Written for professionals, this text examines the complex nature of child sexual abuse cases and current social work practice, exploring the problems encountered by local authority social workers who are required to intervene in families to protect children. Using material from 40 case stduies, Brian Corby describes how the cases were referred in the light of the Cleveland recommendations, and analyzes the strengths and weaknesses of the response of the statutory welfare agencies. He also studies the historical background to child protection, and the curious ambivalence of society's attitude to cases of child sexual abuse.;The text argues for greater co-operation between agencies and recommends focusing upon providing more serious resources for treatment of children and families rather than concentrating exclusively on criminality and the risk to children.

Using the true story of a murdered child as a point of departure, a leading expert on family violence argues that society's first priority must be protecting children rather than preserving families.Richard Gelles was once one of the most widely published and vocal defenders of family preservation: the social policy of keeping troubles families together as a primary goal. He then ran into the true and tragic case of David Edwards, an infant who was murdered by his mother after falling through the chasms in the child welfare system.David's story convinced Gelles that the system must change. Nearly half the children who are killed by their parents each year are killed after they have come to the attention of child welfare agencies. These children must be protected by getting them out of harm's way. That means a radically new child welfare system must be developed. The first priority must be to protect children rather than preserve families. This hard-hitting book critically examines family preservation programs and argues that they do not work. Gelles goes beyond mere criticism of the child welfare system to suggest specific ways the system should be changed, such as eliminating mandatory reporting of abuse, giving better training to caseworkers, and separating the investigation of abuse from case management.

'This book offers some quite unique resource material. The first two chapters should be mandatory reading for all who work with or aspire to work with children. For teachers of students with disabilites, especially students who are deaf or wheelchair dependent, the collection of curriculum ideas offers stimulation for jaded programs.' - The Journal Of Intellectual And Developmental Disability. 'Clearly structured with a large typeface and bold illustrations, the text is friendly and easily utilised with many pages specifically formatted to assist in the learning process... a text that introduces young people to the safelty skills that they require and raises awareness levels of professional to the likelihood of abusive situations is an essential prerequisite of any establishment that encounters young people with disabilities.' - Talk, the magazine of the National Deaf Children's Society 'An excellent resource for understanding personal safety skills for all children, including children with disabilities.' - Link 'People interested in teaching children with disabilities to minimize their risk for abuse often tell me that they don't know where to start. This book starts from the right place. It's based on a firm foundation, a thorough knowledge of abuse prevention curricula for children without disabilities. The principles and practices of abuse prevention for all children have been carefully maintained while allowing for the special needs of children with disabilities.' - Professor Dick Sobsey, The University of Atlanta Abuse and Disability Project 'These modules will be of considerable help when planning a curriculum to help children with disabilities protect themselves, and will enable carers and parents to become more aware and pro-active in such a programme.' - NAPSAC Bulletin 'Contains invaluble information on child protection issues.' - Bulletin, Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists 'Provides invaluable information needed by parents and other caregivers for an understanding of personal safety skills for all children, and explains the risks and considerations peculiar to children with special needs.' - In Touch Newsletter 'This book is a 'must' for educational establishments who have disabled children and take child protection seriously... The layout, contents and illustrations made it easy for me to take in the information boldly presented in the book... the seven modules are excellent and represent a concrete base on which to plan our individualised approach. - Catch Up, Capability Scotland 'All [Briggs'] information is valid and provides a sound foundation for safety skills work... The suggested teaching activities are good ones and are located in wider contexts of work on self-effecacy and self-value. The worksheets are excellent... Provides useful general reference materials and some well though out activities.' - Deafness and Education 'This book is valuable for all teachers, care staff, and child protection practitioners. It should be available within all training on child protection.' - Child Abuse and Neglect Although child protection has become a major issue, the abuse of children with disabilities has been largely ignored. International research shows that this group of children is at greatest risk from all forms of maltreatment. However, the needs of children with disabilities are not being met first, because these children are not being acknowledged as a target population by the community at large and, second, because service providers are so overwhelmed by other problems that they have not begun to take up the challenge of addressing the special needs of this most vulnerable minority group. This book, written at the request of teachers, social workers and psychologists, is in two parts. Part I provides the information needed by parents, teachers and other caregivers for an understanding of personal safety skills for all children, and explains the risks and considerations peculiar to children with special needs. Possible approaches and methods for their protection are introduced. Part II provides practical curriculum ideas and exercises for developing safety skills in children and young people with mild to severe disabilities. The curriculum ideas are sequenced to help with the development of basic safety knowledge and skills, and may also be used in mixed ability classes.

