Family policy

This book examines how pathologising ideas of failing, chaotic and dysfunctional families create a powerful consensus that Britain is in the grip of a ‘parent crisis’ and are used to justify increasingly punitive state policies.

The book aims to show that, in the 21st century, it is possible to live, love, form a family without sex, without children, without a shared home, without a partner, without a working husband, without a heterosexual orientation or without a "biological" sexual body.

This book examines the nature and meaning of 'empowerment' in the child welfare context using the family group conference approach to decision making in child welfare and protection. The authors evaluate the FGC approach so that current practice can be improved and lessons learned for other areas of work with children and families.

This book uses a wide range of international case studies from the Global South to examine the stark repercussions of colonial conquest on children’s lives and childhood policy today. Liebel shows the work that we must do to decolonize childhoods globally and ensure that children’s rights are better promoted and protected.

This book focuses on the drive towards increasingly integrated ways of working in children’s services across the UK. The new edition of this bestselling textbook critically examines the potential and reality of closer ‘working together’, asking whether such new ways of working will be able to respond more effectively to the needs of children.

Drawing on the qualitative research findings, this book develops a new framework to provide a useful analytical tool for academics and practitioners working with children and families to make sense of young people’s experiences of parental separation and divorce and puts forward suggestions for improving support for children in the future.

Covering a wide range of subjects from non-resident fathers to father engagement in child protection, this major contribution to the field offers unique insights into how to research fathers and fatherhood in contemporary society.

How can we support children’s and young people’s mental wellbeing in a digital age? This essential guide for improving wellbeing offers practical ideas for parents/carers and professionals working with children.

A vital challenge to the internationally accepted policy and practice consensus that intervention to shape parenting in the early years, underpinned by interpretations of brain science, is the way to prevent disadvantage.

This book examines the relationship between health and domestic violence. In a qualitative study of the attitudes of health professionals and the women with whom they come into contact, it gives voice to a range of issues which urgently need to be addressed providing guidance for training and practice, as well as recommendations for policy makers.

This book explores the policy and practice possibilities offered by a social model of child protection. Drawing on developments in mental health and disability studies, it examines the conceptual, political and practice implications of this new framework.

This book offers an analysis of the limitations of child attachment theory as the basis for decision-making in child welfare practice, examining controversies and offering a new pedagogy that is responsive to the changing dynamics of contemporary families.