)
State social work and the working class	12	(6)
In and against the state	18	(2)
The tasks of socialists and the tasks of social work	20	(16)
2 Questions of theory	36	(24)
Discourse analysis and social work	36	(13)
The utility of the concept of ideology	49	(11)
3 Still walking the tightrope?	60	(28)
4 The 1989 Children Act: a significant shift?	88	(27)
Report of the inquiry into child abuse in Cleveland	89	(26)
5 A stitch in time: the men from the ministry	115	(29)
Social-work texts and the 1933 Act	115	(2)
The 1933 Children and Young Persons Act	117	(18)
The 1948 Children Act	135	(9)
6 The 1960's and the short-lived 'triumph' of treatment	144	(28)
The Ingleby Report and the Children and Young Persons Act 1963	145	(16)
The child, the family and the young offender	161	(4)
Children in trouble – a discourse of compromise	165	(7)
7 Moral panic and Maria Colwell	172	(29)
The role played by moral panic	172	(9)
Report of the Committee of Inquiry into the care and supervision provided in relation to Maria Colwell	181	(20)
8 Back to the future	201	(17)
Conclusions from the analysis of the various documents considered	201	(5)
In summary	206	(1)
Back to the future	207	(11)
Appendix: a counter-discourse involving a number of young people who had either recently left care or were still in care at the time	218	(11)
Bibliography	229	(6)
Index	235