Written by an elementary principal in a poor, urban neighbourhood in the United States, The Least of These recounts a year in the life of a school and challenges the proposition that school reform can be achieved smoothly. The author describes the conditions of the children's lives and those of the people who struggle to help them. Her account is a moving narrative depicting poverty, violence and neglect, and the teachers' struggle to offset these dismal conditions. The book highlights the restrictions facing the school which result from a large bureaucracy and a powerful teachers' union.

Good Practice in Child Protection is a timely practical handbook for use by all professionals who work with child abuse cases as they get to grips with the new legislation on child protection. The contributors come from a wide range of backgrounds, including the social services, medicine, the legal professions and the police force. The book is soundly based on theory, but its main emphasis is on practice, and it includes exercises to improve practice in specific areas of child protection work, enabling workers to achieve the high standards now demanded. The subjects covered include: The Children Act and child protection Recognizing abuse Preventing female genital mutilation Communicating with children about abuse Child protection case conferences Promoting inter-professional understanding Victims of child abuse The police perspective Supervision and support of workers

A long overdue book by a psychologist who has extensive clinical experience treating male victims of child sexual abuse, it explodes the myth that sexual abuse of male children is rare, or that the consequences are less serious than for girls. Hunter examines the physical and emotional impact of abuse on its victims and the factors affecting revovery. With personal case histories of victims and their families, this is a powerfully written and meticulously researched book that is a landmark in the field of child sexual abuse literature.

For fourteen years, Jayne Senior tried to help girls from Rotherham who had been groomed, raped, tortured, pimped and threatened with violence by sex traffickers. As the manager of Risky Business, which was set up to work with vulnerable teens, she heard heartbreaking and shocking stories of abuse and assiduously kept notes and details of the perpetrators, passing information on to the authorities in the belief that they would do something. Eventually, when she lost hope that the authorities would take action against the gangs she had identified as the abusers, she became a whistleblower for The Times investigative reporter Andrew Norfolk. Now, in her powerful memoir Broken and Betrayed, she describes a life spent working to protect Rotherham's girls, the pressure put on her to stop rocking the boat, and why she risked prison in the hope that she could help end the appalling child exploitation in the town.

This fully updated Reader provides a comprehensive review of recent research and legislation relating to domestic violence and its consequences for children, and identifies the implications for practice. It is divided into three parts. Part One describes evidence for the links between domestic violence and the concomitant abuse of children and assesses the effects on children's future well-being. Part Two is a comprehensive and accessible guide to relevant current criminal and civil legislation. Highlighting the success of multi-agency approaches, the final part details practical issues for interventions with children and their carers, male perpetrators, and, new to this edition, women. Endorsed by children's charities including the NSPCC and Barnardo's, Making an Impact enables professionals working with children to develop informed, sophisticated and collaborative child care and protection responses for children who are experiencing domestic violence.

*Shortlisted for the Young Minds Book Prize 2006* Shattered Lives bears witness to the lives of children who have experienced abuse and neglect, and highlights the effects of early traumatic episodes. Chapters take the form of letters to a child capturing their life experiences, hugely impacted by sexual abuse, parental substance misuse and loss, leading to feelings of shame, rejection and worthlessness. Batmanghelidjh offers understanding for those baffled by these hard-to-reach children and warns against stigmatizing them for their problem behaviour. In her critique of existing structures, she exposes the plight of children who are overlooked by the authorities and denounces those who value bureaucracy over the welfare of the individual child. Society's failure to acknowledge the truth of their experiences and act to change the environment in which such mistreatment can flourish is, she strongly argues, leading to the death of childhood. The book is a clarion call for change.

