Working with Children and Families

This chapter moves the book on to discussion surrounding practice. It will begin by looking at how theories of child development influence approaches in work settings and will then move on to look at practice itself, with a focus around child protection. As population movement from poor to rich countries continues, the economic recession creates tensions in the latter, leading to the popularization of policies limiting immigration and asylum. This impacts particularly on children, and so will be given coverage in this chapter. Finally, social pedagogy will be discussed as a possibility for a creative style that has the needs of service users at its heart. Because this section is practice-focused, there is little attention to either explanation or critique of mainstream approaches but there will be critical comment if this underpins explanation of alternative approaches consistent with radical practice.