Interview: Lynn Davis on her new book, A Practical Guide to Fostering Law

“Foster carers play an absolutely crucial role in the child care system. The vast majority of looked after children live in foster care. Carers are there at the sharp end, dealing 24 hours a day, 7 days a week with all of the consequences of abuse, neglect or whatever family difficulties have led children to be looked after. Yet in spite of this, in my view foster carers are underpaid and often overlooked and under-appreciated.”

June 1, 2010Autism

Inmate to Artist: Jeanette Purkis’ Misadventures with Asperger Syndrome

“When I was young, I had no self-esteem and figured the difficulties my Asperger’s caused made it impossible for me to achieve anything. I gave up on myself and the world. Now that I am older, I realise that Asperger’s is probably the main reason that I have been able to achieve so much…”

May 27, 2010Counselling

Hilary Abrahams looks at long-term outcomes of survivors of domestic violence

Hilary Abrahams is an Honorary Research Fellow in the Violence Against Women Research Group at the University of Bristol. She has worked extensively on the support…

October 15, 2009Social work

Fergus McNeill and Monica Barry on Youth Offending and Youth Justice

“…the preoccupation with ‘youth’ is at the expense of ‘justice’. Too readily such systems exist or at least function so as to punish and to challenge individual young people rather than to question the extent to which the wider society is as much, if not more, to blame for the disadvantages they face.”

September 15, 2009Social work

David Carson: What can Social Workers do to avoid being criticised – or sued?

“I had asked my social work students what additional topics they would like me to lecture upon. As a law lecturer I had explained how they could be sued for negligence and how easily they, and their evidence, could be misrepresented in court. So I should not have been surprised when they said they wanted to know how to take decisions that would avoid liability…”