Therapy is a critical element of work with abused children, offering them the opportunity to explore past experiences in a safe environment with the emotional support of a therapist. Reaching the Vulnerable Child offers a tried-and-tested model of integrated therapy that incorporates play and expressive arts to foster verbal, non-verbal and symbolic communication. The authors describe how emotional, physical and sexual abuse impact on children's development, and discuss attachment, separation, loss, and the effects of trauma on brain functioning. They provide practical guidance on preparing for sessions and creating safe therapeutic environments, and explain the importance of involving carers in the recovery process. Drawing on a wide range of techniques including play, movement, art, drama, music and therapeutic story work, this approach proposes methods for addressing guilt and low self-esteem, establishing trust and dealing with sexualized or aggressive behaviour. This guide to working with abused children and young people will be valued by professionals and therapists from a range of backgrounds, including psychotherapists, play therapists and arts therapists, as well as those responsible for children's services. It is an ideal accompaniment to The Child's Own Story, also in the Delivering Recovery series.

This highly accessible and informative book offers practical strategies for the protection of children that all parents, teachers, and anyone involved in the life of a child will find indispensable. Providing the reader with an understanding of typical/normative sexual development in children, Christiane Sanderson enables parents and teachers to distinguish this from atypical sexual development and recognize the warning signs of sexual abuse. The more knowledgeable and comfortable teachers and parents are, the easier it is for them to understand and talk openly with children about sexual development - this book offers guidance on discussing appropriate and inappropriate touching/behaviours and the dangers of sexual abuse in an age-sensitive way. The author presents information about abusers and how to protect against their attempts to gain access to a child through grooming children, parents and other adults, including up-to-date information on the use of the Internet and mobile phones. Armed with the accurate knowledge and practical guidance on child sexual abuse provided in this book, parents, teachers, and professionals will be able to confront the threat their children may face and take practical steps to protect against it.

Despite heightened media attention and the increase in professional knowledge about child abuse, many children are still being failed by the system. Using attachment theory as a foundation, this book addresses in depth the acute practice dilemmas concerning children who, despite the climate of increased awareness, multi-disciplinary cooperation and legislative and procedural change, cannot easily be protected. The contributors give guidelines for working with the children, in particular those who, unable to disclose their experience themselves, are the most difficult to support. Illustrated throughout with case material and informed by the experiences of survivors themselves, the book presents a framework for well managed and resourced, flexible and integrated intervention with children, their families, and the community that will enable professionals and families to work together to break the `cycle of abuse'.

Grounded in the latest clinical and developmental knowledge, this book brings together leading authorities to examine the critical issues that arise when children and adolescents become involved in the justice system. Chapters explore young people's capacities, competencies, and special vulnerabilities as victims, witnesses, and defendants. Key topics include the reliability of children's abuse disclosures, eyewitness testimony, interviews, and confessions; the evolving role of the expert witness; the psychological impact of trauma and of legal involvement; factors that shape jurors' perceptions of children; and what works in rehabilitating juvenile offenders. Policies and practices that are not supported by science are identified, and approaches to improving them are discussed.

This expertly written book provides an accessible framework for culturally competent practice with children and families in child maltreatment cases. Numerous workable strategies and concrete examples are presented to help readers address cultural concerns at each stage of the assessment and intervention process. Professionals and students learn new ways of thinking about their own cultural viewpoints as they gain critical skills for maximizing the accuracy of assessments for physical and sexual abuse; overcoming language barriers in parent and child interviews; respecting families' values and beliefs while ensuring children's safety; creating a welcoming agency environment; and more.

The idea that the healthy personality is naturally multiple is a major premise of Richard Schwartz's internal family system (IFS) model, and has special relevance for survivors of childhood sexual abuse. Trapped in a nightmare of abuse, denial and betrayal, some parts of the survivor absorb the pain while other parts try desperately to protect the survivor's life; such internal polarizations lead to extreme behaviours. This guide to the IFS model demonstrates how parts can be released from their extreme roles.

