Christian Kerr

Essential reading for students and practicing social workers in Wales, this book is the first to examine what makes the Welsh context unique, including the move towards joint children, families and adult provision and the emphasis on early ...

The ebook editions of this book are available open access under a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 licence on bloomsburycollections.com. Open access was funded by Monash University.

Over the last decade there has been a series of Government policy initiatives in respect of children's services and social work education in England, many of which aim to de-regulate or privatise aspects of these services. Critically considering the impact of the MacAlister Review, this book explores the past, present and future of children's services in the UK from a range of perspectives - lived, professional and academic. This accessible guide provides a timely and incisive overview of the current children's services reform agenda in the UK. It identifies current challenges, analyses both strengths and weaknesses in the current policy agenda and sets out alternative policy and practice directions for a system that can meet families' needs.

The Future of Children’s Care: Critical Perspectives on Children’s Services Reform brings together the perspectives of a range of contributors with different experiences and expertise, lived and professional. Each of the chapters shines a light on aspects of children’s services reform. The chapters also adopt, to varying degrees, a critical lens on the MacAlister Review of Children’s Social Care in England, announced in January 2021, and reporting in mid-2022. The topics covered include: children’s rights; racial disparities in children’s services; perspectives from direct experiences of the family courts and the care system; the influence of policy networks on children’s services reform; an emergent ‘social work complex’ in children’s services; kinship care; adoption; and the social model of child protection. Underpinning the ideas in this collection is an understanding of dissent as a countervailing force against hegemonic control of public policy. The chapters advocate for how children’s services policy and practices can and should be different, proposing a variety of ideas on what those changes should be. Over the last decade there has been a series of Government policy initiatives in respect of children’s services and social work education in England, many of which aim to de-regulate or privatise aspects of these services. Critically considering the impact of the MacAlister Review, this book explores the past, present and future of children’s services in the UK from a range of perspectives – lived, professional and academic. This accessible guide provides a timely and incisive overview of the current children’s services reform agenda in the UK. It identifies current challenges, analyses both strengths and weaknesses in the current policy agenda and sets out alternative policy and practice directions for a system that can meet families’ needs. Bringing together a range of perspectives from practice, lived experience and academia, this is an accessible and timely guide to children’s services reform. Critically considering the impact of the MacAlister Review, the book highlights both the positive and negative aspects of reform, before setting out alternative policy and practice directions. This chapter locates the MacAlister Review’s calls for a reset of the children’s social care system in England within the policy reform agenda of the last 25 years in the UK. It situates the MacAlister Review’s welcome emphasis on better supporting birth family care within a broader analytical framework grounded in Fox Harding’s analysis of values positions in child welfare and an adaptation of Stuart Hall’s notion of the ‘double shuffle’ in policy development. Drawing on insights from the chapters in this collection, it identifies the potential for the MacAlister Review to be used to move children’s services policy reform in contradictory value-orientated directions via a double shuffle. This would entail on the one hand an apparent move towards a greater family support orientation within the child welfare system undercut by further neoliberal-influenced state defunding of children’s services and/or greater deregulation and privatisation of the delivery of children’s services provision. The chapter concludes by arguing for the importance of dissent in future policy development in children’s services.

Bringing together a range of perspectives from practice, lived experience and academia, this is an accessible and timely guide to children's services reform. Critically considering the impact of the MacAlister Review, the book highlights both the positive and negative aspects of reform, before setting out alternative policy and practice directions.

This article presents a thematic analysis of 100 articles which appeared in ‘SW2020 under COVID-19’ online magazine, authored by people with lived experience, practitioners, students and academics. The magazine was founded by an editorial collective of the authors of this article and ran as a free online magazine during the period of the first UK COVID-19 lockdown period (March–July 2020). It contained a far higher proportion of submissions from the first three groups of contributors, above, than traditional journals. The analysis is organised under four analytic themes: ‘Hidden populations; Life, loss and hope; Practising differently and Policy and system change’. The article concludes by describing the apparent divergence between accounts that primarily suggest evidence of improved working relationships between social workers and those they serve via digital practices, and accounts suggesting that an increasingly authoritarian social work practice has emerged under COVID-19. We argue that, notwithstanding this divergence, an upsurge in activism within social work internationally during the pandemic provides a basis for believing that the emergence of a community-situated, socially engaged social work is possible post-pandemic.

INTRODUCTION: Dissent is currently under political and ideological assault in the UK and immigration has long been a target for those looking to quell dissenting practices. At the same time, dissent appears increasingly out of place in the contemporary social work context in England. Yet, as the authors argue, dissent is codified within the professional and ethical standards that social workers in England must adhere to. APPROACH: This article introduces the work of a small UK Charity, Together with Migrant Children, and applies to it key facets of the theoretical basis for dissent through case study and practice-based reflections on challenges in immigration policy and opportunities for dissenting practice. IMPLICATIONS: The authors set out the challenges and opportunities for dissent in practice in statutory, non-statutory and wider community development settings, illustrating how dissent can bring individual ‘success’ that is located within a cumulative structural and tactical change that points to dissent and its practice as a necessary feature of democracy.

Social Work 2020 under Covid-19 was a free online magazine conceived just before the UK’s Covid-19 full lockdown began, in late March 2020. It ran for five editions until 14 July 2020. In this time it published close to 100 articles from academics, people with lived experience, practitioners and students. It contained a far higher proportion of submissions from the last three groups of contributors than traditional journals. This article draws on the six-person editorial collective’s reflections on the magazine: it considers its founding purposes; its role in fostering social work community, utilizing an adaptation of social capital classifications; and its potential as a learning tool. It concludes by arguing that the magazine illustrates the potential for free online publications to be an important emergent vehicle for ‘everyday activism’ within the field of social work.