Family policy

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.

A fresh approach to supporting children who experience parental separation and divorce. Murch argues for preventative intervention which responds to children's worries when they first present them, without waiting until things have gone badly wrong.

This insightful book discusses the origins and theoretical underpinnings of family led decision making and brings together the current research on the efficacy and limitations of family group conferences into a single text.

Paving the way for a government to fulfil its responsibility to families, this authoritative and critical account of the Troubled Families Programme reveals the inconsistencies and contradictions within it, and issues of deceit and malpractice in its operation.

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.

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.

Available Open Access under CC-BY-NC licence. This book presents evidence from over 40 countries that shows how single parents face a triple bind of inadequate resources, employment and policies, which in combination further complicate their lives.

The first book to provide practitioners with an evidence-based, practical guide to safeguarding children and young people from abuse in a world of sexting, selfies and snap chat.

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 is the first to evaluate the recent reforms of UK legal aid from a social policy perspective and assess their impact on family law courts and advocacy. It argues that the reforms effectively ‘delawyerise’ disputes, producing a more inquisitorial justice system and impacting the litigants, court system, staff and process.

This timely book critically examines the capabilities and limitations of new areas of biology, especially epigenetics and neuroscience, that are used as powerful arguments for developing social policy in a particular direction, exploring their implications for policy and practice.

In the UK, as in other rich countries, the ‘playing-field’ is anything but level and the family plays a surprisingly crucial part in maintaining inequality. This book explores how seemingly mundane aspects of family life raise fundamental questions of social justice and calls for a rethink of what equality of opportunity means.