Reports alleging maltreatment of more than three million children were made in the United States in 1996, a rate of 44 per 1,000 children in the population. Of those reports, child protective services substantiated abuse or neglect in nearly one million children -- an 18 percent increase since 1990. More than half the 1996 reports alleging maltreatment came from medical, social services, education, or law enforcement professionals, and almost two-thirds of the substantiated reports were made by these professionals.

As diagnostic expertise has increased, child care professionals face new responsibilities for recognizing the short-term and long-term consequences of childhood victimization and for effectively treating victims of the various forms of child maltreatment. Achieving treatment goals requires that consultations among mental health, medical, and legal practitioners be conducted on common ground. This book seeks to provide that common ground.

Combining current theory about treating child abuse with current practice guidelines, Treatment of Child Abuse provides professionals with the guidance they need to take the correct steps to restore the child and the family as much as possible to normal. In addition, it addresses the rising demand for accountability in the health care system, which increasingly requires professionals to justify their efforts and their methods. The result is the first single reference source for the clinician who needs to know which approach to treatment might be most appropriate for a given child trying to cope with the aftermath of physical, emotional, or sexual abuse. It provides guidelines for treatment of the different categories of abuse as wellas neglect, Munchausen by proxy, and multiple traumatization. Initial medical management, legal interventions, long-term medical management, and long-term management of developmental and psychological consequences are thoroughly covered, as are complicated issues such as treatment-resistant families, the treatment of offenders, forensic implications (including confidentiality), and the long-term consequences of childhood victimization.

Starting with a broad theoretical basis, this book assesses the affect of abuse on the children's cognitive, behavioral and emotional development. A treatment plan incorporating individual, family and group therapies is included.

This text describes the different types of incest and the symptoms, short-term after-effects and long-term secondary elaborations of incest from four theoretical perspectives: traumatic stress; developmental; feminist; and loss.

Joy Janaka Wiradjuri Williams was a member of the Aboriginal Stolen Generations. She was taken from her mother at birth and put into a home for white girls. As an effected adult, she spent ten years in court suing the Australia's State Government for negligence. Not only did Joy lose the case, but lost two separate appeals. Several years later she was found dead, alone, in her Primbee flat in New South Wales. In this book, Peter Read - an award-winning author and prominent historian of Aboriginal history - tells Joy Williams's story, which exemplifies the detrimental effects of Aboriginal children removed from their mothers at birth. Joy suffered abuse, anger, violence, and mental illness. The book is a new style of biography, written in direct speech and dramatized, often using Joy's own words, with a reverse chronology from death to birth. Tripping over Feathers offers rare historical insight into the institutions, street life, and Indigenous and urban culture from 1942 to 2006. Also included are many of Joy Janaka Wiradjuri Williams's poems.

Current statistics on child abuse, neglect, poverty, and hunger shock the conscience-doubly so as societal structures set up to assist families are failing them. More than ever, the responsibility of the helping professions extends from aiding individuals and families to securing social justice for the larger community. With this duty in clear sight, the contributors to Child and Family Advocacy assert that advocacy is neither a dying art nor a lost cause but a vital platform for improving children's lives beyond the scope of clinical practice. This uniquely practical reference builds an ethical foundation that defines advocacy as a professional competency and identifies skills that clinicians and researchers can use in advocating at the local, state and federal levels. Models of the advocacy process coupled with first-person narratives demonstrate how professionals across disciplines can lobby for change. Among the topics discussed: Promoting children's mental health: collaboration and public understanding. Health reform as a bridge to health equity. Preventing child maltreatment: early intervention and public education Changing juvenile justice practice and policy. A multi-level framework for local policy development and implementation. When evidence and values collide: preventing sexually transmitted infections. Lessons from the legislative history of federal special education law. Child and Family Advocacy is an essential resource for researchers, professionals and graduate students in clinical child and school psychology, family studies, public health, developmental psychology, social work and social policy.