Practical Guide to Child Protection ─ The Challenges, Pitfalls and Practical Solutions

Identifying the most serious challenges faced in child protection work, this practical guide offers helpful solutions for frontline professionals working with children and adults. Informed by her many years on the frontline and subsequent experience writing serious case reviews, Joanna Nicolas has identified the most common pitfalls in child protection cases. The book focuses on understanding the impact of neglect, information sharing between professionals, communication with children, working with non-compliance/disguised compliance, and the impact of multiple risk factors. It offers tips for overcoming the challenges of everyday practice, such as home visits, as well as enhancing understanding of the key issues in this complex field. The evidence-informed chapters are packed with case examples and include useful reminders of the underlying principles at play. This is essential reading for social workers, health care workers, mental health workers, education professionals and related professions, such as housing and probation.

Joanna Nicolas has worked in social care for 23 years. She has worked as a residential social worker, a frontline child protection social worker and has been developing and delivering child protection training for her Local Safeguarding Children Board since 2006. She also develops and delivers training in the private and voluntary sector. She now leads on serious case reviews and works as an independent child protection consultant. She is an accredited lead reviewer in the Social Care Institute for Excellence (SCIE) Learning Together systems reviews model and has been leading these reviews since 2011, when the Government first piloted the model. Since 2008 Joanna has been a national commentator on issues around social work, child protection and serious case reviews. She is also the author of Conducting The Home Visit In Child Protection.